Here’s one I haven’t heard before - interview room has only one chair and it’s occupied.
I’m not sure what the right answer is here but the wrong answer is to stand the entire time. I think I’d offer to get another chair, walk out of the room and look for one.
Anyone familiar with this one?
For the one chair, I guess I would say “where do you expect me to sit?” Don’t know if that is the right answer or not. I think it is a stupid thing to do and it would turn me off for working at that company.
The “one chair” situation is either an accident or a power play. If an accident, as can happen when chairs are being moved to other rooms for a meeting, ask to find another chair. If it’s a power play, leave the company immediately, as the company won’t get better after you are hired.
This reminds me of a company I interviewed with during the late 90s during the tech boom. The company’s founder was replaced as CEO and became CTO, but still had hiring influence. I was interviewing for head of marketing.
I had just finished an interview with the CEO and went to the CTO’s office for my next interview. He took my resume, looked at it dismissively, and very deliberately turned around and started working on his computer, intentionally ignoring me. After a few minutes of this, I got up, went around to his desk and he was taken aback when I took back my resume, telling him “You don’t need this.” I then went back to the CEO and told him I wasn’t interested in working here and that he needed to get the CTO under control. He apologized, and interestingly we became friends for several years even though I never worked there.
If true, I’d find this tactic to be both offensive and stupid. As a guest (interviewee) you defer to your host on things like seating. I’d probably ask if I should grab another chair while expecting my host to actually go get one.
I regularly go to meetings with customers where there’s not enough chairs in the room, and I always defer to my host (the customer) to direct me on where to get additional chairs. You can’t just go grabbing random chairs from people’s cubes or offices when you’re a guest!
An interviewee is your guest. I had mentioned earlier in this thread about a full day on-site my daughter had where they didn’t allow for a lunch break.
At the interview my daughter was at yesterday, which was a full day also, once again no break was built in. However, the person she was meeting with at lunch time noticed this and got her a sandwich and they ate together during their talk. It left a real positive impression on my daughter, look how nice and thoughtful this guy was.
The recruiter today emailed her and apologized about not scheduling a break, but that the people she was seeing had tight schedules he had to work around. All of this reflects positively on the company and makes her want to get this job.
Best wishes for your daughter.
Agree with others that to ask where to get a chair but if this is a power play game, who would want to work there?
Glad the one employee clued in and was thoughtful and obviously communicated the mistake to the recruiter as well. That’s someone you would want to work with. From the recruiter’s scheduling perspective, he/she should have scheduled one of the meetings as a lunch meeting. That’s what my long-term employer would do for those all day interview sessions. It is pretty common practice. I’m glad the recruiter apologized though.
Lack of breaks tells you about the culture. We just finished a round of all-day interviews and were careful to schedule lunch and bathroom breaks for all the candidates.
She didn’t get the job. Is rethinking what she wants to do with her life. Maybe this isn’t the right field/type of work for her.
Tenacity will pay off. May take time, but it will pay off.
@kiddie, so sorry your D is having such a difficult job search. I hope she finds a path that works for her soon. The work world is so different from the world I knew when I was job hunting.
Interesting turn of events. She spoke with the recruiter from the company where she just didn’t get the job, . He told her that everybody really liked her but her technical skills weren’t strong enough for that position. He told her to apply for other jobs in the company, so she is going to do that.
It’s nice when recruiters give helpful and honest feedback.
Yep, this recruiter was very nice throughout the process, coaching and helping her. A previous recruiter at another company (where they had her interviewing for a few different positions, do case studies, and meet a full day of people on-site.), told her she would be happy to give her feedback after she didn’t get the job. Then on the call the recruiter basically said she hadn’t done anything right during her on-site interview (not useful at all!)
One of my kids likes to ask prospective employees the “gift card” question:
What are all the reasons you can think of that a company would want to sell prepaid gift cards?
Would anyone here like to play? How many can you think of?
So D has a job lined up post-grad, but she regards it as a back up plan. Meanwhile she’s been interviewing for other jobs and has made it to final interviews six times. Only two of those positions bothered to tell her she didn’t get the job. All the others, she sent a follow-up email (after the first follow-up email) and was promptly told she didn’t have the job. Why are these people so rude? How much effort is it to write a one line email?
Yep, totally rude to ghost somebody who made it to the final round (rude to ghost anybody, but especially after the candidate spent so much time.) And they don’t actually have to write an email - they all have a form one that they use - they just need to put in your daughter’s email address, paste in the message, and hit send. In one case, a month after the on-siteinterview, my daughter got a very long, babbling voice message on her phone from the recruiter saying she didn’t get the job - pretty bizarre!
^^I don’t get it. We immediately let people know if they are hired or not after a decision is made. It’s common courtesy and good business practice. It doesn’t even cost us anything in paper, envelope or a stamp these days. It might take a couple of seconds to punch up the form rejection and press send. Sometimes we may not get back to people right after an interview because there are other candidates we need to sort through, but we’ll always try to give an interviewee a time frame by which we would get back. I think companies that ghost “no’s” have a cultural issue in how they value company to employee transparency and communications.
I would make a distinction between communicating a decision with a person that we have initiated or reciprocated discussions vs unsolicited inquiries . I have no issue with being unresponsive to unsolicited emails or letters from recruiters or individuals.
@kiddie Sending good wishes for your daughter! My DD just ran the gauntlet of dozens of applications and interviews for 8 months. Scraped by in the meantime with remote contract work. This month she had two interviews- one where she felt like she killed it, they were gushing over her, etc. When she got the other interview she emailed first place to see if they had made a decision and they said they were going with other candidates. And the next day they re-upped their ad on Indeed!? Ok whatever.
The second interview the guy called her half an hour after submitting her app and told her at the interview he wanted her and he wasn’t interviewing anyone else till he had her answer. What a contrast to every other place that dilly dallies for weeks. It was lower pay than hoped for but she took it and about every other day she calls me on her drive home to tell me how much she loves it. The two mile commute is awesome too.
Hope soon your daughter lands in that right place!
I think the problem, in many cases, is that the companies are not set on “not hired” but rather a “not hired right now”. I worked for a company that routinely did this to those that came in “2nd or 3rd place” in a search. These individuals were not the top candidate at the time but might have been in a different field of candidates. I think there is a fear of turning someone off with an outright no when there may be the same opportunity in 60 days that the 2nd place person would get an offer. I think honestly telling the individual “not this time but you are the top of the list next time” would be the right approach but that is not what my prior company did, they would ghost for as long as they could.
One individual was strung along for at least 18 months. I know this as I was hired instead of him even though he was already on the “maybe next time list”. Long story short there were 3 others hired before he was brought onboard. He has been a phenomenal employee and is the only one remaining at the company (of those hired ahead of him). He has now been at the company for over 15 years so this is definitely not a new approach to hiring.