Negative interviewers

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I had a weird job interview, recently. It was the first well-paying job I'd been interviewed for for about a year.

The interviewer kept making negative comments like, 'we get a lot of people from that University, they aren't very good' and 'I don't suppose you have any leadership skills' and 'do you sincerely want this job or are you just desperate'. I came back with positive answers every time. He then said that my answers were very good and that he was impressed by me.


Has anyone come across this method of interviewing before, whereby the interviewer tries to get a reaction out of you.

Yep. It's quite common, actually. This may sound strange, but an interviewer wants to find a reason not to hire someone. Its not that their deliberately trying NOT to hire people, because obviously they wouldn't be looking for new employees, but by trying to entice a negative response from the interviewee is a good way of weeding out a potentially bad employee before they are hired on and become a problem on the workforce. Its a way for an employer to gauge whether your going to be a good worker or not.

I thought that was the reason. I'd just never come across so much overt negativity in an interview before. He was being kind of rude, but I suspected he was acting because the poker face he was pulling was so complete it wasn't natural. I gave the right responses, thankfully.

I hope he wasn't being sarcastic when he complimented me at the end because that would just be pointless mind games.

Part of it was also the level of job you were going for.

The interviews get worse the higher up you go!

Honestly, they can be brutal. You get to the higher levels where they want graduate school, and you won't be interviewed by one person, it will be a group of 3 or 4. Sort of like the Inquisition, all slinging fast questions at you. It's like dodging bullets.

I had one like that, it was very confusing - one minute he was asking normal questions, the next he was being very negative and sarcastic and then he invited in his office assistant and they were talking about me like I wasn't there. I didn't get the job, but I'm kind of grateful I didn't because the guy seemed like a jerk. I didn't know this was a technique they used, seems very underhanded.

I think it's all across the board. The spectrum gets wider as you go higher, but I think there are plenty of people in senior management who understand one version or another of the general idea that a new employee tends to have a positive attitude until three bad things happen, and why in the world would you want to have the job interview itself be one of the bad things ! ? (I came up with this theory on my own! But I'm sure a lot of people have come up with something similar.)

(And I guess a more sophisticated version would view the good things as similar to deposits in a bank account, and the bad things as similar to withdrawals. In fact I heard Stephen Covey or someone similar use this very analogy about how customers feel about a business.)

I got the job! They let me know by email, but that was probably better on my nerves than the phone.

Congratulations, Puddingmouse!

Thanks.

Leaving my current workplace was so weird though. I was so awkward - it was almost like 'kthanxbai' I had a splitting headache and people kept looking at me, expecting me to be all happy, but I was just being robotic. Some of them seemed sad, maybe they'll miss me, but I didn't say enough stuff to reassure them. I should get a good reference, I hope, so I should stop being paranoid.

And the funny thing is, they may have really meant it, even if they were not particularly friendly when you were just a regular employee (maybe it's something even almost biological, like our hunting-and-gathering group losing one member).

And if you gave two-weeks notice, they should give you a good reference. And even if you didn't, as long as the reason was understandable and straightforward, they still might.

Congrats! I didn't think of being negative as a ploy or a 'technique', but I guess it's a part of real life. People in general love optimism no matter what. The company takes a small risk that you'll choose someone else over them, especially in these times.

My new boss seemed genuinely impressed with me today. I'm quite happy. I'm going to work hard to keep the optimism going