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Ask Amy: Job Interviews

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My Mom found this Ask Amy advice column in the newspaper over the weekend and I thought I would share it:

Dear Amy: I am one of millions of Americans who have become unemployed this year. The last thing we need is to be treated with a lack of common decency and empathy.

One manager came 45 minutes late to a one-hour interview, and another interviewer at the same company had a scheduling conflict and offered instead to talk to me over lunch. He retracted that offer only after I sat outside his office for 30 minutes.

An executive excused himself halfway through our conversation and left me to discuss the position with a lower-ranking employee also in attendance.

Someone else took cell phone calls throughout the meeting, and last week, as I turned around to shake a manager’s hand, he had already shut the door.

The job search is undignified and difficult enough without treating job seekers like cattle. Please remind prospective employers that common courtesy can go a long way toward making a stressed-out job seeker feel a little better about himself and the process. — Still Looking

Dear Looking: Thank you for your thoughtful assessment of what can be a humiliating process. Looking for work is a soul-sucking experience, and potential employers should be more aware of it.

That said, your self-esteem is not anyone else’s responsibility. It would be interesting for you to find enterprising ways to somehow turn these humiliations to your advantage.

I’m not crazy about Amy’s advice at the end. Kinda strikes me as “Tough noogies, make lemonade, blah blah blah.” But I thought it was interesting nonetheless. I interviewed for a contracts job at a satellite company a few months back and the human resources woman was a half hour late to the interview coming back from lunch. Oh, and I never got a rejection call or email. When I followed up a month later, the woman’s email address was no longer in service. Fantastic!

Have any job interview horror stories you wish to share?

RANDOM | Craig | January 11, 2010 7:58 am

39 Comments

By josh, January 11, 2010 @ 8:29 am

“The job search is undignified and difficult enough without treating job seekers like cattle.”

SOOOOO FOR TROOOOOFZ! I feel like Grade-A failure most of the time considering I’m nearly two yearz outta college, have applied to countless jerbz yet have only gotten a interview wiff one place (where I work PARTTIME now), and still am waiting tables.

Werking six days a week is slowly killing me. I need my weekendz back [aka haven't had them since I was 16!]

::self-loathing stopz…NOW!::
By Michelle M., January 11, 2010 @ 8:39 am

Job hunting is the worst. I don’t know how many applications I’ve sent out. The worst is not hearing any response at all. Bah. This post has reminded me to buy some lottery tickets.
By josh, January 11, 2010 @ 8:43 am

This post reminded me to put a bullet in mah fucking skull…I mean, never give up hope, or something.
By Tam, January 11, 2010 @ 8:48 am

Her advice sucked. In my job we switch positions every 2-3 years. You always have a job, just which job is the question. So the list comes out and you are allowed to apply for 5 jobs. You send your choices to personnel and then …. Well, in theory, they tally up the names of everyone and forward them to the managers for interviewing. There is a list “must interview” “can interview” “don’t qualify”. If you fall into the don’t qualify category they do NOT call you back and tell you so that you can switch out that job for another on the list they just ignore you and assume that you’ll figure it out sooner or later.

They also tell you to phone managers yourself and see if you are getting an interview and I have only been informed twice (by the same manger) that I was NOT getting the job. Although in theory you have to go through personnel, when you ask for help you are told to go out and figure it out yourself. There is no mandatory notification of employees who were unsuccessful, you just sit and wait (not wanting to bug the manager and piss them off) until you finally phone and they say “Oh, we already selected someone.” Thanks asshole, meanwhile I’ve been not seeking other interviews in the hopes your’s will come through and now all the good ones are gone. I also had a manager tell me that they were forced to put the job on the list but someone was already doing it and they were fighting to keep that person so there really wasn’t much point in interviewing. Umm. Okay, so it’s a “fake” available position. At least they were upfront about it. It’s fucked.

But we do it every year or so and I HATE it. Our interviewing process is June – August so right during vacation time which means the process slows as they wait for people to get back or you miss out because you are on vacation. Job hunts bite, but in my case if I hate my job I know in a couple of years I can get something else or my manager will leave and get something else. The concept is great for me, the implementation is a major stumbling block.

