What An Interview Is Not

Open Letter To A Particular Hiring Manager

(You know who you are; at least I hope you do.)

A job interview is not an opportunity for a C-level wannabe to belittle and insult a job candidate. Period.

 A job interview is not an opportunity to put a job candidate on trial to defend every decision she has ever made. Explain, yes. But defend against challenges to each decision’s logic and legitimacy? I’m sure you have more than enough of your own staff to run that little game on, if that is indeed the way you roll. Your staff, at least, is getting paid to listen to your insults and derisions. The job candidate is not. The candidate did not travel more than 4 hours, on her own dime, to be told by someone who just admitted that she has been in this role for less time than the candidate has sat in various reception areas throughout her life (not including the 30 minutes this candidate just spent cooling her heels in your’s, for no apparent reason) that the work she did for previous employers was “useless and meaningless,” and that the work the candidate has done in the past has no value because “every firm does that.” 

The job interview is not the time or the place to suddenly reveal that the position the candidate is applying for is split 50/50 between this city and another, 1600 miles away. We job candidates are not as dumb as we look. We’re all very well aware that such heretofore unrevealed requirements provide the wannabe with an automatic “pass” card − the excuse the hiring manager will give to the CMO (you know, the one you’re trying to usurp?) for passing on a highly qualified and experienced candidate (Yes, I agree she’s great but she just doesn’t want to travel to Houston). We also know that the 50% travel estimate is a gross exaggeration of the amount of travel required for this role. We know this because we have held travel-heavy positions and even those rarely netted out to 50% on a yearly basis. Really? 50% travel for a non-billable law-firm employee?  Still, go right ahead.  We wish the wannabe luck finding a qualified, competent New Yorker who is genuinely “enthusiastic” about living in a Houston hotel room for two weeks out of every month. And, a bit of advice from this particular candidate, an older woman at “this stage” (as you so delicately put it) in her career: in the unlikely event that you do find such a Houston enthusiast, you’d be smart to consider the possibility that  a serious personal issue will surface before too long. Take it from me. Ordinary life experience and common sense will teach you that anyone who chooses to be away from home that much has a reason to want to be away that much and that reason will eventually be revealed in a crises that will infect your work environment.

But I digress. That particular interview was one of, if not the most disturbing and professionally insulting job interviews I have experienced throughout my entire period of unemployment. I have met more than my share of young, upstart CMO wannabes who want to change the world but I have never had to participate in a conversation like that one, in which the wannabe felt it necessary to build a case to support her prejudgment of my unsuitability (age-related no doubt) as a candidate by disparaging and belittling the work I’ve done for previous employers, needless to say, some of the most prestigious law firms in the country. After disparaging the legitimacy and effectiveness of my methods, she then asked me to rate my PowerPoint skills on a scale of 1-10. I asked for clarification. She clarified by explaining “10 being the ability to add animation.”

Me: If you mean the ability to add little stick figures with light bulbs flashing over their heads, then 11. Does this firm still do that? 

After she made the “useless and meaningless” remark, I gathered up my papers, returned them to their folder, put the folder in my bag, zipped the bag and looped the straps over my shoulder. That’s it. I’ve had enough and this is over. She continued to yammer on about the Houston thing and other things and on and on and on. I became genuinely curious to see how she was going to end this and how long it would take. While she yammered on and on about nothing in particular, I contributed nothing to the conversation except an occasional “Hmm. Interesting.” Either she didn’t notice, or was pretending not to notice. Either way, I didn’t care. Still don’t.

Lesson learned: A thirty-minute wait in the reception area with no explanation or apology is not a harbinger of good things to come.