The thing about Friday job interviews is that the interviewers are usually pretty genial and good-natured because of Friday, not because of you. If you feed off vibes, Friday interviews can be misleading because that “click” you think you shared with them is probably a function of the weekly joviality that working people experience when the weekend is right around the corner. Don’t you remember what it was like to work, loser?
I had a job interview for a hybrid role in El Segundo last Friday, and true to form, both of my interviewers were smiling up a storm and having a grand time. As a rule, I perform tragically badly in video interviews. It’s legendary how inept I am behind the camera as opposed to in-person interviews where I tend to shine. In Friday’s interview, I felt I was doing just fine. Not great, but not the absolute shitshow my virtual job interviews have ingloriously proven in the past.
I was interviewed by two men dressed in smart-casual style with equally smart hairstyles. One of them was maybe 30-ish, slightly ethnic, and the other was 55-ish, a more traditional White dude, and they both had tremendous Friday senses of humor.
“We should have a decision by Tuesday,” the older guy said after the interview came to a welcome end. In the midst of cracking jokes and spitting snarky comments, even this simple promise sounded… promising. I interpreted hope. I held out for optimism, rare for me.
Tuesday, it would be.
Tuesday afternoon I emailed my accented Indian recruiter for an update. She advised me they had not responded yet but that she would “keep me posted.”
By yesterday afternoon, I still heard nothing, until…
I was dismayed but not surprised. The patented “we are not moving forward” formulaic rejection, aka “we have decided to go with another candidate.”
This is the standard existence of chronic rejection that defines unemployment for most of us, a ceaseless merry-go-round of “sorry” and “I’ll let you know if another role comes up” dredge that disguises a bleak reality that you serve no role in today’s relevant economy. You have no external purpose in this utilitarian society.
In the days after my interview on May 30, I ruminated over the interview and replayed it in my mind. I felt I answered most of the questions adequately, but there were a few blank spots, dead articulation, and “uhms” that revealed I wasn’t the swiftest speaker in the shed (which I am not).
Before the interview, my recruiter advised me to practice potential questions like…
“What are your strengths?”
“What are your weaknesses?”
“How did you handle a difficult customer in your last role?”
…bullshit like that, rehearsed rubbish we parrot to feign excellence that no one buys, least of all cynically jaded interviewers.
I rehearsed and made up events and stories for potential questions the interviewers might pitch at me. I do this. How are they going to prove me wrong? Prospective employers generally do not subject you to lie detector tests, though I suspect AI may soon be repurposed for such an intrusive role.
I was ready to spin my tall career tales and boast of my greatness. The conversation was friendly and genial. I even felt that maybe these dudes liked me enough to hire me. I can be a fool, a fucking jester at times.
At one point, we were chuckling about something or other and the old interviewer asked, so casually that it disarmed me, “So tell us. What do you like to do for fun?”
Shit! I did not see this coming.
I was prepped to weave intricate and fictional details about that difficult client I invented and all the wonderful, productive, and proactive methods I used to neutralize his anger while offering actionable options for him that would empower him and thus make him a happy, satisfied customer again. Instead, I was asked to tell these strangers about my personal life.
Homey don’t play that!
The zone between my personal and work lives is visceral and concrete. This sometimes places me at odds with co-workers as I am that person who doesn’t talk about what I did this weekend or what I have planned for [fill in holiday]. I don’t like people enough to attempt entertainment, and I surely don’t presume I’m that interesting to them. I am not a monkey here to amuse you. I am here to work, and when the clock strikes the go-home hour, that’s where I shall go. I don’t care to tell you what I do there, and I don’t care what you do when you go to yours. Of course, I understand that I alienate myself with this behavior, and I find it hard to summon any concern about it. I understand that as I try to re-enter the job market after 35 years, I need to reset my thinking and attempt to rekindle a personable character if I wish to get along.
Fuck that. Ain’t happening.
I will never know why they decided “not to move forward” with me, but I tend to think my faltering response to the “fun” question didn’t further my cause.
I was flummoxed.
“I…I…like baseball, so this is my favorite time of year, haha.”
I continued reaching. I don’t speak well on my feet.
“I…like to hike and me and my wife like to take weekend trips. Uh… Haha.”
I think I may have repeated the exciting tidbit about trips and hiking or something, and it was obvious I was struggling. As much as I hated it, this was a genius question to ask and posed perfectly as an aside. A question as neutral as this evokes an interviewee’s fit in company culture more than any other. I don’t fit in most places, and my mask was flung away by the question.
I really wanted to answer, “I blog on Substack about my 60-year-old professional irrelevance and how painful it is to find a job in today’s workplace for an aged social outcast like me, and oh, I fucking hate LinkedIn with the power of a thousand suns. LinkedIn and job interviews are the stupidest things in existence, almost as stupid as job interviewers and their questions.”
The sad thing is, I could have said that and I’d be in the same boat.