Good luck to all seeking work. It is soul sucking.
By Adam, January 11, 2010 @ 9:06 am

I agree with Tam… I also work for a company where you are expected to post for a new position every 2 to 3 years. And I especially agree with her about “fake available positions” being very frustrating. There are lots of times where the company already knows who they are going to hire for the position but HR makes them go through the motions of posting the position and it just ends up being a giant waste of time and effort for everyone involved. If the job isn’t really availble please just tell me… I am a big boy and can handle that better than going through the motions and wasting my time and getting my hopes up.
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 9:23 am

Tam: I remember you telling me about that horrifying process when you were here last. That’s majorly fucked up. Yuck!

I don’t have any horror stories really. Though I did have an odd experience once. I was interviewing for a designer position when I was Art Director at Honda. I’d gone through all the resumes and I had a series of interviews, along with my senior manager, with the ones that I’d selected. The very first interview, guess who walks in the door? My ultimate favorite college instructor. I was flabbergasted. He taught art and print production and he was freaking brilliant. I never made the name connection for some reason when I was reading through resumes. He didn’t remember me, of course — it had been several years since I’d been in school — and he was nervous as hell. It was sooo weird. Me as interviewer and he as the nervous interviewee. Ultimately we didn’t choose him for the job, but it would have been even weirder if we did and I had been his boss!
By TwoPi, January 11, 2010 @ 9:24 am

But at least it sounds like that HR person got canned. So there!

If the management is so flighty and inconsiderate as to conduct themselves so poorly in an interview, I’d be relieved not to be stuck working with the bozos. Of course, it is easier to have that attitude once one has a job one likes….

I thought job interviews were two-way, with both applicant and employer trying to (convince the other that) (see if) there is a good fit. But in a down economy, perhaps that no longer applies. : = /
By Enrico, January 11, 2010 @ 10:44 am

I have a job interview this Wednesday, so I’ll get back to you!
By Polt, January 11, 2010 @ 11:20 am

I’m with TwoPi, if he email’s no longer active, maybe she’s out trolling for jobs like you are.

I don’t really have any bad stories either. I’ve had 6 jobs over my life, and each of them it was the only job I had applied for (granted, most of them were retail part time jobs, but two were not). I’ve applied for two other jobs that I didn’t get, but the process went well.

I don’t know what to say, other than keep trying and don’t get down on yourself. And make sure you remember the name of the person who had the interview. IF they don’t hire you, or are rude, or don’t respond or whatever, then you can have them killed. The more jobs that are open only increase your chances of getting a job, right?

HUGS…
By jere, January 11, 2010 @ 11:23 am

I’ve been on the other side of the interview table and I’ve been appalled at some of the things people do/say/ask in an interview. I once had a job applicant who admitted to being in the bathroom during our phone interview because he needed to hide the fact that he was considering leaving his current job from his boss. He then trashed his boss for 20 minutes and complained about how hard it was to work there.

But he still got a polite rejection notice by email a few days later.
By Mel, January 11, 2010 @ 11:29 am

I have to say I have a rather low tolerance for that sort of behavior. Fortunately, I work in a profession that’s high demand, so I really haven’t had to deal with that, but now that I’m looking at making a mid-career change, I’m starting to encounter it a bit more. As much as the love has gone with my current job, though, I couldn’t imagine working someplace that treats me as an expendable resource rather than a person.
By The Ryan with the Cupcake, January 11, 2010 @ 12:03 pm

I didn’t get any rejection notices when I was looking for a job between college and grad school. I’m glad I’m outside of the real world for the next few years.

Tam: That sounds like a messed up system. Why do they insist on playing musical chairs every few years?
By The Ryan with the Cupcake, January 11, 2010 @ 12:05 pm

Dave S.: What happened to your avatar?
By john, January 11, 2010 @ 12:26 pm

AMy’s advice, while overly pithy is correct. No one is responsible for your self esteem and there may have been an opportunity for this person to capitalize on the experience. The way I would have capitalized on it would have been to run very fast in the opposite direction.

