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?

Agree with everyone else this is not an issue.

For context, this week I had an interview with the director of the business. He conducted the entire teams interview from his phone in his car. It wasn’t ideal because I couldn’t hear him very well, but really it was fine. People are busy.

The candidate is an idiot, you did your best in tricky circumstances. I'd probably be honest with the boss about why you weren't in the office but I really don't see the conversation being much more than don't use your car for teams meetings in future.

I knew it would be a man.

Wouldn’t be an issue where I work. I would also expect your manager to check it’s ok timing wise for you, knowing you have school pick up to do. I guess in an ideal world you could have let you manager know the issues and if it was ok to do the meeting in the school/car. I certainly wouldn’t be employing the iobsworth who took the picture of you without your permission.

Just a thought- is it possible that your manager and the candidate already know each other?
Be careful in case they do, don't badmouth him just in case. I don't understand why the candidate would have felt entitled to complain.

This crossed my mind too.

Did he actually want the job? I worked somewhere where people turned up under the influence for interviews or were offered the job and never turned up to start. I can only presume they were applying to satisfy the benefits office.

Presuming he did want it, what an arse! Big red flag for a) being a drama llama b) being a snitch/back stabber c) being unable to adapt/deal with anything outside the norm.

I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, just explain as you have done. Worst case is you’re told to let them know next time and not join from your car. It’s a bit shitty if them ti leave you worrying about it over the weekend, but that also makes me think they’ll not see it as a big deal.

was the job an internal role? I can’t imagine an external person being so bothered to dob you in, but I can see people being an arse internally.

Insulting? Really? It would have been far worse if OP didn't turn up!

That candidate would not be hired in my workplace.

Candidate clearly displaying he is a poor team and culture fit with this debby dobber type behaviour. Just be honest with your boss and if they’re a good boss they’ll stand by you.

I have read the OP once, and this is my memory/summary of what happened.

The OP was asked to do a task which involved a repeated short period of work across a day on a day when she had to collect a child from school. Mindful of this, she organised a meeting room in which to conduct this short piece of work at the time which would otherwise have been problematic.

However, the arrangement for the private room fell through (no need to mention that this was in a school). Efforts were made to replace the venue but these did not work, so the OP conducted the two minute introduction from the privacy of her car, blurring the background, in order to maintain as much consistency as possible for the candidate.

It might be worth mentioning that the OP at no point consented to having her photo taken or shared, and she feels that this candidate has breached GDPR rules.

I may have misremembered slightly, but I have not knowingly told any lies in the above, and this summary of events is at worst a very minor infraction of any professional standards! (Although my view of this might be different if the manager had stressed the need for consistency of venue and introduction throughout the day, in which case the OP would presumably have mentioned the difficulty in doing the intro which clashed with pick up time.)

Really odd of candidate. I might have thought it too as the candidate to be honest - but raising it can do them no favours. As others have said just state what happened to your manager. Doing it inside the school really wasn't appropriate though - for the school I mean, not for you.

My top tip for future situations - I have to drive for work and sometimes get delayed and have to stop to take a meeting. Keep a white blanket in the car. Put it over the whole back seat head rests for instant green screen(stops the head rests breaking through the virtual image when you move). Sit in back, prop laptop steady on your knees and hotspot from your phone, make sure your Teams is always defaulted to one of the generic office backgrounds (with the blanket the white walls with a couple of plants work well) - do this both when home and away - so there is never any difference to those on a call with you. Don't use your phone for a call - you are portrait instead of landscape and it's glaringly obvious.

I must be missing something here, I really don’t understand the issue.

Be up front, you tried to do XYZ and this was the only option available to you - the alternative would have been the interview not going ahead at short notice. Absolutely ridiculous thing for anyone to be annoyed over, I hope your boss doesn't give you a hard time

I'd just tell the truth- and I'd be asking what the fuck difference did it make to the candidate? It is very normal these days for staff to juggle their commitments and work from different places; hell I've joined senior international meetings where someone is in a hotel lobby or on a train. I would be apologetic that you didn't highlight this in advance to your manager, though noting that the friday school run is a regular commitment of yours, and say you didn't because you didn't think it wpuld affect the candidate in any way - you were in a quiet environment where the candidate was able to hear you clearly and see you. That's all that was required.

Given the opportunity I'd also be suggesting to the manager that this person doesn't sound like someone to be hiring, given 1) they clearly have no empathy and 2) they're telling tales. But I would save that for if your manager clearly doesn't think it's a big deal, otherwise you could undermine yourself.

Actually, I disagree. I run many interviews in my workplace, and the attitude I have is that an interview is as much about the interviewee seeing if the candidate is the right fit for the workplace as it is the interviewee deciding if the workplace is the right fit for them. I've been to interviews before where I've decided, based upon what I've seen or how I was treated, that I didn't want the job. I always treat my interviewees with the same respect as I expect from them myself.

What a little snitch! I hope they don’t get the job

This would be fine with me but I would think what is wrong with that candidates attitude and not hire them, that’s for sure. The approach I’d take is ‘apologetic if anyone was upset, I know people at work know I collect my dc, I asked school about a room to use to make this work but it was occupied with a safeguarding meeting when I got there, the car worked fine but I’m happy to check more explicitly in the future when I need to flex a little like that. And add I’m not sure about that candidates attitude if that’s their take away from the interview, I hope every word they said was pure genius if they want to send criticisms before landing the job.

Yeah, I agree with PP... fuck this shit! You did your job, who cares if you were in the car!? I wouldn't go in full of apologies. If your boss is pissed, get them to explain why because you did your job to the best of your ability. If you've been working since 7am all week then I assume you've done your contracted hours. No one would give a shit if you were a man.

Given that you usually do school runs no I wouldn't.
I'd be honest that you'd arranged to do it in a room at school but it fell through and had no choice.
Also the candidate is a twat n I hope he doesn't get the job.

Well yes, this is the thing: if she's doing it outside her contracted hours as per agreement with her boss, it's in her own time and she shouldn't have been asked to do it at all (in which case I agree, dont apolpgise, but instead expect an apology!).

If, however, it was in her contracted, agreed hours, and she was expected at her desk at home/office, then of course it's a problem and she should apologise.

The OP doesn't seem to have clarified either way but hopefully will do so, as that makes all the difference...

The candidate is a total wet wipe. It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong. You have no fixed hours. You agreed to do a task but couldn't do it at home so you arranged a private room. That fell through so you used the available private space at that location - your car. I don't see any problem with that.

Until recently I managed a large team and would have had no issues with one of them doing this. A problem arose and they solved it with zero inconvenience to the candidate or the interviewing panel (which there would have been if, for example, they had delayed the start time by driving home).

I wouldn't be bothered if someone did a 2min intro to a test from a car (assuming OP had a good enough data signal to be heard clearly by the candidate). It wasn't the actual interview.

I think it says way more about the candidate and they would rule themselves out for me - how do they even know the culture and working practices of the company at that point.

Hi op, can you think of any obvious reasons why the candidate took the photo? Wondering if the candidate couldn't hear the instructions from you because of background noise? Or if you had to email them any documents with tasks on for the interview could there be an issue if the email didnt send correctly?