The Worst Interview Of All Time
Tags: Life Lessons, Software Development, Women In Tech, Interview, This Happened To Me

As a Graduate Software Engineer with two years experience I felt so ready to go to a new company that has different challenges, in hope that it would be something new and exciting.

The Phone Interview

I remember sitting in my car having the first phone interview with the Head of Engineering. We got on really well, he loved my attitude towards best practises, I was already writing technical blogs back then as well ( just on a different platform). I asked about the culture and the team sizes. It was a small team of around seven male developers. Neither of those things threw me off, small team sizes were my bread and butter coming from an SME company. And the tech industry is male dominated, I had spent two years as the only woman in the Engineering team, it makes absolutely no difference to me, you just get used to it.

The Code Test

I was very quickly rushed onto the next stage, which was the code test. Without sounding too confident, I knew I did well. I met all the requirements and had time to add unit tests in. It met my standards which is saying something, I’m always really hard on myself about the quality of my code.

I had nailed it! They asked me to come in and meet their team lead and one of their team members for a final interview in their office in London.

The Big Day

It took me about an hour and a half to get there, it was a mixture of trains and tubes. I was slightly uncomfortable because I’m quite claustrophobic, but It was the chance to work in London, It was exciting, I would have done anything to live that life. Anyway, I digress…

I arrived early, It was a really nice office and I just walked into the lobby and waited there. I was greeted by the team lead and he seemed out of his comfort zone trying to make small talk. This is something else that I just got accustomed too, so I just started asking him about his day and made couple of jokes; it relaxed the whole situation.

Needless to say the interview was going really well, we were talking about strengths and weaknesses, agile practises and problems I had faced in development.

Then he wanted to walk through the code test, line by line, I was looking forward to what his feedback was.

Before we did that, he told me it was the best one they’d ever seen. In my head I was already rejoicing, I had nailed every stage, new life here I come!

When I was walking him through my code, I don’t know why, he just seemed really anal about having something explained to him in a specific way, like he was looking for a specific word. But while he was doing he was ignoring what I was explaining to him, we were saying the same things, he just didn’t like how I was explaining it. I didn’t quite get why he was doing that, the code was commented and I had documentation.

In that moment something felt really odd, like he wanted to see me mess up, making me feel rather uncomfortable. I advocate pair programming and I’m well aware people need to have things explained slightly differently for them to understand, but no matter how I said it he wasn’t happy. But It was my code, I know what it does, I wrote it. I was trying to stay really calm, I’d never experienced this, it was really frustrating. Until it all made sense, because then he said …

I don’t think you wrote this.

He pointed at three lines of less efficient code that he didn’t approve of and said…

I think you wrote this and someone else wrote the rest

Those words haunted me, I was in shock. Normally, I’m quite a quick-witted person but all I could say in that minute was ‘oh’. I literally didn’t know what to feel, he’d seemingly brought me in for interview after already casting his judgements about me from the code test, to tell me what ? That I cheated ? It didn’t make sense.

I don’t think I have to tell you, that I messed up the rest of the interview, and travelled an hour and a half home. For a long time after this experience I was haunted, not from what he said but from being made to feel like a school girl who had cheated on a test.

Here is what I learnt…

They didn’t deserve me, it was their loss! I think it’s all too often that we think, when you go into an interview, the interviewee is the only one that has to be impressive. In reality it’s a two way street. Had I relived that moment again, I would have walked out. There’s not a company in the world who should be able to make people feel like that. And that is for sure not a company who is worth your time. I was a really good at my job. It wasn’t until I went home and told this story to my boyfriend, did I realise this. My boyfriend thought it was the most messed up complement that the hiring manager had paid me. He started with ‘it’s the best they’d ever seen’. Even though it turned out that he thought it was too good to have been written by me. That still meant after all the candidates they had been interviewing in the last five months of that vacancy being open, I was the best. Talk to people. When something like this happens, look to your support network and reach out. I stayed quiet, I really wanted the whole experience to go away and forget that it ever happened. However I think that’s why it stuck with me for a lot longer than it should have. I’m a mentor for a lot of people now, and I can only hope that if they experienced something like this, they would feel like they could come to me. Also, provide feedback to the recruiter, so hopefully they would never do that to someone again.

I hope you never have to experience something like this, but if you do, I hope reading this has helped you.