My partner recently applied for a job, and was rejected on grounds of “telephone style”, and told that she should not be saying “uh huh” or similar affirmative noises, and rather repeatedly say “yes”. She was incredibly passionate throughout the interview, and was very polite and considerate, so this feels like an incredibly weird thing to reject someone for, never mind the interviewer passive-aggressively sending a “competency based interview” textbook to teach her the correct noise to make in response to questions. In my own interviews, “uh huh” and “mhmm” were used by both me and the interviewer with seemingly no problem. Are we right in finding this a little frustrating?