This interview took place at a company where I worked while hiring a new engineer for an IT-related job. While I wasn’t part of this interview panel, I did talk to multiple people who were part of the interview who corroborated the story. All names have been changed.
Our candidate was a Hasidic Jew, which I mention only because it becomes relevant to the story. He arrived at the train stop near our office in the afternoon. One of the guys from the devops department as a token of good will offered to pick him up and he accepted. He drove out and returned 20 minutes later, alone. When the candidate saw the car was a VW — a German car — he had refused to get in.
So the candidate took a cab and was shown to a conference room when he arrived. At our company, we usually do multiple rounds of interviews back-to-back. A candidate will typically meet with someone from HR, then two engineers, then a manager or director.
When the first engineer, Bill, came in he was surprised to see not one, but two men sitting waiting for him in the conference room; one younger and one elder, and from the resemblance, guessed to be father and son. He told the candidate, “I’m sorry, but you’re not allowed to bring anyone else with you during the interview.”
He responded, “It shouldn’t be a problem as, he won’t be interfering with the questions. This is my personal assistant; he will be taking care of my other needs”.
At this the elder gentleman, having not yet uttered a word, takes a bottle of water from one jacket pocket and a cup from the other, fills it up and places it in front of the interviewee, as if to demonstrate the point.
That’s a pretty ballsy move, showing up for someone else’s interview and reacting with such cool nonchalance when it’s suggested that you leave. That combined with the contrast of the goth-meets-Amish outfits juxtaposed against the modern office landscape of white walls and florescent lights. I like to imagine the water glass incident like a scene out of a Tarantino movie: highly stylized, and a bit over-the-top with an under-current of menace. I like to imagine “the assistant” maintained steady eye contact with Bill while slowly pouring the water as if to daring him to object further.
* the closest image I could find to what’s in my head
But I digress. Bill decided to roll with it and continue with the interview which otherwise proceeded normally.
So after the interview, Bill gets up, shakes the candidate’s hand and tells him “Lisa will be by in a few minutes to interview you next,” and turns to leave. The candidate stops him at the door
“Hold on, can I talk to you a second?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Just one small problem: I can’t talk to women.”
“Come again?”
“I can’t talk to women. I’m not allowed to talk to women.”
“Uhh… Well, that’s who we have coming in next. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“It’s okay, just let her know not to talk to me directly. Instead she should talk to my assistant and he will talk to me.”
“O…K…”
So Lisa came in and proceeded to conduct a very awkward and halting interview where she asked the older man questions, he repeated the same question to the candidate, the candidate gave his answer to the old man, and the old man repeated the answer back to Lisa. If she slipped up and addressed the candidate directly, he acted like he couldn’t hear her. After this went on for some time, she felt too insulted to continue and cut the interview short.
In retrospect, she never should have been asked to do that, but the request was so unexpected, I don’t think anyone knew how to react.
Bill came back in and let the candidate know this sort of behavior wasn’t going to work with our company and asked him, “How would you expect this to work in daily office life? There are women engineers and managers who work here. You need to be able to interact with them on a daily basis.”
The candidate responded, “I would just bring my assistant to work with me.”
“So every day you would have another person coming into the office, sitting by your desk, following you around to every meeting?”
“Precisely.”
“Yeah … that doesn’t work for us.”
And that was the end of that.
