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The worst job interview I ever had

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Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#241

Post by narag »

I had a pretty weird interview with this crazy french guy that after a couple of minutes, started acting like a telepreacher and demanding passion or something.

But the most frustrating one was with an attractive smiling girl that praised the founder as a genius, dismissed my experience and refused to talk money. She said the next step was a "group dynamics" with the team. I said no thanks. Cult.

In general, I get the job when I reach the technical guy. Except that time that, after being approved by the technical lead, I had a chat with the dept head, that asked some inane what are your hobbies questions and rejected me, really because of too high salary. Later the same company reached me, when he was replaced.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#242

Post by ozim »

cwnyth wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. This is not a standard job interview question at all. In fact if you tried asking this at any company with a legal or HR team, you'd get pulled out of interviewing people until they could train you appropriate job inte…

Keeping in mind the context of the original parent comment, yes it is 100% standard to ask about the "hardest day of your [working] life." I wouldn't ever put it like that, but asking about difficult challenges and how you overcame them is completely normal. The blog post reads to me as someone who is oblivious about the subtext of these questions. When I ask that kind of question, I'm not asking you to share about a…

I think you have to take into account context of the blog post where author was in the interview for “mental health startup”.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#243

Post by msftr1 »

I had a weird experience interviewing for a company recently. I'm in cyber security and I'm no way a SWE (my CV clearly shows that) and apart from the odd python/shell/powershell script I'm not a developer.

Job description matched 95% of my skills, and I thought it'd be a great opportunity to move to a more lean company, in a challenging industry. First interview with HR went awesome. For the second one I had a whiteboard to code a random problem. I never had a whiteboard before as I was never a SWE before. I tried my best but yeah not exacly what I've been doing for the last 15 years. There was a couple of system design questions which I think went well.

But anyway, received a rejection email a couple days after. What shocked me most was that I wasn't asked a single security question. Literally nothing about authZ, authN, threat modelling, vulnerabilities, frameworks, intelligence. Nada. All these things were listed in the role description, though.

I was upset but yeah, maybe they didn't know what they really wanted.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#244

Post by AussieWog93 »

jval43 wrote: post #47
rigonkulous wrote: post #40

I was excited, it was a game company, and I'd wanted to get back into games - or more specifically, game engines - for a few years. The tech of this particular company was interesting, an in-house engine developed by wunderkind, of course, and they'd invited me for an interview because I had done a fair bit of low-level work, which would be handy for their rough edges. Apparently. Half way through the interview, I ha…

Always trust your gut. Especially when it comes to people. Don't overthink, never rationalize it. Accept your feeling, it's valid. If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.

I had to check your profile after reading that first line.

Fortunately 2016 join date, "No AI used in my comments".

But holy cow that was uncanny after months of Claude

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#245

Post by AussieWog93 »

genewitch wrote: post #43
analogpixel wrote: post #24

Would be funny if the interviewer wrote the exact same blog post; "I had the worst candidate interview today, I asked him a simple ice-breaker question before getting into more technical stuff, and he just went off about his family and relationships for an hour; weirdest interview I ever gave."

you think that's what it was? The people with 100% of the power in this situation did everything 100% correct and you're not victim-blaming at all?

"Victim blaming" because of a bad interview. lolwut

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#246

Post by rkachowski »

morkalork wrote: post #84
rsoto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, OP just unwinded himself, no filter. You can be truthful and open with friends and family, close people to you. You absolutely shouldn't when talking with strangers.

Then strangers shouldn't fucking ask questions that could have answers that make them uncomfortable. Just a thought.

It's wild to see so many advocates of "the inexperienced should have experience already". You're put in an awful situation but it's your own fault because you went through it, you should have known better than to take questions at face value as presented.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#247

Post by huhkerrf »

analogpixel wrote: post #24

Would be funny if the interviewer wrote the exact same blog post; "I had the worst candidate interview today, I asked him a simple ice-breaker question before getting into more technical stuff, and he just went off about his family and relationships for an hour; weirdest interview I ever gave."

I've had that before. I asked a woman to walk me through her career (I told her I've obviously seen the profile before, but I'd love to hear the elevator pitch directly from her) and she started off by saying,"Well, you need to know that I was raised in a cult."

And, yeah, I feel bad for her. But also: time and place.

I passed on her because she didn't have the technical skills, but that was definitely a case of the setting not being right.

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#248

Post by underdeserver »

LoulouMonkey wrote: post #239

As we're all sharing some bizarre experiences we've had, I feel I have to chip in. I had 2 very weird interviews with the same FAANG company, before actually joining the company in 2021. Anyway, we're in 2011 and my career in tech has just started. I hear back from a recruiter regarding a role I've applied for, and to be considered for this position it is mandatory to be fluent in French. Which shouldn't be a problem…

Was this a technical role?

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#249

Post by halapro »

akdor1154 wrote: post #236
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had an interview like this in the past. At the time, I chalked it up to a power trip and the indignant behavior that comes along with it, as it is especially embedded in the culture of the country that I'm based out of. Having said that, talking to a relative, I found out that this style of "interviewing" is often done when they already have someone for the position, but need to show (for compliance reasons, or…

> I chalked it up to a power trip and the indignant behavior that comes along with it, as it is especially embedded in the culture of the country that I'm based out of. That's a very globally-conscious way to refer to the USA!

My mind raced to the letter I instead

Re: The worst job interview I ever had

#250

Post by shrikant »

LoulouMonkey wrote: post #239

As we're all sharing some bizarre experiences we've had, I feel I have to chip in. I had 2 very weird interviews with the same FAANG company, before actually joining the company in 2021. Anyway, we're in 2011 and my career in tech has just started. I hear back from a recruiter regarding a role I've applied for, and to be considered for this position it is mandatory to be fluent in French. Which shouldn't be a problem…

Wow, why do you think the communication was so off? (I don't know much about French)

My guess would be that the intervewing manager was just translating English sentences directly into their French worded equivalent without actually following the rules/grammmar, and so it was confusing -- right?

I initially thought they might be attempting to read off a Google Translate conversion but I suppose if that interview was face to face then that'd be implausible.

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