I had a similar experience about a year ago. The interviewers were late, they made inappropriate comments and one actually told me it was inappropriate to ask questions (I thanked him for the feedback and made the mental note that he was an ass and that I didn’t want the job).

Like Jere said, interviews are the time to figure out if the job is right for you. You should always do research on a company with whom you are interviewing and have a list of questions to ask and be ready to tell them your skill sets as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Lastly, Craig, if that person’s email is no longer active, then call someone else. They may have canned her and still might be interested in you.
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 1:00 pm

Ryan: Damn. I keep forgetting to sign in under the right email address. Thanks for the reminder!
By Tam, January 11, 2010 @ 1:08 pm

Ryan: The nature of my job is “rotational”. As our people leave and come back from overseas every summer there is a HUGE turnover and we are encouraged to have a wide breadth of experience, so you can go from trade policy to working in personnel to the Afghanistan task force to working for our protocol office. It makes life interesting because you get the chance to try things that most people never would. So I love the concept, it’s great for us ADHD career people who get bored easily but our system is so bad and has gotten far worse in recent years.
By M. Nicodemus, January 11, 2010 @ 1:34 pm

Ugh! Don’t get me started; after the DotCom bubble burst in late 2000 my entire product division was let go and I suddenly went from a career that was in high demand with few qualified available candidates (I should know, I was a part of more than a few interview panels) to one where jobs were scarce and I was up against candidates with 20 years more experience. I went from being wined and dined by prospective companies to being treated like cattle.

One of my worst experience was with Microsoft. I was excited for this position because I would get to work with some of my best friends from college. First I sat through an eight hour interview process, after which I was told that I had been selected for the position and to expect the paperwork in the mail in the next few days. Well, a few days went by and I hadn’t recieved anything so I called and left a message and a follow-up email to my recruiter; no response. So, for the next three weeks I would send two messages a week asking for the status of the paperwork. At the end of the third week I got an email notifying me that after my interview a current Microsoft employee became interested in the position so they hired him instead. Now, I understand wanting to hire from within the company, but to tell me I got the job then just leave me hanging like that sucked. I had (foolishly) stopped job hunting and missed several oppertunities during that three weeks. However, I did feel a little better when my friends at MS told me later that the manager I had interviewed for lost most of her employees to other departments because of her poor people skills.
By M. Nicodemus, January 11, 2010 @ 1:41 pm

Enrico: Good luck!

Josherz: Don’t get down, have you thought about expanding your search beyond the East Coast?
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 2:08 pm

Personally, I’m with john — When I interview for jobs it almost becomes me interviewing them rather than the other way around. I want to find out everything about the people, the job, the company. I used to be so perplexed by people I interviewed that either had few or no questions, but rather just answered the questions I asked. I was always more impressed with candidates where it was more a dialogue rather than a monologue.
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 2:10 pm

Oh, and I just created a Twitter account for my site (yes, dammit, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon again). Anyone want to follow me? I don’t have any followers yet and I’m feeling lonely… Twitter account: FunWithGrindr
By john, January 11, 2010 @ 3:37 pm

Dave S.: Bandwagon or bandwidth? Sorry, can’t let Craig have all the geek.
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 3:46 pm

john: Wow. That *was* geeky! lol
By Craig, January 11, 2010 @ 3:49 pm

NERD ALERT!
By The Ryan With The Cupcake, January 11, 2010 @ 3:49 pm

john: Craig is worried that Dave S. and josh are going to have all the geeks.
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 4:06 pm

I have plenty of geeks — I want hot athletic guys and girls!
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 4:07 pm

And I already love Twitter! I was talking with Chris Salvatore!!! Woohoo!

Well okay, we exchanged tweets is all, but still…!
By john, January 11, 2010 @ 4:14 pm

Dave S.: Looks fade, brains are forever. Unless you eat lead.

