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Blowing Up a Pointless Job Interview
Nemo the Magnificent writes "Ever been asked a question in a job interview that's just so abysmally stupid, you're tempted to give in to the snark and blow the whole thing up? Here are suggested interview-ending answers to 16 of the stupidest questions candidates actually got asked in interviews at tech companies in 2013, according to employment site Glassdoor. Oil to pour on the burning bridges."
Actually, that question, while itself lame, does serve a purpose if the job requires creativity. They want to watch your come up with something different, and do it outside your comfort zone. If the interviewers are sharp enough, it will also give them a clue as to how you would fit into their culture.
In my current job (originally as a sysadmin, now DevOps)? I went through a battery of technical grilling, then I was asked point-blank:
"Is there intelligent life in Outer Space"?
I answered yes, then asked to defend my position. I spent the next 45 minutes in back-and-forth debate involving my bringing out Drake's Equation, panspermia, extrapolation of odds, and many other related topics.
I got the job, and quickly discovered the reason why... the company is chock-full of full-on geeks, many of whom have a passion for their respective skills, and share many common cultural touchpoints, which allowed me to fit in perfectly.
It's stuff like that which you really cannot pick up on by asking dumb crap like "what is your greatest weakness."
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Interviewers all too often forget that this is a two-way process. I am evaluating them as much as they are evaluating me. In a recent interview a manager (not the hiring manager) really started to put the screws to me about my job history, really harping on how long I'd been at certain places that are just plain normal these days. Engineering has become somewhat nomadic, moving on as contracts dry up, or after the place gets bought up to be run like a puppy mill.
My takeaway was they were out of touch the industry they were looking to break into, and further probing by me bore this out. At that point I was still smart enough not to "blow up" the interview, as as others have noted, niche industries are alarmingly small and interbred. You never know who you will run across again down the road.
Thats a legitimate description of a good day from someone who is ex-military.
Several years ago I was looking for a tech writing job. Found a local company advertising for a lead writer to (among other things) redo their user manuals for networking gear. I sent them my resume, the HR guy called, we spent an hour on the phone and it sounded like we had a perfect match. He asked me to download one of their user manuals (about 100 pages) from their web site and critique it and bring it to an interview. I grabbed the doc, spent about three hours reading and annotating it and writing up a recommendation (and it needed a hell of a lot of work).
I get to the interview a few days later and the head of engineering is in charge, and the HR guy is there. Engineering guy obviously thinks there's no need for anyone, ever to employ a technical writer, engineers can do everything (which no doubt explains the train wreck I saw in the manual I reviewed), and was very rude. I stayed upbeat and polite, even though it was clear I had zero chance to get a job that he didn't think should exist, until he pointed to the marked up document I'd brought along and said, "I don't know why we would care about what you thought of our current work." I pointed to the HR guy and said, "I did this at his request. Who's doing the hiring here?" They looked at each other, and it was clear I had just poured salt into a fresh wound.
The interview ended shortly thereafter, and when the HR guy walked me to the door he apologized for what had happened. I told him to keep my resume on file in case they figured out how badly they needed professional help. Never heard from them, and their manuals are still a train wreck.
My personal fave:
After the spending the first gulf war in the military and then working a decade in extremely active security companies (we're talking 200+ combats a year and solo commercial and industrial armed alarm responses) I was ready to break into IT. On my first interview (for @Home phone network support) the hiring panel asked me "how I would handle the extraordinary stress of having to deal with people who were so very angry with me".
I started laughing like a lunatic, and couldn't stop until the tears were rolling down my cheeks. I realized they were horrified at my behavior and had been serious. I asked if they'd even read my resume and cover letter, and when they hemmed and hawed I explained further.
It went something like - "Look, 6 months out of boot camp I spent a night in ops watch at a flag command as the 4th link in the chain of nuclear response...that means that had anything happened I would have been one of the first people to get the ball rolling towards global nuclear armageddon. In security I was called upon to rush alone into a warehouse in the middle of the night with hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise all around me and find out if it was on fire, or if a half dozen armed criminals were robbing the place. I had to put myself (unarmed and unarmored) into melees with a pack of armed gangbangers out for revenge over a recent shooting. I had to restrain psychotic killers who were on PCP before they could murder the 19yr old nurse on duty. Look I realize you take your job seriously, but quite honestly none of you have the slightest idea of what stress or anger are. Next question please."
I figured that was gonna wash me out in a heartbeat, but surprisingly I got the job.
I walked out of an interview at ebay. In the middle of the interview, they told me the position had been filled but they wanted me to talk to one more person to complete the process. I didn't know until after that it was a "stress interview". The interviewer was clearly enjoying watching me struggle. The first question the interviewer asked was which java packages I felt comfortable using. After I told him, he said "those are the ones I won't ask you about". The best question from that interview: "If you were given a technical design document how would you tell if it is good without reading it?" Later, I ended the interview when he told me I couldn't use the whiteboard to make it easier for me to show him the answer.