When her Google Assistant suddenly and noisily interrupted the important Zoom conversation, the techie’s dream job interview turned into a complete disaster. The job seeker, who wanted to look professional and confident, went to Reddit to talk about the embarrassing experience that left her “literally still shaking.”The event happened at a real job interview for a job she really desired. In her popular post, the techie wrote, “Suddenly, the Google Assistant on my phone decided to turn on by itself and started reading a Wikipedia article about something totally random out loud.”
The loud, unexpected incursion of technology turned out to be a calamity. The job seeker said that at that time, her “brain just shut down,” which made her lose all attention. The rest of the interview was hard for her because she was still flustered and couldn’t calm down.
Grace Under Pressure vs. Empathy on Social Media
The techie’s post got a lot of people talking on Reddit, with some saying that a candidate should handle a strange, high-pressure circumstance like this in a certain way.
Some people were quick to evaluate the reply, saying it showed a lack of strength.One person said, “Nobody really wants to work with someone who can’t handle stress at all…” If someone gets angry because their Google Assistant goes off, how are they going to act when they truly mess up, say dropping a table in production or something like that? Another person agreed with this and noted that the candidate might have just said, “Sorry, I don’t know why my phone is ringing right now,” and then switched it off.
My Google Assistant just ruined a job interview for me. I’m dying of embarrassment.
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Some people, on the other hand, were more understanding and offered comfort. A third person, who said they were an interviewer, understood how stressed the candidate was. “If this happened during an interview, I would make sure the person could manage it and calm down first. People who are being interviewed are under a lot of stress, and we get a better interview if we help them relax.
The encounter is a striking, if regrettable, reminder of the particular technical problems and high-pressure situations that come with online interviews.