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A business manager dressed in casual clothes waves hi while on a remote call in a conference room.
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I just had the weirdest and most unprofessional interview of my entire life.
PrettyCoast1 shared what he believes to be the most confounding interview experience he has had over the course of his professional career. Thankfully, the interview was done remotely. Otherwise, who knows how this candidate would have handled the discomfort of having his potential employer berating colleagues and coworkers nonstop at his place of work?
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A young professional sits on a Zoom call with a human resources representative on the other end.
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First of all, it's always disappointing in any scenario when an interview does not go as expected. No matter how much you prepare, you can never fully predict how people will act, what they will ask, and what they're necessarily looking for. After all, hiring managers tend to only be so transparent in job listings. So, our hearts already go out to anyone who plans late into the night to bring the best of themselves to an interview, only for all that preparation to be put to zero use. As the candidate here explains, he truly felt like he was going to knock this out of the park. Oh, how wrong he ended up being!
I'm still trying to process what happened in an interview a few days ago. It was with a very well-known company here, and I was very excited, had all my notes prepared, and felt I was fully ready and going to nail it.
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A human resources representative holds a resume in one hands and a coffee mug in the other.
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It was a video call, which I'm used to. The meeting was supposed to be 45 minutes, and I joined exactly on time.
As soon as the interview started (it was scheduled for Thursday at 5 PM), the guy, a business manager, joined and seemed kind of hyper, but I thought maybe he just had a long day or something. That was just the beginning... He had zero professionalism.
First of all, the fact that this candidate had advanced far enough for what seemed to be a final round interview for a demanding job at a prestigious company does, at the very least, deserve some applause. One has to wonder why it took him this far to meet the person he would actually be working for and why everything was still virtual if the job itself was going to be in person. But that's nothing compared to the lack of professionalism this business manager was about to demonstrate in full force.
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A screenshot of the young professional smiling while clasping his hands during his interview.
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He asked me maybe two questions about my experience, and before I could even finish my answers, he would cut me off to start rambling about his life and his employees, going completely off-topic.
He spent about 95% of the interview lecturing me about things that shouldn't be said at all - his ex-wife whom he divorced, his problems with his landlord, and how one of his best employees is "ungrateful" and doesn't appreciate him enough. He even mentioned the names of former employees and bad-mouthed the last person who held the position I was applying for, and went into details about their personal problems.
Look, as someone who has also found himself in situations where employers reveal how they feel about coworkers more than they necessarily should, I can attest that it is a wildly uncomfortable experience. All you want to do is wrap up the conversation, change the subject, and get the heck out of there before you say something that might encourage more unprofessional language.
The fact that this man couldn't keep his professional demeanor in an interview context says more than anyone needs to know about how he would behave as a boss.
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A screenshot of the young professional folding his arms while participating in his interview.
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He was swearing the whole time, and I could barely get a word in. This guy is clearly a huge narcissist. Honestly, I feel sorry for anyone who has to work under him, it's clear he's a toxic person and speaks ill of his team in front of complete strangers.
As the candidate says, it should take a lot for someone to speak so negatively about the people who work for him, especially to a total stranger. And yet this man spoke way too freely about folks that this candidate would ostensibly be working with day in and day out.
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A screenshot of a LinkedIn Jobs page on the internet.
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While he was rambling on with this unprofessional talk, I was trying to think of a way to get out of it. I seriously considered pretending my internet disconnected. In the end, he looked at the clock and realized he had been talking for over an hour (it was 6:15 PM). What a terrible waste of time. I had such high hopes for this company, but now I just feel disgusted.
Look, we understand that this candidate feels like this experience was a total waste of his time. It's hard not to think of what transpired that way. However, he deserves to give himself some credit for getting through the experience and for recognizing the red flags immediately before getting sucked into a work environment like that.
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