Craig: Nerd and proud, thank you very much.
By Dave S., January 11, 2010 @ 4:31 pm

john: Damn. What about those of us that have neither? Are we doomed to a life of lying on the ground in fetal positions, murmuring lines from Family Guy?
By john, January 11, 2010 @ 6:17 pm

Dave S.: What are you looking at me for? Like I have the brains to answer that? With that said: “Who’s leg do I have to hump to get a drink around here?”
By Mel, January 11, 2010 @ 7:10 pm

Michelle M.: I can tell you from personal experience that the whole winning-the-lottery strategy isn’t much better than the job search. Except that you don’t get the door slammed in your face if you don’t win.
By Kári Emil, January 11, 2010 @ 7:51 pm

Sometimes I’m glad I’m still in school and that my F-1 visa doesn’t allow for me to work.
By GoKitty, January 11, 2010 @ 8:13 pm

As someone who works in HR, they really should notify you even if you don’t get the position but its always better to grab the card of the recruiter and ask if you can send them an email in a week or two asking about the status.

Interviewing is rough, especially your first couple when you aren’t prepared and think you can wing it. In one of my first interviews, I was ask what I wanted from the position and I basically said “money”. It was an honest answer but I didnt know they wanted me to BS about finding a “family” in the workplace and advancing my skillz.
By Chris D., January 11, 2010 @ 11:10 pm

It sounds like there are a lot of companies who are badly out of touch with how they interact with job candidates.

I think I may have only been on two interviews, and that was many years ago. It seems that I have been lucky to avoid all this craziness.

I have interviewed a number of interns over the years. The first one we hired was a college student. He told us the reason he wanted to work was because his mother told him he had to get a job. He was a compsci major, but he was one of those compsci majors that don’t seem to have much passion for, or understanding of, the field. We actually hired him since he was our only applicant at the time and we thought we could inspire him. We couldn’t inspire him, and had to let him go a few weeks latter. He didn’t seem to mind. We learned some lessons from that experience, and have had some great hires over the years.

We put a lot of effort into our interviews. We treat our candidates well, and try our best to gauge their potential. We always notified applicants we could not hire.
By Enrico, January 11, 2010 @ 11:17 pm

GoKitty: You can’t say “money”?! OMG! My interview is less than two days! HELP!
By Justin, January 12, 2010 @ 12:41 am

Man. I’m so glad I haven’t had to be interviewed for .. well … ugh. I’ve worked at my current job (IBM, formerly Lotus) for 16 years (horrifying). I’ve changed jobs within IBM about 8 times. Two of those times I had to “interview” like Tam does, but it wasn’t that bad.

I agree that interviewing should be a two-way street. Most interviews I’ve been on were fairly reasonable — they asked if you had questions about the company and didn’t just grill you. But I did have a few horrific interviews too. My worst interview was at Fidelity: the manager actually paused on the way to his office to yell — red-face, vein-popping scream — at two of his employees for talking. One was visiting the other in his cubicle and the manager shouted “I don’t pay you to talk!! Get back to your cubicle!!!” It didn’t seem to occur to him that they could have been talking about .. um .. work? Not to mention it was dehumanizing to tell your employees they can never talk at all (even if it isn’t about work). Not to mention it was appalling bad manners to publicly berate an employee — let alone berate an employee in front of a prospective candidate. Horrifyingly, they offered me the job. Even though I dd everything I could to blow the interview. Needless to say, I didn’t take it. But this was a billion years ago and the economy was a lot more forgiving.

Enrico — GOOD LUCK!!!

Josh — no bullets, please!! Nor should you take M. Nico’s advice. Evil advice. West coast indeed . Six days a week I feel bad.

Ryan — I love that you’re the keeper of the avatars on this blog

Craig — John is right — the fact that the HR person is gone means that they could have dropped the ball. It’s worth a call.

Dave S. So, first off, consider yourself followed. Second off. In precisely what parallel universe can you be considered to lack (a) good-lookings and (b) brains? Puh-LEEZE.

