awful interview, WIBU to have ended it early?

[cigarsmokingwoman]

I had an interview this week for a fixed‑term maternity cover role in a field I’ve worked in for years. On paper, it looked perfect — but it turned into a complete nightmare.
The current postholder is full‑time, but they want to replace her with someone part time, on a short contract, no team, and still covering the same massive list of responsibilities. Straight away, it felt like they were expecting one person to do the work of several. Its not a senior role, but sounded it as they kept refering to "supporting our staff of over 2000".
Beforehand, I’d asked for some reasonable adjustments, as I have several disabilities, which they agreed to — but when the interview started, they hadn’t done them. I had to ask twice, which was awkward and made me feel like I was being a nuisance. They did send the questions in advance, again as an adjustment, but then on the day they started asking completely different ones, putting me on the spot and making it much harder to answer properly.
One of the panel was so patronising. They asked me to explain really basic concepts that I’d expect anyone in the field to already know. When I started talking about some of my biggest achievements, they cut across me and actually said they didn’t want to hear about the awards I'd won! The question was literally about qualifications, experience and achievements related to the role.
The whole thing felt off. The tone was wrong, the expectations were ridiculous, and there was no sign of respect for my experience or the effort I’d put into preparing. Eventually, I just said I was ending the interview because it was a waste of both our time. I left the Teams call feeling small, upset, and wondering why I’d ever applied.
I’ve done and sat on many interview panels, but I’ve never had such a bad experience.I've never exited an interview before either and I'm still shaken by it. AIBU to think that whatever the role is, the least you should expect is a bit of professionalism and basic respect?

This. I feel only a very inexperienced person (or someone like HR doing a tick box exercise), uses and sticks to a specific list of questions. Depending on the role, I'd also be concerned with someone asking as that would suggest someone quite rigid and probably not right for the job if they are that insecure. In saying that, the interview in general sounds terrible and agree with PP you dodged a bullet

It’s nothing to do with whether or not it’s a technical role or not, but you can’t assess candidates fairly against one another if you’re not asking them all the same base questions. Of course their answers might invite further, different questions, but fundamentally you need to be able to score them on a fair system otherwise how do you decide? If you’re hiring based on gut feel and vibes you are not hiring fairly.

OP you did the right thing and not unreasonable at all. Some of the hiring practices hinted at on here are strange. If you want to test someone’s ability to present, ask them to give a presentation. If you want to know if they can retain recently learned facts then test that. It’s a weird approach to treat the whole interview like a memory test. You need to understand what skills someone has and if they’re at the level required, nothing about adapting your process to accommodate neurodiversity hinders that.

I just want to offer a slightly different view. I’ve always worked from scoring questions and often these will have almost a “tick list” of things someone needs to cover (public sector).

If I can tell a candidate is good - but maybe hasn’t hit the point I’d probe them on that particular thing (maybe a bit like the basic concept you mentioned).

so it may not be that they’re trying to be patronising or “trip you up” but trying to ensure you cover what’s needed for the scoring system.

you have no idea of the reality of a job, have you?
There's an actual life outside of MN you know 😂

that's what people who are obsessed with "fair system" without any understanding of the real world don't comprehend.

Thank you for putting this out there.

If only you knew what I do.

Well done for exiting the interview early OP, you said no to them , not the other way around. Send them some feedback too! I Feel sorry for who they do hire, at least your feedback will be on record and might help the future hire

feel free to let us know

I am pretty sure you're not a member of my staff so that's something😂

You aren’t allowed to be ‘organic with the questions’ - you are supposed to prepare and ask each candidate the same thing! (Bar follow ups obviously). What the hell is going on in some industries??

I think that’s understood, but isn’t what happened in OP’s interview.

I don’t think it’s clear either way really Op didn’t really expand

Bur either way my intention was to try and reassure the Op

I wouldn't consider giving questions in advance a reasonable adjustment (outside of the most basic things like 'Tell me about yourself/your last job/your qualifications') depending on the role.

If hearing/processing the questions was an issue for the candidate, I'd have suggested alternative workaround.

One of the main things I'm looking for in an interview is how someone reacts to a question in the moment. I'm not necessarily asking questions that have a correct answer, I'm looking to see how someone thinks on their feet. If I think someone is giving me a rehearsed answer or blagging, I'm absolutely going to ask them a bunch of follow ups to be sure.

That simply wouldn't work if they had the questions in advance.

I would suggest - with kindness - that if someone is not capable of interviewing without knowing all the questions they're going to be asked in advance, many roles will not be suitable for them.

This is outdated in general and discriminatory towards those with relevant requirements.

Why people are so wedded to recruiting people who are able to blag quickly I don't know.

Some companies now give the questions in advance as standard to avoid just recruiting people who are good at interviews and crap at the job.

Dyslexia? Why?

I'm sorry people have taken this perspective. I was going to say to remember that an interview is both ways and you were totally right to end it when you did. Don't feel bad - they should feel bad.

I have no clue but I wouldn't be surprised if they were breaking the law.

Being “organic” with the questions is not best practice. I think you should consider some training before conducting more interviews.

I would be very reluctant to send the questions in advance as well. If there is a task/presentation then fine, but not the interview itself.
The main reason is you don't want the responses to be rehearsed, or written down by someone else. It defeats the purpose of the face-to-face interview itself.

There are other adjustments I can think of that would be more acceptable from an employer perspective. I would be happy to allow for more time to prepare the answers on the day, any tool that can support (e.g. I have had candidates bringing their notes), splitting the interview in two parts if it's too long, changing the wording of the questions or even the style (competency based can be a mouthful to read).

If it had interview questions in advance id be checking my responses with industry pals. This means the answers aren't really, fully mine.

What's to stop OP doing the same?

I say this as someone fully aware of the equality act, with an ND condition myself, working in HR

Going against the grain.

I think they dodged a bullet. You come across as though you have a chip on your shoulder OP. They did what you asked and provided questions in advance. Does that mean they can’t deviate from ‘the script’ 🙄 you’ve not given any details about the job, so it’s difficult to make an informed judgement.

for all we know you could be applying for a receptionist role (at a law firm like you mentioned) but expecting an adjustment of only responding to emails so you have time to process…… clearly it’s not a reasonable request!

Surely in the job itself you won’t know what everyone is going to ask you in advance. How can the interviewer assess your ability to respond to the unexpected questions or issues that crop up in real life, if they can’t ask a question in response to something you’ve told them in your conversation?

I agree that as they failed to honour the agreed reasonable adjustment there’s a possible small claim for disability discrimination. It wouldn’t be huge compensation but there could be something for injury to feelings and a possible loss or earnings claim - this is based on the likely salary discounted to reflect what the percentage chance of getting the job would have been if reasonable adjustments had been made.

This seems ridiculous to me. Life is “organic” fgs.

Good lord 🙄