Let’s talk about interviews, baby.

Let’s talk about you and me.

Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be.

Yes, let’s talk about interviews…

…and all of the nonsense games that people play with people’s potential and future career paths.

How did I do? Vote below if you want to provide invaluable feedback on my adventure.

Full disclosure: I wrote this entry without editing, and I wrote it fast. In this post you will feel my emotions, and I wanted it to be that way. Interviewing is an anxiety-ridden experience, and I had to shoot from the hip to get my points across.

Can you spot what is wrong with this picture?

Once upon a time, I led an interview panel. That interview panel was made up of nine leaders. Nine people, you say? Yes, nine people. Too big for it’s britches. Out of those nine people, all nine had biased opinions, including myself. All nine would sit in applicant interviews and listen closely, all nine would write down notes to keep the candidates’ answers fresh in their heads, all nine would go back to the office, would chat amongst each other over who was their favorite, and all nine would grade the interview packets days after the actual interviews, and all nine would stack the decks so their clear favorite would come out on top, regardless of if the candidate was the best out of the applicant pool. Because love wins over everything, right? And if you “love” someone, you will help them be successful by trampling on the more qualified candidate and lying about who was the winner.

You better believe I called out all nine of these people on their bullshit. And you might find it difficult to digest, but all nine of these people continued to stand behind their cliquey decision. Humans can be disgusting sometimes.

Filter out the poison.

So I did what any crime fighter would do, I revamped the interview packet so that the following happened:

1. Scoring for the interview happened within the interview. Interview panel members were not allowed to leave the room until they scored and handed in their packets.
2. The questions were modified so we heard more real-life examples less hypothetical scenarios. Yes people, we know what you would do in this moment if you were in a perfect setting, but what really happened when this occurred to you in real life? Did you falter, did you cave under the stress when you thought you would hold your head high? Did you actually flip out on someone instead of maintaining your calm composure that you originally sold to us in your previous interview question response about your character and integrity?
3. The questions were repetitive throughout the interview. We fact-checked the hell out of these people. If their story started one way earlier in the interview and ended up completely different after asking the question in a different manner, we knew we were in the midst of a fibber with flaming trousers.
4. The questions were the same for all applicants. This one was especially important, because some of the nine leaders would ask specific questions of their friends, or they would grill the applicants they were not fond of to better expose their weaknesses. Tricky, tricky, but I can spy evil a mile away, so good try, go use that tactic on someone else.

After this revamp, not many people wanted to sit on the interview panel. Aha! Success!

Also proceeding this revision, we started hiring people who had soft skills instead of technical experience, and the environment started to become kinder, smarter, and more communicative. Interesting what a little integrity can do for a cloudy day.

Willy and Canny were the best of friends.

The interview selection process is a bitch. No other way to put it. You know you are hurting someone no matter what, and you also are aware that you are making someone’s whole year or potentially few years by choosing them for the role.

You will never know if you made the right decision because there is no right decision. People change, rethink, and reform their opinions, but most importantly, people lie. It is a dog eat dog world, my friends (such a gross reference, my dogs have never tried to eat each other).

However, you can do your best by rooting for and hiring on the Willies over the Cannies. The Willies are the people who are willing to do the work. Does not mean they are capable, but damn if they do not give it a college-effort every single time.

The Cannies are the people who can do the work. They either went to school for it, or they have been living that experienced life for quite some time.

In my mixed-up world, the Cannies are the people who ruin the whole thing. They show up with their report cards of how they are technical dream-machines, but what they fail to expose is that they are usually not skilled in the butter-soft talent known as Emotional Intelligence. They are essentially robots who have a low amount of human skills. They let anger fester, they take action in a spiteful manner, they look down on those who do not have their intelligence level. They are the people in college who told me I was an idiot, but frowned when I came out on top in Biochem. They are the bullies of the workplace. I should be kinder here, but I am shooting it to you straight, mostly because I have been bullied all of my career by these people, and I think everyone deserves to know how to spot one.

Now if you get yourself a Willy/Canny hybrid – A Wilcan, not to be confused with Vulcan or Wilco (Jeff Tweedy, I see you), is a golden nugget of awesomeness. These diamonds in the rough not only can do the job, but they are willing to do it too. And, get this, they are kind, they communicate effectively, and they know how to empathize. Holy moly, a triple threat. What a wonderful world.

Unfortunately, there are less than 3% of these mystical beings on this gorgeous planet. Wilcans come out of the crevices once in a blue moon, and when they do, we celebrate so hard that Prince would be proud.

