A call from a dev-recruiter
Yesterday morning, I got a phone call from a recruiter. As the conversation progressed, I realized that he was actually a developer with a good level of knowledge.
The offer was good. The interview was very technical, and we spoke mixing English and French. He asked me advanced questions mainly about DDD and Laravel.
At one point, he asked me a question, and after I answered, he told me it seemed like I didn’t know what I was talking about. So I looked up the documentation and confirmed that I was right and he was wrong. I read it to him, but I felt like he got upset — he ended the call almost immediately with the usual “we’ll call you” and never contacted me again.
It was a small detail, not even an important question, but I felt like he didn’t like the way I told him he was wrong. Do you think it might have been a trap question to see how I’d correct someone? Has anything like this ever happened to you?
It might also have been influenced by the fact that the interview was in a mix of French and English — neither of which is my native language -.- Maybe it was a cultural-fit trap question (?)
I felt pretty bad for a while after the interview, kind of on edge, like I understood perfectly the exact moment when the recruiter decided to eliminate me, and I felt bad for not “seeing it coming.”
Later, I looked up the company on Glassdoor and it has 2.0 out of 5 stars. The top comment says it’s the McDonald’s of IT, tons of bad reviews… and well, I felt better about being rejected from the process.
But now that I think about it more calmly, I shouldn’t have gotten so upset just because my knowledge was being tested. I should work on my soft skills so I can learn to tell someone they’re wrong in the best possible way. And I need to stop looking for comfort in Glassdoor comments — if I want to do better in future interviews, I need to learn from my mistakes.
Has something similar ever happened to you? Do interviews in another language — or even in your native one — make you nervous, tense, or stressed? Do you record or log your interview processes so you can improve on them?
