Interview Disaster

Update 11/18/2020 - my windows got re-installed...

11/03/2020

It would never happen to me.

How could it be? I have been preparing for this. I have been waiting for this.

Then, it happened to me.

On this unforgettable Monday, Murphy's laws - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong - came true and true. I have gone through two phone interviews with a company. At 1 PM, there was a video interview scheduled for 2 hours, with 3 people. I knew it’s the last stage. I am this close.

I tried to soak up as much React, a web front end language as much as possible for this day. Disaster struck #1: The day before, I got a phone call from my sister that my dad was in a motorcycle accident. All of his left side is scratched up. I spent two hours in the morning with my dad, my mom, and my sister to better assess the situation before the interview. I am upset that I wasn’t there to help and that he didn’t call anyone for help at the scene.

Disaster struck #2: It’s almost 1 PM. I made sure kids are fed, and everyone knew that I had an interview. I opened Microsoft Teams ahead of time. I am the kind of person who is always early for the meeting. Wait… the video conferencing window was not popping up…

I called the computer expert in the house (he is a technology expert by any standard), my husband to come and help. He opened the task bar and killed the pending processes. There was nothing obviously wrong. We restarted the computer.

The time got too close to comfort and I started Microsoft Teams on my laptop. It worked. What a relief!

The interview with the first person went reasonably well, I think. I tried to be pleasant and hide my nervousness. The second person came in 30 minutes later, it also started reasonably I felt. His video was blocky and I thought, well..., we both had our shares of technology issues with video conferencing. Then things went south, really south.

The person asked me to walk through the codes for one of my projects, which was a reasonable request. The only problem that I soon realized was - the codes were on my desktop! Later on when I reflected on this, I might be better off showing the codes on GitHub. Don’t ask me why I didn't think of it at that moment. Instead, I told him the problem of starting Teams on my desktop and kindly asked to be disconnected from the meeting, so I could try and reconnect on the desktop.

My desktop has restarted by this time, however Teams was not cooperating! What an oxymoron. I was asked to reset my password, which sent the validation code to my phone. I ran to the kitchen to get my phone and was desperately praying that Teams would start. After what felt like an eternity, when I was about to connect Teams with my laptop again to call off the meeting, Teams started on my desktop! Hip hip hooray!!

Well, only hip hip hooray for a moment, then I saw the interviewer’s video is no longer on. He must be pissed off. I don’t blame him.

When I tried to walk through the codes in my projects, my mind was somewhere else. Calm and carry on, right? No. The phone I brought in the office started dinging like crazy. At the moment of panic, yes, panic, I picked up the phone and dropped it on the floor. Then, when I picked up the phone, I tried to hide it under my stack of books. Yes, hiding a dining phone under a stack of books! When it didn’t work, I told myself, any moment now, it would stop dinging. But it did not stop!

The second interview was finally over. It was bad. No amount of apology would make it better. I did try to look up the interviewer’s email to apologize again, but couldn’t find it.

You might be curious why the phone dings like crazy at that moment? Well, in September, I became a sub for Saturday Chinese School and the teacher’s group uses LINE. Previously, I only used LINE to call my family. Imagine a group chat with 28 members… After the dreadful incident, I looked up to mute chat on LINE!

What’s wrong with my computer? Well, we don’t know.... Somehow the window is acting funny. Some simple tasks take forever to run, like opening file explorer. My personal computer assistant (actually I inherited his computer when he wanted an upgrade) believed it’s time to get a new computer. I am a bit resistant to that idea since it’s a lot of work. Do I have a choice?

Believe it, whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.