Bad job interview experience

[Jan de Boer]

I had a job interview today. I am pretty sick of it. It’s not that I am rejected for the job. I do not care, there will be other possibilities. I am irritated by the arrogance of the interviewer. I try to present myself as a new employee, but I am also judging my new manager. He did not offer me the job, but, on the other hand, I do not want to work for him either.

I had the interview with a former client of a company I used to work for. The staff there still partly knows me, and they were very enthusiastic to see me. I have worked with them six years ago, and it was a very pleasant project to do, and they were very happy with my work. It was a project of one year.

I had my interview though with a new guy. It was my first interview since years, so maybe it was not one of my best, and maybe I was a little nervous. I had not done this presenting yourself for a long time. So I start talking, telling about my past, about my skills. The guy says nothing. No questions, just let me talk. So I continue, it’s my presentation, I take the initiative. Then after ten minutes he begins to have a certain uninterested body language. I really think ‘go f..k it’. Do you want me to work for you, or don’t you? Then he says: ‘well, you are a waterfall of information..’.

At that moment I already could have gone home. The arrogance in that sentence. He was insinuating I kept on talking because I was nervous. Talking about my tone of voice, my body language. Well, you did not say anything yourself, and you seemed almost disinterested. What should I do? He is one of those persons that thinks that he can judge a person in two minutes because he has peoples knowledge.

When he after that, and I already had given up the interview, did ask some questions, there was of course one of those annoying ‘let us stress applicants question’. Why are manhole covers round? He then offered me a job, but not on the level I was aiming at. And I might have considered it, if, from my side, if I considered him possibly a nice manager to work with.

Okay let us then talk for two minutes about the first impression you make to me, jerk! You sit here, you say nothing, you sit in your chair like a bag of potatoes, you think you can judge me in two minutes on vague appearances, you ask utterly stupid questions that confirm your arrogance. I do not like you, and I do not want to work for you. Even thought about that mister? The impression the interviewer makes on the applicant?

[Henry Wong]

I think that it is a good idea to not take any interview personally. IMO, the best outcome is to just learn something from each bad encounter.

Like you said, an interview is a two way street and they failed too.

Henry

[Jan de Boer]

Of course you are right and I should not take this personally. It's okay!

But it is exactly what you also say. It's two ways. And that guy just sat there...

But let's just quit about this. It's yesterday and not important anymore! :-)

[Mansukhdeep Thind]

I too have had some pretty bumpy experiences with people interviewing me. But nothing matches this one. No word for such a long time. Observing some sort of silence.

In my opinion, the whole process of recruitment needs to be overhauled and standardized. Right now it is all adhoc and unorganized, at least here in my country it's that way. There have been times when the interviewer has been rude, less knowledgeable than me, hasty, arrogant, uninterested and all that. Like Henry rightly said, learn from it.

Remember that, perhaps, the only control that you have is on your own self, no one else. You can't control what people do, how they behave and all that. Just believe and yourself and things will work out mate.

[Luke Kolin]

Why are you so angry? You've had a few interactions with someone over 10 minutes and you're attributing arrogance, you're calling him a jerk internally and venting about it.

There's a lot of reasons people don't hit it off. Maybe the interviewer was unprepared or unfocused. You probably ran on too long (generally any time one person talks for more than a few minutes it concerns me). And obviously the interview didn't go well for either side. But there's no reason to get angry because it's likely to happen more than a few times.

Cheers!

Luke

[Henry Wong]

Luke Kolin wrote:
There's a lot of reasons people don't hit it off. Maybe the interviewer was unprepared or unfocused. You probably ran on too long (generally any time one person talks for more than a few minutes it concerns me). And obviously the interview didn't go well for either side. But there's no reason to get angry because it's likely to happen more than a few times.

Also, if you can figure out what *you* did wrong in the exchange, then you can learn something from it...


For example, many many years ago, I had an interview that got onto the subject of RTTI (this was C++, of course). The interviewer hated RTTI. I had no issues with it. The exchange got a little heated, as with any two engineers. Finally, the interviewer said "just test it, you will see that performance of dynamic casting is dramatically slower!!". My response was "I don't disagree with that, and I guess if I had to deal with a real world application that did nothing but dynamic casting in a tight loop, I might notice it to actually bother me".

Anyway, the interview went downhill from there... And in retrospect, I still think that I am absolutely correct, but I was completely wrong to bring it up in an interview...

Henry

[Bear Bibeault]

How to sink an interview: bring up tabs versus spaces!

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

Jan de Boer wrote: He is one of those persons that thinks that he can judge a person in two minutes

Aren't you doing the same thing that you are accusing him of?

[Jan de Boer]

Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:

Jan de Boer wrote: He is one of those persons that thinks that he can judge a person in two minutes

Aren't you doing the same thing that you are accusing him of?

Yes. I am aware of that though. But, just leave it. I posted this in 'meaning less' originally, and that's what it is. I am not thinking about this anymore. We will just go to the next chance.

[Mansukhdeep Thind]

Jan de Boer wrote: Yes. I am aware of that though. But, just leave it. I posted this in 'meaning less' originally, and that's what it is. I am not thinking about this anymore. We will just go to the next chance.

That's more like it. Way to go.

[Mansukhdeep Thind]

Bear Bibeault wrote:How to sink an interview: bring up tabs versus spaces!

What does this saying mean Bear?

[Bear Bibeault]

tabs versus spaces

[Rameshwar Soni]

There's one even in the MD section tabs vs spaces

[Bill Clar]

Was this interview setup by a recruiter? If so, he/she may be able to play peacemaker and schedule you a new interview with someone else in the company. They do have a vested interest in your job placement after all.

[Henry Wong]

Bill Clar wrote:Was this interview setup by a recruiter? If so, he/she may be able to play peacemaker and schedule you a new interview with someone else in the company. They do have a vested interest in your job placement after all.

Actually, for most recruiters, this is not true. Keep in mind that there are more candidates than positions. They focus on filling the positions -- and tend to have plenty of applicants for each one. There is no need to play peacemaker for a bad interview, because there are plenty of other applicants that the recruiter is working with.

In other words, the recruiter works for the company -- the side that is paying his/her bills.

Henry

[Ryan McGuire]

Rameshwar Soni wrote:There's one even in the MD section tabs vs spaces

In that discussion, Greg Charles brought up an interesting way of indenting and formatting code that maintains multi-line formatting and works even if different people use tabs of different sizes. In short: tabs to indent and spaces to format. I've switched over to what he suggested and have never been happier.

<tab><tab>int    finalResult = ((a      ) & 0x000f) |    
<tab><tab>     s p a c e s     ((b <<  4) & 0x00f0) |    
<tab><tab>          i n        ((c <<  8) & 0x0f00) |    
<tab><tab>        h e r e      ((d << 12) & 0xf000);    

I will say that I prefer Egyptian Braces but without Tie Fighter elses.

[Bear Bibeault]

If there's to be any further discussion of tabs vs spaces, please be sure to make it in the MD post.