Went through 6 rounds of remote interviews over 3+ months. In the final interview, out of nowhere, I was degraded and accused of cheating.
To say my jaw dropped is an understatement. I thought the interviewer was joking. No, they told me they literally wanted to see my room because they thought I had notes hanging up!
Supposedly I kept periodically looking off into one corner, which I do occasionally because my ADHD kicks in and I choose an area to focus on, so he assumed I was “cheating”.
I showed him my walls and was like uh no, I don’t cheat on interviews nor do I know how to cheat because I wasn’t aware of the questions ahead of time?
He then tried to throw random questions my way as if I should ignore what just happened. I had to stop him because it was the first time in my career I drew blanks and was almost on the verge of a panic attack. I was so taken back. Like you just accused me of cheating and you want me to go along with it?!
In the beginning of the interview he kept stopping to critique me every other minute. It was overwhelming. I kept referring to my past team as “we” and he found that odd, and continuously tried to demean my knowledge because of it. I didn’t mention how “I” used the product directly, e.g., instead of referring to it as “I used the product to do x”, I said, “we used the product to do x” because the way he posed the question referred to how did “we” use it. His reasoning is I didn’t say “I”, therefore I’m not knowledgeable enough in the product.
The whole interview was bizarre and frankly ruined me. After a decent start, minus the drawn out interview length, suddenly the whole thing went out the window.
How am I supposed to motivate myself to get back out there after this? Does anyone see a therapist for this shit? Didn’t know I could have PTSD from a damn interview.