Chris D. You are an ethical guy. *Most* corporate employers aren’t unfortunately. I know what you mean about interviewing and hoping to redeem interns. We’re successful about 30% of the time…

Lastly. I’ve gone back and forth about the content of Craig’s original post. I’m not sure if Amy’s advice is crappy or not. She is sympathetic at first. And she does have a point about self-esteem. On the other hand, it does come across as condescending and patronizing. Not to mention bitchy.
By Adam, January 12, 2010 @ 3:31 am

Wow, a LOT of people comment on your posts, that’s so nice everybody!

I worked for two years as a systems admin on campus and was “demoted” by my boss for not working hard enough, when I had put in 38 hours to a maximum 20 hour week (campus restrictions).

The next weekend I trudged through the cattleyards at a part-time job fair and connected with a manager from ticketmaster. They were hiring technicians and I arranged an interview for two days later. I waited an hour for my interview, it lasted five minutes with a promise to call. I followed up ten days later and was told “Oh wow, you were the first to interview, everyone was so bad after you we got so caught up trying to pick the best, that we forgot about you entirely. Can you start tomorrow?” (I swear this is true)

Well the “technician” job turned out to be tech support on the phone, and I left the job, amiably but disappointed, about six months later when it was clear I wasn’t going to be transferred. (The department was shut down a few weeks later, doh! severance pay.)

I refocused on my studies, doing 18 credit hours a semester (12 is full time) and graduated Dec. 2008 and have been without work since. I send out applications for one week every month and then follow them up. I’ve got a degree and four years corporate experience and haven’t even landed a single interview. It’s not with self-pity that I write, but with frustration. My pride gets in the way of working as a cell phone salesman or candle vendor in the mall, but I don’t understand how our society expects us to be successful and self-sufficient adults, contributing to our communities, when there’s no jobs to be had!
By Xi_Heather, January 12, 2010 @ 8:56 am

Hmmm. I’m not sure how you can turning getting a door slammed in your face into an advantage. That’d be quite a trick.

I once had a job interview where the person interviewing me talked (negatively and specifically) about the other candidates. This would have been awkward under any circumstances; it was more so because the names of those people were posted where I could see them. [I didn't know any of them, but it was still disturbing.]

My one real horror story was once when I got a rejection over email. It was actually a very nicely worded rejection and I wasn’t the best match for the job so I would have felt OK about it, except that it was to Dear (blank) and the person sending the rejection had forgotten to removed the forwarded note, which was from HR and said something like, “Send this to the job candidates” so the nicely worded personal note felt suddenly quite impersonal. But that’s not the horror part — the horror part is that I forwarded it (so I thought) to a friend of mine also looking for a job, with a comment like, “We weren’t a good match, but a rejection still hurts — still, it doesn’t sound like they remembered me, does it?” and not three minutes later got a very apologetic note from the person who sent the rejection saying that they hadn’t meant to send it as it, they DID remember me, etc. I wasn’t sure if they realized what happened on their own or if I accidentally replied instead of forwarded. So I didn’t know if I should apologize for what would have appeared to be a snarky comment, or ignore it. [Of course I chose to ignore it and hope it was coincidence, though I'm sure it's not.]

I also got a letter of rejection once for a job I never applied for. Now *that* makes a person feel special.
By David, January 12, 2010 @ 2:22 pm

One of my worst experiences:

A few years back I interviewed for a mid-level development (fundraising) position at a local university. The first interview went well and I was called back for a second interview. This interview was attended by several university deans and the head of HR. It was stressful but it also went well. I followed up with the original interviewer and he told me I was one of three finalists for the position. It was before the holidays but they would let me know the decision after the new year.

Mid-January, not having heard anything, I called and left a message inquiring on the status of a decision. I was told that a new VP had been hired for the department and she was getting up to speed on process in filling the position I had applied for. I called a few weeks later, left a message and received no response. I called again a few weeks after that and left another message. Again no response.

When March finally rolled around I hunted down a person in the HR department to inquire what was going on. After much digging I found out that the new VP had scrapped the entire job search process until further notice. The End.
By Alfonzo, January 13, 2010 @ 11:16 am

It is not out of the ordinary to not hear anything back from a company that has chosen not to hire you. Welcome to the job market, it doesn’t get any better. Usually you have be on the potential employer to find out if they’re going to hire you or not.