Another testing session on Friday ended somewhat abruptly in what must go down as one of the most bizarre moments of my professional career.
It had not begun well, with the candidate being 20 minutes late after cancelling a previous session due to car trouble.
However, I was prepared to not make a big fuss about this being as he had travelled nearly 150 miles for the session, which was to include an interview straight after the tests.
After getting the candidate settled down, I explained to him how the session would proceed, with tests first followed by an interview (he had been made aware of this prior to the day as well).
At this point, the candidate decided he would like to ask a few questions about the job.
Given that he was applying for a highly technical role, I explained to him that it would be best if he could ask such questions during the interview, as I would have the expertise of the area manager to answer some of the specific queries.
This, I thought, was perfectly reasonable. The candidate, however, decided to get up and walk out of the room, declining my offer of a discussion about why he felt the need to withdraw himself.
After a few minutes of staring at the wall in the testing session, pondering what on earth had just happened, I left and went out to see the candidate who was sat in his car on the car park.
Once again, I politely enquired why he was taking this course of action, particularly given the distance he had travelled.
Somewhat aggressively, the candidate explained that he felt that if I would not answer his questions, he did not want to work for the company as he did not know enough about the job.
Keeping my cool, I did point out that he would have been welcome to phone me before hand to get more details, but that given the other demands on all of us involved in the session we really did need to stick to our plan for the day. I also reminded the candidate that there would be ample time to discuss queries in the interview.
My calm reply only served to increase his aggression and rudeness, which highlighted how utterly stupid he is. Why on earth would you not just bite your tongue and sit through 2 20 minute tests?!
Just as I could feel myself starting to lose my cool, security came over to ask him to leave as they had overheard the conversation.
I think we can consider ourselves lucky that he showed his true colours at a very early stage...
I'd say that was definitely a stroke of good luck. Otherwise, you might have hired the guy and then found out that he was irrational.