Shades of Interviews

The following story is true based on my own personal experience.

In the year 2013, I returned home from living and working overseas. Upon my return, I was settling back into east coast living. I figured freelancing was the best thing to do until I figured out what my plan was and I needed to get some income in. Luckily, having work experience overseas made me stand out more to companies regardless of my only being three years out of college. I updated my Linkedin profile, and the emails started to flood in. I was receiving emails every day about positions–sometimes about the same one, but from different agencies. One day I got a phone call from an agency about a UX Design Position for a big name “Mobile Communications” company. They told me that they were looking for someone to start in two weeks. The hourly wage was competitive, and the commute was a dream—ten minutes from my house. I figured having their name on my resume would help me down the road. I agreed to meet with the company. The recruiter put my name forward, and the manager wanted to meet with me right away. I set up a time to meet a couple days later. The recruiter requested I show up forty-five minutes early so she can brief me on the team and what would be my responsabilities.

 The day came, and my interview was around 9:30 am. I drove to the office and made it there within seven minutes. I had no idea they had an office so close to my home. I met the recruiter outside the building. She was an older woman in her fifties who drove a gray Mercedes. She held herself high and was very formal.

We walked into the lobby and sat there to have our meeting about the company. I thought this was odd only because in the past I’ve met in meeting rooms, not a lobby. She started off by talking about the team and what they were trying to accomplish. She struggled to describe what the position was about–I assumed this was because she wasn’t as tech savvy. She used the term “Gadgets and Gizmos” a lot. It occurred to me when I spoke to her on the phone she was only reading off of a brief. Towards the end of our conversation she paused, looked at me, and said– “Just so you know, the lady you’re about to meet with is very strict, it’s not that she is mean, but a lot of people say she is tough, but don’t worry she’s a very nice person.” I went from rosy red cheeks to white as a ghost. Then, someone called my name to escort me upstairs. The recruiter told me she’d wait for me in the lobby and waved me off. 

I proceeded into an elevator and went to the upper floor. The person escorting me didn’t say a word, nor did they look at me, they just looked down at the floor. I was brought to a tiny room and was told to wait in there. A couple minutes went by, and a short asian lady came in with a gray suit and perfectly cut hair to shoulder length. When she entered the room, it was like all the happiness in that room was sucked dry. I could have swear the lights start to flicker a bit and a hazy entered the room. I smiled and said, “Hello.” She did not smile, she did not blink, just a cold stone stare. No hello was given in return.

She spoke in a thick accent. She stared at me with a pissed off look and skipped the formalities. Immediately she flung her hand up in the air, “Show me your work, I want to see what you have done.” I thought to myself, this woman is already coming across as if I’m a burden to her, but I kept my cool and took out my laptop to walk her through my work. I explained my thinking process and showed her the final pieces. She stared at my work with a stone-cold glance while never uttering a single word. I was thinking, "Am I speaking too fast, too slow, am I not making sense?" I’ve interviewed enough at this point where I almost had it scripted and could walk interviewers through things that applied to the position. I knew the usual questions that were asked, so I had an automated response. Usually, by this point, other interviewers will ask questions, understand my process, agree or disagree with my choices- I got nothing but dead silence. My brain was trying to come up with some other way of getting her to speak, so I decided to show more work, and maybe she would see something that piqued her interest. I carried onto the next project-Again, dead silence.

By this point I really didn’t know what to say, I was never in this position before. I then started initiating conversation as I had nothing left to show. I went on to explain why I worked overseas. It seemed something triggered in her mind as you can tell by the scruntching of her brows she was forming a response or a thought? The next thing she yelled was “Do you have anything else?” I said “no, this was everything I had to show". I was a little shocked as I sent my portfolio to her before even meeting with her and I was told she “loved what she saw”, so to be asked if I had anything else with a cold look was a bit confusing. The thought crossed my mind if I had been played?

