In trouble at work

[Dottiemay]

There's been Teams interviews for a junior role at work. The interviews include an on the day task for the first half an hour of the interview. I'm not on the panel but my manager asked me to join the call at the start of the interview alone to introduce the task and say the panel will join the call in half an hour and will ask you to introduce the task. All fine. I did six interviews this week and I was on the call for max two minutes to introduce the task then left. The last interviewee had been scheduled at school pick up time. I'd asked around to see if someone could pick up my kid from school but couldn't. So I asked the school - where I've been a governor for many years - if I could come early to use the meeting room to jump on this call for a couple of minutes. That way I'd be at the school for pick up. The head said yes, no issues. When I got to the school, the head was away at a meeting and hadn't told the deputy, and the meeting room was being used for a safeguarding meeting. They offered me the school reception area but it was full of parents wanting to speak to staff. As I didnt have time to drive back home, I jumped in the car and blurred the background. Introduced the task and then left - took a minute or two. The candidate then sent my manager a screenshot of me on the call clearly in the car. My manager has now raised it with me and said we'll have to chat on Monday about it. I'm shitting myself. They know I'm a single parent. I start work at 7.00 and work through my lunch break to get an earlier finish so I don't think I've done anything wrong and who cares if the background was a car. But I feel like I'm in a lot of trouble. Do you think I've done something terrible?

Why didn’t another member of staff introduced the interview when you couldn’t do it?

This seems so bizarre? Do you mean the candidate purposely emailed your manager with a screenshot to try and get you into trouble? They seriously care that you were in your car and not at a desk?
If they do try and reprimand you speak to your union? Bring up gdpr? Permission to record on teams without other person knowing?

I think you tried extremely hard to accommodate the task which by all accounts was outside of your working time. I would explain what you have said here and not lie.

The candidate looks like a complete and utter dick for doing this - I really hope they don’t get the position (but wonder if they may due to the fact that the manager is bothering to follow it up).

If you go in with reflections then it looks remorseful and proactive - such as, you could have made a short video of the intro, or told the panel in advance that you were unavailable at that time or that you had planned to do this off site (the school).

I probably wouldn’t have turned my video on in this situation but apologised to the candidate that your meeting room was double booked or similar truthful but vague reason (not excuse).

id be the same in you meeting tomorrow…. You were remote working and had arranged a room but it was double booked and you had a scramble at last minute. You had the option of bailing last minute and disrupting the interviewee and panel and whole process, continuing in a noisy space with lots of background noise, or a quiet private space albeit a car. Ask what they would have wanted you to do differently next time.

@Moonnstars Their manager supposedly knows they do the school run on certain days, so not entirely sure why the OP didn't raise that when asked to do this interview.

there’s been a few comments like this and the lack of understanding baffles me.

its one thing having a formal (or most often informal) arrangement for ad hoc working but it’s another entirely to constantly be telling your manager or team that they need to work around your school runs. Most people with this arrangement just work around it themselves and don’t use it to bail on responsibilities when they’re being asked to do something. Especially something like this that’s often a career enhancer to OP being involved in a recruitment process.

I frequently have to decide to accept or decline meetings whilst I’m on the school runs (yes despite having my diary booked out). Sometimes people are working around senior managers calendars who are far more important than me and I then need to decide to not attend which hinders my career. Or attend and risk putting forward a ‘karmens such a slacker as she’s obviously out and not chained to her desk’. Personally I think it’s better to attend, hope I can contribute something smart and people think ‘karmens nailing it and women really can have it all’ rather than the latter. But really some of the attitudes on this thread saying you have to be at a desk to be professional are galling. (And sorry to single you out @Moonnstars there were many others as well)

No one is saying she should be at her desk. If her workplace don't have an issue with her doing the school run and it sounds like her childcare is usually sorted, I don't see why she would go to the fuss of asking another adult (the school headteacher) and not her own manager to try and sort it. This to me is a very bizarre way of handing it. I don't see why you would involve another person like this (and I am not entirely sure why the school would even have said yes to this).
A simple 'I am still ok to do the meeting intro later but unfortunately it clashes with the school run, I can work around this by doing the intro in the car' and sending this to someone in her own workplace would have been better. It also sounds like there was time to change the interview as the OP mentioned she had tried to find alternative childcare but couldn't, and then she obviously had the conversation with the headteacher, so this was all planned in advance. It seems sketchy to me.
Also it is usually polite to mention the arrangements to the person on the call, usually someone will say 'sorry for the background, hope you can hear me ok, between meetings at the moment'.

