The most outrageous moments of my career

[micseydel]

I attended a hiring committee once where a candidate had done the "onsite" portion of the interviews over two days via Skype. They were believed to be an industry expert in their specialization and there was a hiring manager who really wanted them. They had done poorly across the board, though one of the interviews had gone particularly well. For any regular candidate, it would have been an instant no, but the hiring manager advocated hard.

After a bit, someone noticed that that single interview that went well had accidentally used the same coding question, and the first time the candidate got that question they bombed it horrendously. So most of us thought the candidate was an instant no because of the lack of honesty on their part (as well as the game-theory involved; it seems so likely we'd notice!). One guy said that interviews are adversarial and that therefor it shouldn't be held against the candidate but that was not generally accepted.

In the end, the hiring manager basically said he wanted the candidate "anyway" and then I witnessed one of the most awkward moment of my professional life so far - another hiring manager said something along the lines of, "Ok, I get that you want this candidate in spite of their interview performance. I just have one question. If we're going to hire them after this, why did we bother with the interview?" You could have cut that silence with a knife.