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The worst job interview I ever had

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Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#141

Post by pan69 »

anyfoo wrote: post #102
pan69 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had something similar years ago. I applied for a job at a company, size around 150 people. Did two rounds of interviews which were great. They wanted me to offer the role. However, as a third round, I was going to do a meet and greet with the CEO and he was going to yay or nay me. At point I dropped out. If a CEO can't trust his delegate managers to hire the people they see fit for a role, then thanks but no thanks…

I don't know your particular situation, so it might be totally different, but I think this is commonly just a formality and a friendly chat. It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit). Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decisio…

> just a formality and a friendly chat

That was not the case in this scenario. I was told I would be offered the role if I came out favorable with the CEO (did he like me or not? did I jump when the said "jump"?). To me this meant that the CEO doesn't trust the people he hires. He clearly didn't trust the hiring manager's jugement and/or respected their position. The CEO delegated a task and responsibility but then felt to have to authority to override that, which maybe he does. However, that's not a culture in which I want to operate. If I was wrong, so be it, but I saw a red flag and I made a choice.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#142

Post by genewitch »

kxrm wrote: post #109
WatchDog wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with. Just in an interview situation, or you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with?

> you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with? Building relationships with colleagues is possible but I have tried to be careful. I have made some friends over time that were once co-workers. However, they were only able to move to full friend once they moved on to other teams or companies. I don't see someone I work with day-to-day as a personal friend. I compartmentalize them…

My best friend is someone i worked with, and we hit it off immediately. He also was one of the people who interviewed me before hire, too. I left the company because of medication induced issues with co-workers (long boring story... careful with SSRIs kids!)

and we still ... actually he just called so i gotta cut this short we talk 5 hours a week on the phone plus we run a PBX and chat server and stuff so we're constantly in contact.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#143

Post by ryandrake »

neilv wrote: post #132
anyfoo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.) That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you…

Some good points. Just a heads-up about something interesting I heard/read in training... "Innocuous" icebreaker questions about hobbies, the weekend, or whatever, can be surprisingly problematic. The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of. For me, this wa…

> The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of.

I had a bizarre interview (at an extremely well-known company with an eccentric, controversial founder) where the recruiter asked me directly questions that "BigTech interview training" explicitly taught me to never ask or even walk close to. I was actually shocked and stammered out an awkward "Uhh, I'm pretty sure it's fraught with risk to even ask those things" non-answer, but she seemed genuinely surprised I wouldn't go into personal family details during a professional job interview. So, it seems not everyone has gotten the memo...

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#144

Post by genewitch »

elzbardico wrote: post #75
eximius wrote: post #59

Earlier this year I was told I failed an interview because when asked why I wanted to join a company, my answer "could apply to other companies in the same stage of life." They apparently required me to be _uniquely_ interested in their company. There were other oddities about their interview process. Some interviewers just want to feel special.

Assume that every singlemotherfucking breathing human you find in your life wants or at least likes to feel special, and that any company that asks you that question wants you to massage their ego a little bit. Don't think much about it, just believe what I am telling you. It is going to save you a lot of grief.

Dale Carnegie floating around this thread a lot.

Remembering (and using!) someone's name is a magic spell, too.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#145

Post by ryandrake »

gamblor956 wrote: post #127
anyfoo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know your particular situation, so it might be totally different, but I think this is commonly just a formality and a friendly chat. It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit). Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decisio…

it's usually just a meet-and-greet. Yes, it usually is. But in this case the problem was that the CEO could unilaterally override the decision made by everyone else, so it wasn't just a meet-and-greet.

Yea, it's not a meet-and-greet, as in there can be no impact to the outcome of the interview. You're definitely still interviewing. But, in every case where I got to the point of "You're going to chat with the [Founder|CEO|BigTech VP]," at that point the job was mine to lose. They're not going to waste a VIP's time if they're not serious about making you an offer. You effectively have the offer. Your job when talking to the VIP person at the end is to "sound like a likable, competent person, who VIP would be cool with saying 'yea I hired this person'." That's pretty much all you need to do.