Be more like a Wilcan.

Do the bladder-stomp.

Back in January 2021, I got pregnant with my second child. After three and a half years of being in a role, I became bored and started looking for my next adventure. I interviewed for over five positions, and I went bold and disclosed my pregnancy in each interview, witnessing literally slumping of shoulders from the interview panels after I communicated my status of having a bun in the oven.

One interview was six hours away from our home, and they had amped me up to be the best candidate since sliced bread, but when I showed up as a blooming, glowing, sweating seven-months pregnant person, they acted as if I did not know how to read or write. They led me on until the very end, looking me dead in the eye and promising me housing accommodations once the offer was extended, only to find out days later via weak-ass emails that I did not get the role, telling me that I was not “good enough” and that they went with an internal candidate (they never mentioned there was an internal candidate in prior conversations).

What they should have said was this:

“We are not sorry, but we went the easy, less offensive route, and we chose the person who already works here that we were too embarrassed or weak to say no to. We were scared to have to work with this person after denying them a promotion, even though we know you would have kicked more ass at this job than Kim Kardashian can fit into Spandex shorts. We all know you are a rockstar, but we are not emotionally intelligent enough to go with the “right” decision. So we will stick with our lack of guts and continue accentuating this toxic culture by promoting the Cannies of the world until eventually the whole team is brainwashed to believe that this is a good place to work. We will train our people to stay within their small comfort zones. Retention, retention, retention.”

My research concludes the following:

Pregnant women + job interviews = Incompatible for life

Willies + job interviews = Do not get your hopes up

Cannies + job interviews = Offer accepted!

People say they do not discriminate against pregos, but the truth will set you free.

Play the game, Prego.

After consulting with others on my struggles to land a new role while holding in my vomit in between questions, I was told by all other women that I do not need to disclose, nor should I disclose, my pregnancy during the interview.

My response – I do not want to work for someone who would not hire me as a pregnant person. Because these people suck, and they will continue to suck even after they offer me the job.

Their response – Hmmm, good point, but you still need to play the game to get the job.

But I am a Wilcan! I can do anything I put my mind to!

Oh contraire.

Apparently you have to play the game because good is hard to find in this world and shittiness prevails. Ahhh, that makes sense, right?

What kind of world are we living in where we cannot share this joyful experience of growing a gremlin with any human being in any scenario without pain, bias, or stereotypes interfering? Why are people hating on the baby mamas of the world? What in the hell did we ever do to you except ask for a chair or for you to pick something off of the floor for us? We are the ones puking in the trash cans, having our bladders stomped on, and having our ribs used like a jungle gym. Just give us a damn promotion and trust that we will come back even stronger after maternity leave. Ignore the fact that we will be gone for three months (still not enough time for maternity leave), and push aside your preconceived notions that we will not be hard workers because we have to care for a team outside of work. Stop discriminating. Stop being jerks. Go get pregnant yourselves and see what it is like, and then come talk to me.

Do not even get me started on the job interviews where the candidate is a Wilcan, is not pregnant, yet still does not get the job. Discrimination happens even when there is not a factor to discriminate against. This scenario is what we define as favoritism, and boy is it rampant in the corporate world.

I chose not to be an ass-kisser, to show my skills and integrity without needing to brown-nose, and that is why I am unemployed.

Transparency killed the cat.

People say they are transparent, they hype up their honesty, and then you discover that at the end of the day, people revert to being selfish and they do what is best for them first and foremost. I do too. You do as well. Please try to convince me otherwise. However, if we can all stop leading people on, the world will be a better place.

The next time you interview someone, I challenge you to do the following: Please do not hype the candidate up, please disclose who they are interviewing against, please let them know what they could have done better, and please share what they did well. Stop telling them they landed the job before you consult with the team. Discontinue choosing the person that your team selects, and go with the correct candidate. Immediately halt on your practice of being comfortable and going with what you know. Be risky. Tell them why you did not pick them, tell them you were too weak to go with the right candidate, and for the love of whatever in the hell created this world, please tell them within two days of interviewing if they did not get the job. Stop ghosting people. Hell, tell them right before they walk out the door if you know, call them that night if you find out you are going with someone else.

Stop playing games. It hurts. It is mean, and it f*cks with people’s minds.

And for those of you reading this who are already hiring Wilcans, hit me up sometime because I would love to come work for you or refer a handful of people your way. You deserve better.