Had a final-stage interview today - this was a big deal for me because I’m trying to move into a different part of my industry/discipline and it hasn’t been easy to convince people to take a chance on me at this stage in my career.
When I got home, I told DH I was a bit disheartened because one of the interviewers seemed a bit cold and disinterested, and that I couldn’t gauge if it was how they felt about me as a candidate or just how they are, or were having a bad day, etc.
DH said, “well, I’ve had to interview all kinds of people who I’m not really interested in hiring in the first place, just because HR tells me I have to, so that’s probably why they didn’t care.”
I answered that this may well be the case, but that I’d like to think final round candidates (like me today) were no longer just there to placate HR.
He pushed back on this half-heartedly and went on to say, “well, you’ll probably find there’s a better candidate, or that they have someone internal lined up already - they just have to follow a process and also interview people like you.”
This made me feel a bit deflated - I don’t need empty praise or false hope, but I also don’t want to come home only to hear from my own husband I’m just the quota candidate and will never get hired anyway. However, I figured that he might just be managing my expectations, and I tried to change the subject.
So I commented that the technical part of the interview (more of a test) had seemed suspiciously easy, and that I wondered if I’d missed some trick questions, or if I was a bit rusty on that particular topic and had missed a few steps.
DH’s response? “Well I’m much better at maths than you.” Apart from this being totally irrelevant to the matter at hand - it’s not like we were competing for the same job - it’s also just not true! DH is faster at mental maths, yes, e.g. when it comes to adding up prices at the shop. But unlike him, I have two-maths based degrees and several years in a technical career behind me; he didn’t even do maths at A-level (no problem with that of course, just saying it’s ludicrous to claim he’s “better” at it than me). And, to be clear, it’s not a mental maths based job, it’s a calculus-based job!
Trying not to take the bait, I said, well, I’m pretty good if you give me a calculator, and he snapped back “well anyone can be a genius with ChatGPT.”
At this point I told him I felt he was being rude and unsupportive, and he immediately stormed out of the room.
Just need to vent first and foremost, but also wanted to get an outside view on the whole thing as I’m feeling really sad now - the whole thing was stressful enough (especially as I had some tricky practical stuff around the interview) but his reaction felt like a real kick in the teeth. Especially since it wasn’t one off-colour comment, he seemed very persistent in wanting to put me down.