I had a final interview for a vac scheme today and one of the interviewers was incredibly rude - told me my previous experience in due diligence was irrelevant and that I shouldn't draw on it because most due diligence reports he reads are overall shoddy work anyway. He also asked me a few questions and when I would be halfway through my answers he'd just go "WRONG. Try Again." and told me that in his team he advises people to "Think 10 times and reply once, which is something you obviously don't know how to do'. My answers weren't bad because I'd prepped them in advance and were absolutely relevant - they've gotten me multiple vac schemes before.
I just don't know what to do or what to think. A friend of mine had the same interview before me and he didn't have the same experience at all. I'm just really upset and disheartened.
Hi
@ofm - I am sorry to hear you have had this experience. I can understand it can be upsetting. Hopefully the community here at TCLA can provide you with some support on this.
In the past, I have tried to provide balance when we have had similar posts to this or people have privately messaged me with concerns of their interviewers being rude. Many times I can justify some behaviours on some level or can explain how certain things might have been misconstrued by the candidate and that the intentions of the interviewer were probably not what the candidate thought they were.
I know
@AvniD has provided some excellent advice on these types of situations before. One of her excellent points was to at least sleep on it and try to reflect on it with a fresh and open mind. Sometimes you can get caught up in the raw emotion of the situation when it has only just happened and maybe feel particularly riled by the situation right now, whether rightly so or not. Just taking some time to step away from your current feelings about it and try to look at it from a more pragmatic point might be helpful, both for what you consider your next steps to be and/or how you are feeling. I'd also try to look beyond the worst interactions and try to see if there is anything positive you could take from the interviewer. If you still feel this strongly (or even more so) once you have taken these steps, I'd be happy to provide guidance on what you could do next.
On this occasion (caveat that by saying this is based on only hearing your story from you and the limited information you have provided), I feel what you have said is pretty damning. Even if this is some kind of reverse psychology approach to see how resilient you are or how you deal with challenging conversations/someone challenging your viewpoint, the ways in which they have approached this isn't necessarily productive in an interview setting.
There are some parts of this that I could justify as interviewer behaviour. Interrupting someone and telling them they are wrong will be something that happens (I have done it!). The bit that gets me is the "which is something you obviously don't know how to do" comment - that is a shitty (excuse my language) thing to say to anyone if that is what they said. It's also ridiculously presumptuous. If I was the graduate recruitment person at the firm, I would want to know this was going on. Depending on the firm's culture they either know this happens (and put up with it) or this is something they wouldn't deem acceptable (and they may not rely on that interviewer again).
Feel free to PM me (and you can send it to
@AvniD too) if you want to discuss this outside of the forum - although if you want to keep chatting on here you are more than welcome to as well. Avni and I can provide our thoughts as to what you might want to consider next.
What I would stress is that although this is disheartening and upsetting, this is just one person's opinion. And by the sounds of it, they are the anomaly if you have secured multiple vacation schemes previously.