A couple weeks ago, a 3rd party staffing agency reached out via LinkedIn to see if I'd be interested in interviewing for a position with their client. I told them that I wasn't aggressively looking at the moment, but I'm always open to exploring new opportunities. If it was a great fit, then all the better. Another thing to consider is that this role was going to start contract-to-hire, so I was already 'meh' about leaving my FT perm job for this. But the hiring manager hyped up the opportunity to grow within her team, and that was appealing to me since there really isn't a career path at my current job.
After a couple web interviews with the agency and the hiring manager, they invited me to come in for an in-person to meet the team and see the office. As a side note, I had to take 2 hours of PTO at the end of my day to make this work. Now, the interview started off alright, but soon after red flags started popping up. The hiring manager picked me up from the lobby and brought me into a meeting room and immediately starts her line of questioning. No soft open, no asking if I was comfortable or needed water, no tour or introductions. She is transparent with me at this point that I'm her top choice, so it has me feeling pretty confident at least.
Eventually, she hands me off to a couple of other directors who I would presumably be supporting in this role, and this is where the interview unravels. She warned me that the first director who I'd be speaking with is old school and will want to know more about my job history and why I've moved around as much as I have. And sure enough, that's exactly what this next director did. She dug in hard about why I was looking and why I move around so much. I had to explain to her that I wasn't actually aggressively looking for a new role at this point, but always took the opportunity to explore new opportunities if they presented itself in case there was a good fit. She proceeded to ask me questions that had absolutely nothing to do with the job I was interviewing for. For instance, I was interviewing to be a data analyst and she asked me questions about whether I negotiated contracts before. I had to remind her that, “no, I am not a contract manager or lawyer”.
The cherry on top was the last director I spoke with. This guy was apparently only three months into the role, so the hiring manager told me he'd be a good person to ask questions about culture. I thought, “whew, this part of the interview should be pretty relaxed and easy going”. Think again! This guy walks in, barely introduces himself and then rolls into asking me super technical questions about a financial investment scenario. No time to write it out, think it over, just drills me on this scenario. Keep in mind, this is not a financial analyst role at all, let alone anything to do with finance. Next, he asks me with such a disgusted look on his face about why I move around so much from job to job. Once again, I had to remind them that I was not, in fact, aggressively looking for a new opportunity at this point and took the interview in the event that it wound up being a decent fit and opportunity for all involved. When we finally got to talking about culture, this director straight up tells me, “I don't really know how to answer questions around culture” and then proceeds to talk about how they don't have Nerf guns in the office (like this is a selling point…or not?) but they do have a tap with six different kombuchas. 🤯. Finally, once this nightmare wraps up, the hiring manager retrieves me and essentially pushes me out the door and haphazardly tells me how to find my way out of the building.
I'm befuddled. I took this interview merely to entertain what they had to offer and wound up getting drilled on irrelevant questions and berated instead. Needless to say, I'm informing the 3rd party recruiting agency this is a no go on my end.
tl;dr: Casually took job interview just to see if there's anything worthwhile in it for me. Hiring manager tells me I'm their top choice for this glamorous contract-to-hire opportunity. Interviewers proceed to berate and critique my work history and ask me a bunch of questions unrelated to the job I would be doing. Felt like total doo-doo upon leaving.