Bad interviews can ruin your day


Let me tell you a story:
Last week I had an interview for the UI Web Developer job at a “big” company here in Santiago de Chile. One of the company’s recruiter contacted me by email saying they had time for my interview on Thursday at 11am with two guys. I’m currently employed, so I found it kind of uncomfortable, but I accepted nonetheless. That day I got at 10:55 to the reception’s place. I talked to the receptionist, who did not even look at me to say “what’s your name?”, and then she asked me to have a sit. From that moment I felt something wasn’t right.
I sat down and waited for about 15 minutes. It was 11:15 when she stood up and told me one of the guys who was supposed to attend the interview had not arrived yet, but she said: “we are still on time so let’s wait”. I didn’t understand that phrase. “We are still on time”, were we? Did my time mean nothing? I was kind of annoyed. I saw a service woman cross many times, and she didn’t even look at me either. She didn’t offer me water. I was not thirsty anyway, but, isn’t it normal to offer some water or coffee to visitors? At least where I work it is.
The guy finally arrived at 11:20, the receptionist had to tell him he had an interview; apparently he didn’t remember it. He said hi, and asked me to enter to a small meeting room. I did, I sat down and waited for him to come back. Then a second guy who apparently had been there all the time got into the room. He was an Indian guy, they both started speaking English. The first thing the guy who was late told me was “we are going to make a technical interview, and it’s going to be in English”.
I was applying for a job at Santiago so I thought it was going to be in Spanish. I do respect they use English in their company while they are working. I could understand now there are many people from different countries. I do know English, but it would have been nice to know I was going to give a technical interview in a second language before even scheduling the event. I said I had no problem about it, I felt I wouldn’t, even though it was my first technical interview in English.
They started asking me about my job experience (just the technologies I have used) I told them I had experience with HTML, CSS, Git, Jquery, Javascript, Angular, Typescript and some other frameworks. They said all question were going to be about Javascript. I agreed, and then they started asking me about ES9.
Wait, what?!! Well… I had no idea there was an ES9 specification until I got home and googled it. I do know there is an ES7 specification and I think there is an ES8 version, I wasn’t even sure. So I told them I could answer the questions with the last version I know. The late guy started asking stuff and I gave my responses the best I could. Obviously, it is different explaining them in Spanish with tech words in English, than talking about them in English all the time. The indian guy then proceeded with some questions.
That’s where I f*cked up. I couldn’t understand a single word of what he was saying. He was not vocalizing. I have nothing against Indian people. I love their culture. They are clever people. But, if you are going to make a technical interview, at least be careful with the way you speak. Remember, I was not even an English native speaker. Even though my friends have told me my English level is so good, I was so nervous, I started to feel my face turning red. The late guy had to repeat what the other guy said. From that point, it turned into a broken phone. The indian guy asking me question, the late guy repeating them, me answering in my nervous state.
I went blank. They asked me to code, with the indian guy checking on it live, moving the mouse over the screen while I was trying to figure out how to use the freaking macbook keyboard. Yes, I’m a windows user. That shitty experience got worse at that point. I was trying to make a function return true when a string was palindrome. I had done it a million times. I used a split, then reverse it, then a join, then evaluate and return true or false. But I was so nervous and blocked… And they didn’t help at all with their faces. Somehow I remembered how to do it and it worked. Then the guy asked me to do it without the split, reverse and join functions. I was so confused, why did they want me to do the same shit if I was already nervous? Of course I knew how to do it, using a for loop, but why? At that point I just wanted to leave, but I felt it would be so rude for me to do that.
Then the indian guy started asking questions again. Over and over, I had to tell the other guy to repeat them for me. The indian guy was clearly mad and uncomfortable. The other guy was uncomfortable as well, I was so annoyed. The last question was so stupid, he asked me if I was willing to move to different technologies, since they didn’t only work with Angular. I said yes, I was willing to learn. But deep inside I was thinking to myself, “I don’t wanna freaking work for this company ever”.
As it finished they told me they were going to give their feedback to the recruiter and she was going to contact me. I said thanks and left the room. It lasted about 40 minutes. It was the worst interview I had ever experience. I left that day feeling bad. I felt I could have handled the situation better. When I got home that night I thought about what happened. I got to the conclusion that it was not my fault. My brain blocked itself from that place. They didn’t even ask me about me. They didn’t care about me. They only cared about what I knew. I learn things every day, I change my knowledge everyday. But my soft skills remind and improve slowly. They didn’t care about that.
The day before I went to an interview for an international big company too, that one lasted about 2 hours. I spoke about my experiences, the way I work, my soft skills, my background, I answered lot of technical questions, from https, to javascript, angular core and more. I felt so comfortable. They offered me coffee three times, they asked me what I like, what I don’t, how do I face hard moments at work, what do I do on my free time, what would I like to work with. They asked me tons of things about me and they also told me tons of things about them. It was a real conversation. We laughed, we talked about what we were pasionate about. I talked about how much I love coding and how much I love what I do. I left that day so happy, thinking that even if I wasn’t selected it was worth the time. I felt so welcomed and comfortable. I felt important.


The same technical questions. The same role. Both consultant companies. But one of them was actually interested in their employees.
What’s the problem here? Old big companies think they are making us a favor by giving us a interview. They think we have to adjust our times to theirs. They think we deserve nothing. They think we need them desperately. They really think they own our time. Do you really want to know how it should be?
It should be taking the time to know the people you are putting your money on. It should be taking the time to take care about your employees. To give them the best you can. To realize you’re spending about 8 hours a day with us, so you need to know us and we need to know you. You need to provide us the best you can so we can give you back the best we have. It’s about realizing that we are all humans, we deserve to be looked in the eyes and asked how we are, what we like, what we don’t, what we expect, what we want to become.
The world is changing. The tech community is changing. Priorities are changing. Remember, you need us as much as we need you. So stop playing God and start making your work as it should be done.
Recruiters: before going into someone to tell them “I have a role you might be interested in”, ask yourself, would you even pay attention to someone who’s not giving you the time and value you deserve?