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Then strangers shouldn't fucking ask questions that could have answers that make them uncomfortable. Just a thought.
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It's wild to see so many advocates of "the inexperienced should have experience already". You're put in an awful situation but it's your own fault because you went through it, you should have known better than to take questions at face value as presented.
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Uhhhhh these questions are experience filters, that's why it's better to have experience when you answer them.
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Don't you think an interview is a collaborative effort? What signal is the interviewer getting from a candidate if they're asking about work experiences and the candidate is answering with personal non-professional anecdotes?

Assuming that the candidate was in the wrong here, and the interviewer wanted work anecdotes, why didn't the interviewer guide them to the right topics? If they didn't guide them to the right topic, your assumption that they wanted work examples may be flawed.

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We weren't there, and the article is light on details, so we can only speculate. I see two options here:

a) The potential employer vastly overstepped commonly accepted boundaries.

b) It was totally implied that the questions were to be answered in the context of work. "What was the hardest challenge you had to overcome?" in that context relates to e.g. debugging a hard concurrency problem, not your divorce.

What stood out to me is that whatever interpretation is the correct one, the candidate was willing to give (apparently) deeply personal answers. That's just something to adjust for in upcoming interviews, we live and learn.

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At any point the interviewer could have clarified if they meant "at work" when they received an inappropriate answer. The fact they did not do this means they did not mean "at work," which makes sense because the questions they ask neither specify that nor are worded to make one believe they are work-related.

What would be the point of conducting an entire hour+ long interview where the candidate is only giving you irrelevant answers and you make no attempt to get them on track?

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They shouldn't ask such questions, but people also need to learn to push back against unreasonable behaviour too.
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"How are you?" "How was your weekend?"

It is common for people to ask a personal sounding question but expecting an impersonal answer.

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And they should stop doing that. Who benefits?
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The people asking when they figure out whether you can follow simple conventions or not.
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I think this is the case of "hey how it's going." In most cases what is actually being demanded of you is a bullshit answer.

OP took it at face value. I can relate.

Alternatively, the interviewer was a psychopath. (I can also relate!)

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This is what makes this a potentially (mostly) great interview. If the candidate can’t/doesn’t understand the dynamic of the interview and hates it, they opt out of the process.

Probably only thing I would’ve done differently would have been to limit first call to 30 minutes to save me time when someone is obviously a bad fit.

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