This interview was special.
My sister led me to the vacancy post on social media. I soon get an invitation for an interview via email. The email stated at the end that the team looked forward to talking to me.
The day the interview was scheduled was on a date that I was travelling. The time was set for 10:00 hours. Luckily, my flight was in the evening, so I made some basic calculations to stay on schedule and go for the interview.
I arrive at the venue about 10 or 15 minutes early. It’s residential. Hmmm.
Ten or so ladies are waiting outside in the compound. No one else was in sight, and I wasn’t sure what to do, so I joined them. But then, one of the ladies of them is kind enough to inform me that people were present for different reasons. She advises that I knock on the front door and find out if “my people” were already inside.
Meet the interview team
As I turned towards the door, I see someone already knocking. The door opens, and a man stood there. He was dressed in a singlet and shorts with flops, looking like he just “rolled out of bed”. Turns out he was our interviewer/potential employer.
Okay. I don’t see a problem with dressing rather casually for things like this. You know, no need to be stiff or too formal? The more important concern is the work that can be done. Right?
Yet, I’m thinking he’s a bit too casual for the occasion, even by my liberal standards. Especially since there was a note in the email about the importance of presentation. Anyway, he lets the person go inside to join their ‘people’, and I have to wait outside a bit more because I’m “special”.
After over an hour of standing, he comes back outside to make a call for content developers – aka me – as well as more of the kind of candidates that were already inside. We join them.
It was a ‘bulk interview’ if you’ve ever seen one. Pretty radical.
Now, if this is just me, please, point it out after you read. But, I think that if you’re invited to come for an interview on a specific day and time, you imagine that your potential employers want to meet with you one on one. Especially if the email was directed to just you. This way you have conversations about what the job entails, see if you’re a good fit, and so forth.
There is no such thing here. As a matter of fact, I basically sit in for what was a quasi-Ted Talk that I neither asked for nor took anything beneficial away from.
An astonishing encounter
It’s okay that you’re a startup, and you need a loyal team to innovate and succeed with. A lot of job seekers look for this kind of opportunity and environment to launch or expand a career. Yet, I didn’t quite feel like that was the case there.
I got the sense he wanted to get more ideas from a group of people he did not even bother to be introduced to, under the pretext of an interview. He went on about how you didn’t need to spend any money to get your business running, and how he wasn’t interested in ideas that would cost him money, among other things.
If there’s anything that’s unattractive about an employer, or a potential one, it’s one who’s looking to exploit honest job seekers without any consideration for their current situations, or plans to appropriately compensate them for their work and contributions.
At the end of his session, he gave us ‘assignments’ that involve developing ideas for his startup to take off running. This is after he talked about getting to a place together where our collective issue would be that we would be too successful. A couple of movie and television scenarios came to my mind.
This ‘assignment’ was literally what I earned a salary doing on a day-to-day basis, or getting paid to do as a project on the side. Or work with people with who I actually share a vision. In summary, he wanted an actual content plan for his business! Even though, after the ‘interview’, he still didn’t even know the names of the people that were in the room with him!! Even for the day.
He even gave a deadline for the submission of the assignment.
I shake my head internally and smile. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not interested in sitting down to come up with a content plan for free. Also, not for this particular venture, as I didn’t even see any opportunities in there for me. In any case, there was no room to find out.
Anyway, the good thing is I left early enough to not get stuck in traffic, grab some shut-eye, and head to the airport later. Hopefully, a real opportunity presents itself soon.
TL: DR
- The way the interviewer/potential employer dressed and presented himself did not show any consideration for the candidates he was expecting. Yet, he had asked us to be presentable.
- He was not at all interested in the candidates. He was simply looking for more ideas to develop his business further. Not a crime, if this was sort of communicated beforehand. Some of the people I spoke with had come from far places, for example. I spent quite some money getting there myself.
- The interview was arranged and carried out in an awful manner. Every single candidate was asked to come at the same time, and the interviewer/potential employer was the only person conducting the ‘interview’. There were close to 50 people there that day, if not more. I guess ’bulk interviews’.
- Candidates were kept waiting!! And I don’t remember hearing any apologies of any kind.
- It was not a structured work or business environment. There was no room to actually discuss what could be what, in terms of the role, expectations, and career growth.
Your thoughts and experiences, please?
*This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
