Job Interview From the Dark Side, Pt. 2

  For some strange reason my life has been littered with more hard-luck job interviews than perhaps the average person. I once asked a job-networking group to share stories of job-interview disasters and got nothing that compared to multiple experiences of mine, and certainly not enough to fill a book the way so many of mine have gone. I don't know whether getting together a collection of them would be best presented as some kind of dark comedy routine, or as an educational lecture at a job-search seminar, or a cautionary job-search book. This is the second part of an occasional series about my nightmare job interviews. This is the one that constantly replays in my head, that I can't forget no matter how much I may want to:

Shortly after I finished college, my mother, a state employee, gave me a job announcement for the state government equivalent of a management-trainee position.  All that was required was a bachelor's degree, any bachelor's degree.  So I applied and was invited to an interview.  It was with a panel of several management personnel.  The question was asked, "Why do you want this job?" 

I knew, "I need the dough and my mother made me apply" wouldn't cut it.

Instead I was looking forward to explaining that I was looking forward to working in a state office--a government office--where I could put my skills, abilities, and qualifications in the arts to use, participating in enriching the state's cultural heritage. All I got out of my mouth was, "I'm looking for an office job-" 

One interviewer interrupted as if the words "office job" were an insult to his mother. "THIS IS NOT AN OFFICE JOB!" he mansplained. "It is NOT an OFFICE job!  It involves MEETING with people, TALKING to people, it is NOT an OFFICE JOB!"  He ranted and bellowed and raved and thundered on and on about "very important" and "very high up" and very high up and very important, and talking to very important people and meeting very important people, and talking to very high-up people and meeting very high-up people, and "THIS IS NOT AN OFFICE JOB!"

We were IN an OFFICE, weren't we? The guy was mansplaining about "meeting" and "talking" like those required years of intense training, not skill sets the average five-year-old is capable of. Apparently he assumed: young blonde white female equals not capable of comprehending anything in an office beyond, well, an "office" job. Women are only good for typing and filing, and they're so dumb they think they're good for "meeting" and "talking."

He could've said, politely and in a normal voice, "Miss, when you say "office job," are you aware that usually means clerical work and this is a management-trainee position, and could you please explain?" That would've been condescending enough, but this guy just assumed that young blonde white female, not IMPORTANT enough for him to show even surface courtesy to.

When he finally paused for breath, I smiled and said, politely, the only thing I could think to say, "It's not picking strawberries." 

Another man on the panel chimed in, "I think she means an office setting," as if trying to smooth things over.  However, I think my "office job" and "picking strawberries" comments somehow had the whole panel convinced that here was some woman who was good for nothing but "office work" or "picking strawberries." Who let her in? Who gave her a college degree? They didn't even ask about my college degree or how I intended to use it.

Any hope left for salvaging the interview evaporated when some panelist asked, "How long do you intend to stay in this position?" and I said, I was looking forward to exploring what opportunities that being employed with the state might hold for me, and I'd be looking forward to being eventually promoted into the state position that best suited my qualifications.

No, no, they wanted someone who would be "committed" to the position they were interviewing for. I couldn't salvage that, nobody offered me anything, I never got anything out of the interview except for a guy screaming at me over nothing, plus a polite form rejection letter.