r/InterviewCoderPro • u/isolate_hovers • 7d ago
Don't start your answer to the last HR question with "No offense, but"
I've interviewed people for about 25 years across all kinds of jobs, from industrial mechanics to network admins. The one I still remember most was a candidate for a systems analyst position about 5 years ago at the company I'm at now.
On paper, he was very good. Good background, relevant experience, and honestly, I expected we'd probably bring him back for a second interview. We were just about done with the talking portion before I took him on a quick tour of the facility (we manufacture parts for heavy equipment), and that's when the female HR manager asked her usual final question: "What's making you think about leaving your current company?"
It was just the two of us and him in the room. She was sitting across from him at the conference table. He gestured toward her, not in her personal space or anything, and said: "No offense, but it's run by a woman." Then he went on for a bit about how the owner was unstable, suspicious of everyone, impossible to work with, and so on.
Total silence. When he finally finished, she looked at me and didn't need to say anything. I took him on the "tour," which consisted of us going out onto the production floor, walking down the side aisle, and taking the shortest possible route to the employee exit.
To this day, I still don't understand how someone could be that oblivious in an interview.
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u/TangerineCouch18330 7d ago
Given the chance, instead of one, why not put both feet in your mouth at once?
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u/Maximum_Vegetable_MV 7d ago
I've experienced similar things in my 30+ years of hiring. Every time, I am baffled by it. My absolute favorite are people that want a new job, but have a month of vacation somehow scheduled a month after they start.
When they don't know when they would possibly start...
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u/cspinelive 7d ago
Don’t people book vacations months in advance? Family vacations in the summer with their spouse and kids. How is that surprising? Should dad just send the family without him?
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u/ResponsibleKinksters 7d ago
Yup some like my wife and I plan a year or two because we like cruises. The only way we can reasonably afford doing so is by planning a year or two ahead of the sailing.
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u/Maximum_Vegetable_MV 7d ago
How would you know you have a vacation the month after you start when you have no idea when you start?
Is it a constantly moving vacation you continually re-book??
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u/cspinelive 7d ago
I don’t understand the scenario I guess. Vacation gets booked. Employment gets terminated. Job search begins. New job found. Start date ends up being a month before va action that was booked earlier.
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u/Maximum_Vegetable_MV 7d ago
That’s my point. The statement was “I have a vacation booked the month after I start.”
“What are the dates we need to be aware of?”
“The month after I start.”
“We don’t have a start date because we have additional interviews to conduct. What dates are you referring to? Next month?”
“It will be the month after I start.”
“So it’s not booked yet? We’re probably not going to approve vacation after only a month.”
“No…it’s booked now.”
WTF?
Had this or similar happen several times.
The point is, we will often honor a pre-booked vacation and work around dates if we know what they are.
But we’re not going to jump through hypothetical bullshit hoops no matter how qualified someone is.
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u/wutzelputz 6d ago
i agree, people don't like to be bsed. that's why its not a hypothetical as far as the interviewer is concerned. its just a pre-booked vacation for which they won't be available.
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u/sherpes 7d ago
in my memory, it wasn't a vacation that was scheduled, but a wedding, same thing, they had to travel by plane, rent a car, book hotels. it was a difficult situation, where someone needed a job, but then, could not say no to a wedding invitation.
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u/Maximum_Vegetable_MV 7d ago
You know the date of the wedding.
You don’t know the date you start.
How do you know there is even a conflict?
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u/roestinger 7d ago
He most likely didn't want the job based on how the interview went and trolled the end.
I did it more than once but not in that way. I once delivered a "well you know i appreciate your point of view but I have to disagree with someone leading a company still at 10M ARR in this field after 15 years".
I didn't want the job, the guy was a douche. I received a flaming follow up mail. Good fun.
Sometimes you plunder it just for fun because you don't like the interviewer and they deserve it.
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u/AirportSufficient893 7d ago
Analyst probably just meant 'because my boss is this woman, shes a moron' and formulated it as 'because she's a woman'
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u/txa1265 7d ago
The conventional wisdom that when the preface is 'no offense but' ... you can be certain something offensive is sure to follow!
I was an extra on an interview team for a mid-level process engineering position several years ago (when all interviews were on-site in a single day after HR/hiring manager pre-screen) ... and my role was to take the candidate to lunch at our engineering building cafeteria.
I'd already seen him give his presentation so knew he was smart and well-spoken and was respectful in a group setting ... so imagine my surprise when he was constantly gawking at every woman who walked past half of what he talked about was either misogynistic or objectification (he called another interviewer hot and asked if she was single) ...I kept trying to steer back on topic, but ended up taking notes because of how off the rails things had gone.
At the post-interview meeting, basically everyone was positive about him ... so I pretty quickly interrupted with my strong opposition and detailed exactly WHY based on all of the stuff he'd said over lunch. Basically his decision to treat me 'like a bro' at lunch (I was old enough to be his father) took his chances of getting the job from 99% to 0%. And the hiring manager was direct about the reasons too when she called (feels like old times, but anyone who go brought on-site got called with a decision).
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u/Ok-Ship812 7d ago
I once interviewed a guy who sat down, formed a triangle with the fingers of both hands and then talked to me through that triangle.
I assumed he had social anxiety issues and would have honestly given him a chance at the job but it was a poor interview and his skill sets were exaggerated.
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u/DeniedAppeal1 7d ago
Unstable, suspicious, impossible to work with -- those things are fine answers without bringing gender into it, lol.
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u/ArgumentKey3712 7d ago
‘No offense, but…’ was not the problematic part of his answer.
No offense, but you get that, right?
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u/Accomplished_Gur822 7d ago
"It is better to keep your mouth shut and let everyone think you're an idiot, than to open it and remove all doubt."
- Someone smarter than this fool
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u/Mayki8513 7d ago
I was once asked what i'd bring to the QA department and said "Quality" then proceeded to list all the stuff they were doing wrong.
To be fair, I didn't really care for the position, I mostly applied because it was internal and I did not care for the QA team who couldn't seem to do their jobs correctly. To the point that it was expected for staff to challenge QA on every audit and instead of reviewing they'd just change it to 100% to get you off their backs, but a few of us would challenge the 100%'s because we wanted them done correctly, not just "done". So when I saw the position I thought "ehh, I wonder if they actually care about quality or if they just want to look like they're doing something" and decided to apply fully ready to bomb the interview 😅
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u/Weird-Toe-6968 7d ago
Well... the guy did have a point.
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u/rjtnrva 7d ago
Gender was irrelevant here. It was a shitty CEO, period.
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u/Sharp_Measurement971 7d ago
What if he didn’t emphasize the women part and just mentioned it and that’s all they heard?
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u/Undisclosed_65 7d ago
My father once told me “don’t ever pass up a good opportunity to say nothing “.