The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Recent Tales from the Interview

Job interview stories.

It Depends & Too Good To Be True

by Alex Papadimoulis in Tales from the Interview on 2008-08-26

It Depends (from David)

Several years back, a "small startup on the verge of explosive growth" emailed me back after I had sent over my resume. They were interested in an interview. I went there, and their "office" was an old house in some shady downtown neighborhood that had four home-built computers jumbled together on an improvised table in the dining room with two guys in wooden chairs sitting around it. For a startup, I didn't think it was that bad, as many start up that way.

258 comments - Last comment @ 2022-07-02

Hot, Hot, Hot!, The Last Interview, and A Wrinkle in Time

by Jake Vinson in Tales from the Interview on 2008-08-13

Hot, Hot, Hot! (from Rob Sutherland)
In the mid 80s, a headhunter found me a good lead for a coding position at a (now-defunct) auto manufacturer. When I showed up to the headhunter's office, a very large and very scary looking woman took me out to the cafeteria so she could smoke during the interview. Different times, the 80s.

I could tell right away that she wasn't impressed with me. She lit up a cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke across the table, picked up my résumé, looked at it, grunted, flipped the page, grunted again, and tossed the résumé to the middle of the table. After another grunt, she glared at me and said "get a haircut!"

59 comments - Last comment @ 2008-08-20