Interview Horror Stories: How To Respond To A Raging Racist?

How should candidates respond when subjected to offensive behavior during the recruiting process?

onAugust 28, 2015 at 7:59 PMSeptember 2, 2015 at 3:29 PM

Welcome back to our series of posts on interview horror stories. Yesterday we shared with you a funny story about an interviewee who embarrassed herself in a humorous fashion.

What about the interviewers? One reader wrote to us:

I’m an attorney now at a Biglaw firm in New York, so I got what I wanted out of OCI, callbacks, and law school. That being said, how about concentrating on atrocious interviewers as opposed to atrocious interviewees?

My bad interviewer story happened during the callback lunch at a D.C. firm. I had grown up in the D.C. area, so it was familiar stomping ground for me. I had also grown up in a working-class neighborhood, the (pre-gentrification) Mt. Pleasant/Adams Morgan area, where a lot of Latino immigrants tend to settle.

I ended up having a lovely lunch with two associates, one of whom was a raging classist and racist. He talked badly about the people in that particular neighborhood, about how earning $160,000+ kept him away from neighborhoods like that, and how wonderful it was that his significant other earned a comparable salary. It was one of the worst lunches I’ve ever had, hearing this nitwit prattle on, and I had to try my hardest to smile throughout all of it.

Suffice it to say, I don’t think I hid my displeasure too well and didn’t get a summer offer from that firm. But I think they were doing me a favor, keeping me away from someone that tone-deaf and offensive.

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From Ethan Beberness

Well, some people like listening to the tone-deaf and offensive. They’re called Donald Trump supporters.

There is, in this mortifying story, a serious question: what should candidates do when confronted by offensive (or even illegal) questions, comments, or behavior during recruiting? Feel free to opine in the comments.

Most people just do what this person did: suck it up in silence. That’s what I would do. There are many fine firms that one can work for; no need to rock the boat or get yourself a reputation as a troublemaker.

But years ago, one student who received offensive questions during an interview lodged a public complaint, ignited “a campus furor,” and got her law school to force the firm to write her an apology.