I do still think that for an interview situation it is all about first impressions.
I still think it is not the candidate stitching the person up, as why would they have time to send this in immediately when they should be working on the task, and instead someone from their workplace. Any interview I have done online has had someone monitoring the call. I don't really understand the context of the OP doing a 2 min intro and then the candidate having no one around if they had any questions or concerns during the task before the formal interview panel arrived. Maybe this is my misunderstanding of how some interviews work.

I don't think you have anything to be ashamed of. It sounds like you acted professionally. Unless the interviewee was expecting you to be in an office?

Good luck tomorrow, OP. I think you should just be honest, that you tried to make the best of a difficult suggestion but perhaps misjudged it, are sorry, realise it could have come across as unprofessional etc. emphasise that this has never happened before but perhaps talk about how it has made you realise a contingency plan could be useful and suggest there is a back up person in case of internet problems, emergencies etc.

I'd just say you couldn't be at home, the meeting room you intended to use fell through so you improvised and did it from your car. What a dick of a man tho.

No, don't lie. Tell the truth. You haven't done anything wrong and your solution was fine.

Apologise for not letting them know you had a clash, tell them you didn't think it would be an issue.

The candidate is a dickhead. If he got the job I would have very little to do with him at all, and hell would freeze over before I lifted a finger to assist him in any way. Wanker.

It ‘baffles’ me that business is sooooo important that it can’t work around what is a national issue - the school run. If this was normalised, women wouldn’t have to constantly out do themselves for the sake of normal life.

I run (own) a successful business, we make it work.

Totally agree. I also own and run a business but that doesn’t mean I think that children can somehow magically transport themselves too and from school? We would have lost some fantastic employees if we weren’t prepared to be flexible.

This wouldn’t be an issue for me to do and I certainly wouldn’t make it an issue if any of my team did this. I work in a global company where from time to time all of us need to take calls in off locations. One tip though…don’t use a blur background where it’s still easy for people to see where you are, use one of the ‘office’ backgrounds from the teams standard options. That way no one would be any the wiser.

That candidate has not done themselves any favours.

Your employers know about the school run (which is only once a fortnight on a Friday!)
You tried to have a private, office space
You had a private back up space
Your background was blurred
It was two minutes

I think you showed some quick thinking in a tricky moment!

I wish managers understood not every complaint needs entertaining. I'd have told the candidate that wasn't their concern.

If one of my team did this, I wouldn't be in the least bit bothered.

If a candidate did this, I'd very much assume they were both unable to cope in even the slightest change of circumstances, and unprofessional for reporting like that.

Both people would be in the same situation as before - the first working with me, and the second not.

@Dottiemay how did it go today?

Also would like to know how you got on.

@Dottiemay how did it go?

Thanks all. We had a team meeting yesterday and I was half expecting her to say "can you stay at the end" but she didn't. Maybe she'll raise it in my 121 this week but so far so good!

@Dottiemay Glad to hear today went well. If you are feeling brave, raise it in your 121 yourself. Take control and ask whether you need a conversation about Friday’s interview. At least it’s then out of the way rather than the worry hanging over you. You did absolutely nothing wrong and if you say, for example, “I have thought about this and maybe next time I would do X, Y, Z” then you demonstrate you have reflected on it and are open to a conversation.

Whatever you do, hold your head high!

Or she’s a mumsnetter and realised YANBU!

Sorry if I've missed it - did the troublesome candidate get hired?

If they did, I'd wonder how long until they nark on all their colleagues 😅