I was encouraged to apply for the mid-senior level position (despite not having a senior title), and had a contact who kindly got the wheels in motion for an interview. Once a (face to face) interview time and date was set up, the experience was extremely unprofessional, and very demeaning to say the least. The below is but the main points of this negative experience.
When I arrived, the interviewers were running late. The receptionist motioned me toward my interviewer when he emerged from the offices, who unfortunately for me, was seeing out another candidate. I was ignored, when I reached him, as he chatted by the lift with who I had incorrectly assumed was my second interviewer. It was only when this individual entered the lift, that I was acknowledged, and I awkwardly introduced myself. I recalled the minute long conversation, and when I got home, It hit me that this was the reason I was completely ignored despite my greeting, until he was gone. This is certainly a massive no-no in HR and recruitment, and my first red flag.
My second interviewer was remote, and once we entered the interview room, and they had introduced themselves, I was told they may need to leave the call at a particular time (they ended up staying only for the first 10-15 minutes of the interview).
I was asked the classic 'tell me about yourself', speaking into my interviewers' personal laptop, where the remote interviewer was viewing me, and from there, the entire interview was purely technical. My interviewer, sitting beside me, opened the REPL, and handed me his own personal laptop, and began issuing commands for me to follow.
This was very awkward, not only because I am a mac user, or because I usually blow up the text due to having highly impaired vision, but moreso because this was the interviewers' personal machine and I am being broadcast to the second interviewer through this device. I did my very best not to squint or lean into the screen.
The instructions were delivered in a robotic monotone, and fast paced tone, I presume to make the experience more difficult by not only testing my coding skills, but also testing my verbal comprehension, processing speed and god knows what else. I did ask for clarification when I felt it was required. At a certain point, I believe my hands on the keyboard were giving away that I was most certainly not at all comfortable with this entire weird set-up. Without any comment from me, the interviewer felt it necessary to share that 'this experience is 'designed to make me uncomfortable and stress me out', and that that is the desired effect. He felt compelled to defend this interviewing technique by saying that every one of his employees, has been interviewed in this exact manner, and that it tells them absolutely everything they need to know about the candidate.
There were a number of offhand, disparaging remarks, such as "well, you don't have x, or y skill, but at least you've got z', which were completely unnecessary and obviously designed to make me feel like rubbish.
I can only assume that I was there for 1.5 hours (as opposed to the allotted 50 minutes), because the interviewer was having a lot of fun doing this to me. I say this because I essentially put a stop to this interview. It reached a point, where I felt I was being made fun of, that I was the butt of some unspoken joke. I did this by using pause, intense eye contact, and answering quite clearly and slowly, "I don't know" to one of the first questions on another technology (I wasn't going to do that all over again)
I did a lot of research, asking people what to expect from mining interviews, particularly technical ones, and this was certainly not what I was prepared for. I strongly suspect that this person perhaps did not want to interview me (most likely because I was not a mid-level or senior), but did so perhaps as a favour to the connection of my connection. It seems the decision about my suitability for this role was already decided before I set foot in that room.
Believe it or not, I didn't realise that most of these things are beyond unacceptable since it was my first technical interview, and you occasionally hear stories about bad experiences. It was only when I actually shared the details of the experience with seasoned software engineers, particularly those in the mining space, that I realised that this wasn't in any way normal or okay.
Despite what this person told me, I highly doubt that other candidates, especially more traditional ones, such as the one the interviewer was making small talk with, at the lifts as they saw them out, were/are treated the way I was treated during this process. I also sincerely hope that the way I was treated has nothing to do with the fact that I am a woman, because that is the only thing that could possibly make this entire experience worse.
Unsurprisingly, I never heard a peep back, so couldn't provide formal feedback, however feel compelled to share this experience here.