Generally the chat with the VIP means: "You have the job, but I (VIP) want to just double check that my underling hiring managers are not totally useless."

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#146

Post by ryandrake »

nomel wrote: post #32
nicbou wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question would not be received well in many places. What candidates do in their private time is none of your business.

Not sure why this is downvoted. Even if I wanted to, these questions aren't allowed in the company I work for, along with feedback related to "team fit". This is dictated by execs, dictated by legal, because it has nothing to do with proving competence, and opens up for employment discrimination lawsuits since you're persuading them (you have to understand the power dynamic) to reveal potentially protected info. For…

Great comment. It's really shocking how close to the legal line Silicon Valley tech companies get, and the extent to which many of them actually cross way over the line. A huge number of interviewers I've encountered are in extreme need of training so they don't so casually put their companies at legal risk. If I was Lawful Evil, I could probably make a career out of just suing companies for discriminatory hiring practices, due to the various landmines poorly trained interviewers routinely step into.

BigTech seems to be the best at it. They tend to have rigorous training, and often have a "safe question bank" that interviewers pull questions from, which are all vetted by lawyers and are known not to put the company at legal risk.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#147

Post by [deleted] »

donatj wrote: post #81

I've been working as a dev for over twenty years now and have had my fair share of interviews. The very worst I ever had was about six months ago. I'd had a fantastic initial interview, it seemed like a perfect fit and interesting tech. Overlapped a lot with some work I'd been doing recently. They made it sound like my experience was a great match and they were exited for me to move forward. I was the most excited I'…

[deleted]

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#148

Post by psadauskas »

shoo wrote: post #106
psadauskas wrote: post #54

I had an interview many years ago, that wasn't nearly as traumatic, but the interviewer asked me about my failures like 4 different ways. - Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake. - Tell me about your biggest failure. - Tell me when you last shipped a bug. - Tell me when you took down production. Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistake…

I conducted a few hundred software engineering interviews while working for a non-tech corp. Aside from technical problem solving & programming interviews we'd also ask a few behavioural questions -- including asking about times where the candidate had made a mistake at work, or a time at work where they were very frustrated. What we were looking for - people unwilling to admit they'd ever made a mistake -- red flag…

Right, I'm aware, and like I said, I expect those questions, and I have several examples I'm prepared for, and can tailor it to the interviewer. Like if it was a devops role, I could talk about when I took down production and what I learned from it. Or I could talk about when I failed to properly manage a junior if the role was more management-oriented and what I learned from it. Or when I badly architected a feature, and what I learned from it, and so on.

What I _wasn't_ prepared for was 4+ of those questions in a row, and _zero_ questions about my experience, or strengths, or anything else. The questions were more of the type "when did you stop beating your wife?". In retrospect, I think the interviewer already had someone they wanted to hire, but were forced into it by HR due diligence or something.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#149

Post by anyfoo »

pan69 wrote: post #141
anyfoo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know your particular situation, so it might be totally different, but I think this is commonly just a formality and a friendly chat. It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit). Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decisio…

> just a formality and a friendly chat That was not the case in this scenario. I was told I would be offered the role if I came out favorable with the CEO (did he like me or not? did I jump when the said "jump"?). To me this meant that the CEO doesn't trust the people he hires. He clearly didn't trust the hiring manager's jugement and/or respected their position. The CEO delegated a task and responsibility but then f…

You know better, as you have all the information and we merely have a shadow of it, but that in itself still sounds like “standard boilerplate” to me.

I remember from my friends who worked at Google at the time, that everyone’s always been told that “every new hire’s contract lands on Larry Page’s desk, he has to sign off on it”, and you can probably bet your bottom dollar that Larry Page didn’t spend a lot of time on each hiring package, if any.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#150

Post by victorbojica »

MattRogish wrote: post #90

This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of ever…

I was also part of this sort of interview once. They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc. Definitely not work related. It was indeed a very strange and exhausting experience. I could've definetly refused to answer some of the questions or drop out of the interview altogether, but not sure why I haven't.

So yeah, this type of interview exists so I highly doubt the interviewer interviewing OP was asking about work stuff...

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