She then asked me to tell her about my schooling. Schooling? I haven't been to school in a couple of years. I then proceeded to tell her about my college classes and what I studied. She became all flustered and waves her arms in the air, then interrupted me- “No, tell me about your experience in High School, were you a good student?” This completely threw me off. I was thinking how does my high school work relate to this position? Confused I stuttered to say, “I–I–I, did the best that I could, but I don’t see how it’s related to the position.” She didn’t bat an eye, just starred me down. She continued on the subject, “How did you do with your grades? What was your GPA?” At this point, I’m thinking, what the heck is she asking? Calmly I say, “I don’t remember, why does it matter, and how does it relate to this position”? She got very annoyed and asked me to remember. I sat there in silence for a minute thinking back. I couldn't remember my overall GPA. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. I just blurted the first number that came to my head, “Maybe 3.4 GPA, it was a long time ago. I still don’t understand why that matters.” She finally has some emotion on her face and shook her head in disappointment. She said, “Oh, wow, that’s pretty bad. I got a 4.0 in school. In Korea we expect perfection.” Why do I even care what she got in school, I thought I was being interviewed, not her. The first thought that popped in my head, this is America, not Korea. I didn’t want to say anything to jeopardize my chances of getting the job. I smiled and politely said, “Well, it was the best I could do.”

She asked me to follow her and quickly walked out of the room. I tried to keep up the pace, but the minute I walked beside her so told me to never walk ahead of her and keep a steady pace behind her. A sarcastic thought popped in my head "Yes, your majesty." I rolled my eyes like yeah, ok. As she walked me down the aisle of cubicles, I noticed all her employees looked away in fear as she passed them. She sat me in front of a crappy PC laptop and told me to take 45 minutes to duplicate a design of an icon in Adobe Illustrator. It was a crappy 3D version of a person that was made in 1995. Forty-five minutes passed, and I wasn’t even close to being done, this was obviously all done in a 3D program and was impossible to duplicate in Illustrator. She came over to see my progress and told me to continue. I finished in about an hour, after all the gradients, custom shapes, etc., I got it to match, but not perfectly.

After two and a half hours, she had two men show up to escort me back downstairs. I felt like I was about to be detained. I felt bad for the recruiter as she was still sitting in the lobby. She looked tense. The minute she saw me she jumped up out of her seat and huddled up next to me as if she wanted to tell me a secret, she whispered, “How did it go?” We proceeded to walk outside, and I told her about my bizarre interview questions. She gives me the most BS answer I’ve ever heard, “She’s testing you, wants to see how to perform under pressure.” I politely laughed. She said she’d follow up with me in a week or two as the manager had a couple more interviews that week. I then left to go home.

 A couple of weeks went by and It was silent. I was interviewing with other companies and had an initial offer on the table, the same day when I received the offer from the other company I got a call from the recruiter about my interview. I was told because I was so “Nice and Polite” I beat out all the other interviewers and I left such a lasting impression on the manager they wanted to hire me for the contract. I laughed inside and thought- you've got to be kidding. How did I leave a lasting impression? She was the one with the lasting impression. I was also told again that she was “just testing me and that she is excited to have her on her team.” I didn’t even give my answer. I had two offers on the table, the other one was slightly more money, and I got to work remotely a couple of days a week, but the job was over an hour and a half away. I wanted to make sure she truly wasn't as cold and horrible as she led me on to believe.

She wanted to meet me again. I went to meet with her one more time to reassure myself she wasn't as mean as she came across and to see why she wanted to meet with me. I went back to the building a day later, this time with no recruiter, and met with her again. She seemed a little more open and friendlier, but still, something was off. She talked to me as if I agreed to the position, but I didn’t decide yet. I had a couple more questions. I proceeded upstairs and had another meeting. She wasn't as cold and very open. After our positive meeting, everything seemed ok, so I decided to give it a chance and turned down the other positions.

Three weeks later, I quit after she was screaming at me every day- calling me worthless and that she should have never hired me. A guy from another department came up to me and said "Hey are you ok, I've never seen someone get treated that way here." He was very helpful and said he'd speak to anyone he could about that situation. During my three weeks there she brought other employees to tears. She was as mean as they came. Her manager was worse. I stood up for myself on the last day to both of them. I told them this was a hostile environment and I just left. I proceeded to call the recruiter to tell her everything. She became very "unavailable" in the times that I tried to call her. So I had to call the main office number. The lady I spoke with was "shocked" and said she'd follow up. She never did. I regretted not taking the other job(s). Having that name on my resume didn't seem to work out after all. Lesson learned, don't take a job for the presitgious name.