Bizarre Interviews: Part 2
You're invited to a video interview...
You hear ‘video interview’ and you think, “Oh, cool! I’ll meet the hiring people on Zoom or Microsoft Teams.” Most of the time you would be correct, but sometimes you would be dead wrong.
Sometimes, the interview goes a little differently. Sometimes you get on the Zoom and the faces from the other screens are…the competition. (Yes, this really happened!) I was invited to interview for an educational consulting company. When I joined the meeting, and before the hiring manager joined, three other people joined. As we were greeting each other we realized we were all being interviewed. Talk about awkward. I felt like I was going to hear, “Surprise, you’re on Candid Camera!”
Then the manager joined and with no pleasantries introduced herself. She brusquely explained that the interview process would go like this:
She would ask 5 questions to the group.
We then were to type our answer into the chat—to be sent only to the hiring manager
There were no more than 3 minutes allotted per question
There would be limited time for questions from the group after the 5 questions
The interview would end with a hard stop at 25 minutes from when she joined
Hopefully my face was not betraying what was running through my brain:
For like the bazillionth time, I thanked Ms. Beulah Harper for kicking me out of 11th grade Honors English, because as a result I took remedial grammar and typing. However, nothing can prepare you for typing answers to interview questions in a tiny chat box while a 3-minute timer is counting down onscreen. No time to think or review your answers—no way to proofread and edit what you submitted already. Never mind that a main part of the job was EDITING! She threw out questions like, “What makes you a good fit for this job?” and “What makes you a valuable team member?” You know, the kinds of questions that are difficult to answer in a few sentences, and ones that are better in conversation. The last one was this: “Given the choice of a brief overview or an in-depth report, which writing assignment do you prefer and why?” Y’all, you know that the job description was vague, high-level, and mentioned literally every type of writing deliverable so I thought it was safe to answer truthfully. I was wrong. Immediately after the last answer time was up, she said…
I hope you all answered “short format” for that last question because 90+% of the assignments that you will be asked to work on will be about 250-500 words.
I doubt this kind of questioning and this format of interviewing would ever be a case study in the book “Effective Hiring Techniques.” File this experience in the fat folder labeled Jobs I Didn’t Get.
Another candidate asked the HR representative about the selection process and moving forward, and she said that this format is the best use of HER time because she could efficiently {she did finger quotes} weed out applicants. She said that she scheduled 3 sessions over 90 min which is why she set the hard stop. She had us type the responses so that she could put the 9 answers side by side and make the hiring decision. So basically, her time was the most important factor and the value of each individual applicant was nonexistent.
Sigh.
Yes, Pollyanna, it’s a good thing I wasn’t offered the job because it would not have been a great option. And yes, getting invited to interview is better than hearing nothing. But, damn y’all, by the end of this interview I had hours of time and emotional energy invested in the process. I even put on makeup! So frustrating.
Sometimes the utterly bizarre video interview goes down in a completely different way. The interview experience with one of the universities in the area left me initially perplexed and subsequently pissed. It seemed like I embodied the job description. I even had a personal recommendation from an employee at another of the university’s campuses. I was excited about many aspects of the job and was happy about the chance to interview…until I saw the instructions after following the link in the email.
Yikes!
The first couple of questions were pretty standard, but a minute isn’t very long to formulate and deliver a comprehensive answer. And it shakes your confidence a bit to have to re-record yourself and watch yourself flailing onscreen. Then this pops up: “What’s your educational philosophy?” How exactly does one answer this in a minute? I mean, really—this is a pretty important question for an institution of higher learning to ask a candidate, right? I jotted down what I believe are critical points to include and found words to make it all connect. I must have re-recorded at least 10 times and still ended up slightly cut off at the end of the minute. At that point, feeling a touch frazzled, I completed the process and hit *send* to await my fate.
Cue the chirping crickets.
A week passed and no response. I sent a follow-up email to the HR contact and noticed that the position was no longer listed.
Crickets still chirping.
I reached out to my friend who sent the recommendation. She had no information and was confused because she thought I was a shoe-in for the position.
10 full days after the interview deadline, I got another “Thanks, but No Thanks” email for my growing collection. This is literally the email content minus the identifiers:
Excuse me, but if you INTERVIEW someone who is very qualified and has an internal recommendation, the very least you owe them is a personalized response! I know my answers were solid (I did my homework), I went out of my way to contact a current employee, and researched as much information as possible before completing the application. So that leaves me wondering, WTF?
Like I have said before, job hunting is NOT for the faint of heart.
Bless you for trying!