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Left interview early.

Fixed it for you. This happened many years before the anti work movement I guess. I was interviewing with a company. They told me it would be an all day thing (8 hours, not uncommon in my industry). It was set up so I was in a conference room, and small groups would come in and interview me, one after the other (usually 2 – 4 people at a time). My interview started at 8:30 am. The first 2 – 3 groups went fine. Everyone was friendly, enthusiastic and getting me pumped to join this company. But then right before noon, the group I was interviewing with, while also mostly fine, had one individual who was a director, so someone I'd be working closely with. His behaviour was rigid, yet professional. During the interview with this group, he would ask me questions which I immediately recognized. They come straight out…


 Fixed it for you.

This happened many years before the anti work movement I guess.
I was interviewing with a company. They told me it would be an all day thing (8 hours, not uncommon in my industry). It was set up so I was in a conference room, and small groups would come in and interview me, one after the other (usually 2 – 4 people at a time). My interview started at 8:30 am. The first 2 – 3 groups went fine.
Everyone was friendly, enthusiastic and getting me pumped to join this company. But then right before noon, the group I was interviewing with, while also mostly fine, had one individual who was a director, so someone I'd be working closely with. His behaviour was rigid, yet professional. During the interview with this group, he would ask me questions which I immediately recognized.

They come straight out of the Microsoft interview guideline book (this is an actual book Microsoft employees use to interview candidates). He'd ask me things like “how many tennis balls can you fit inside of a bus?”, “how does a dog move?” or the classic “on a scale of 1 – 10, how would you rate your skill at xyz…?” (btw, this is a bs question. If anyone ever asks this in a job interview, it's a red flag) I knew that if this guy was here, me experience with this company would suck. I had enough experience and mentorship to know that questions like this demonstrate lack of effort in forming questions which pertain to your specific needs. These are cop out questions.

So I decided in my head “I'm out… but how do I escape this interview?!” So I had some fun with it. I made up the most wild answers, completely off the hip to, like no hesitation. “tennis balls? 1 million!”, “a dog moves to the rhythm”, “scale from 1 – 10? 42”. The response to the last one raised an eyebrow and he asked “are you being serious?” and I was like “I'm the best. In fact, I'm probably better than anyone else you got here”.

After this interview, companies usually take you out to lunch. Just to schmooz you and get to know you. So I'm in this room still and the HR person enters and says “ok just sit tight a minute. They're getting ready to take you out to lunch.” and I just told her “I'm immensely sorry, but I'm just going to leave.” She was speechless. She says “You understand we still had more people to interview with you?”. I Then replied “I understand. I can tell already, however, that I just won't work out with this company.” I grabbed my stuff and left. She just stood there, shocked.

About 3 days later, I got a phone call from this company. They told me that based on the interview parts that I did do, they most likely would give me an offer. But they wanted to know why I left the interview early. I was tempted to tell them it was because of one individual and the questions he asked. But right before I did, a tiny voice inside me said “take the high ground”. So I just told them again, “I could just tell I wouldn't work out well there”

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