Comment by anyfoo
17 hours ago
We weren't there, and the article is light on details, so we can only speculate. I see two options here:
a) The potential employer vastly overstepped commonly accepted boundaries.
b) It was totally implied that the questions were to be answered in the context of work. "What was the hardest challenge you had to overcome?" in that context relates to e.g. debugging a hard concurrency problem, not your divorce.
What stood out to me is that whatever interpretation is the correct one, the candidate was willing to give (apparently) deeply personal answers. That's just something to adjust for in upcoming interviews, we live and learn.
At any point the interviewer could have clarified if they meant "at work" when they received an inappropriate answer. The fact they did not do this means they did not mean "at work," which makes sense because the questions they ask neither specify that nor are worded to make one believe they are work-related.
What would be the point of conducting an entire hour+ long interview where the candidate is only giving you irrelevant answers and you make no attempt to get them on track?