A-twitter

[jethrien]

So my office is all a-twitter. We just had a job candidate (not for my job, a different position) walk out after an interview, leaving his interviewers unable to stop giggling. To start off, this is was a guy in his 40s or 50s with the Worst. Combover. Ever. He'd dyed the combover black (a horrible black not found in nature), but not the sides. So it was like a dull, plastic furry animal was trying to gnaw off his skull. Apparently his shirt was completely soaked through with sweat. (Umm...it's the last day of November. It's not hot out there!) The sweat ran down his arms onto their hands when they shook hands with him. He had a ten page resume. Apparently he spent the entire interview not answering questions. Instead, he insisted on showing them charts and stuff from an accordian folder he'd brought. This isn't a graphic designer - this is supposed to be a QA guy. Who wants to see the random printout from his last job, honestly? He also smelled funny and made weird faces, and made strange clicky sounds to himself as he hunted through the folder.

Anyway, they were thoroughly traumatized, and fed him some line to get him out of the office. I think if it had gone any longer, they would have tried gnawing off their own limbs to escape.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Heh. Awkward people are funny.

[shnayder.livejournal.com]

Heh. Though one minor point in his defence--I don't know about NY/NJ, but it's pretty much summer outside around here.

Note to self: if ever doing interviews, have a one page handout of interview tips to give to people as they walk out :P

[(Anonymous)]

Here's the problem: we take kids with autism and Aspergers (and there's no doubt your candidate was on the spectrum) and tell them they can be anything they want to be. At the same time, we mainstream them and teach everyone in the class tolerance and manners. We grade them differently and make many allowances for their handicaps. (Just yesterday I judged a writing contest. The special ed teacher reminded us that it was mandated by law that her students be given special consideration. And so we did.)

And then we send these people into the real world where no one makes allowances for their handicaps or gives them a break because that's not how the world works.

This is tragic.

And I don't have a clue what the solution might be.