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DrBazza • yesterday at 4:18 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

Anec-data - as an interviewer, last year, I had my first sketchy, perhaps 'North Korean', candidate.

The name on the CV, was, for the sake of privacy, Michael Smith, from Australia, and ticked the right boxes.

We'd expect a fluent, Aussie-accented English speaker. Instead, we had a candidate with a webcam that wouldn't work (weird!!), with clearly accented English of a East-Asian background. I suppose there's a vanishing chance they really were Mike Smith of Adelaide or wherever, but we couldn't take that chance. We tried rescheduling, but tumbleweeds...


Replies

pants2 • yesterday at 5:30 PM

Haha I had the exact same interview experience, the candidate was named Connor Wood, from Austin, TX. I actually told them we couldn't continue the interview unless they turned on their webcam. Cut to a meek east asian man in a dimly lit room. Are you sure you're the Connor Wood that played on the UT Austin Lacrosse team?? LOL I don't know how they expected that ruse to work.

jedbrooke • yesterday at 5:49 PM

I’m sure there were other signs of sketchiness, but in case you weren’t aware there actually IS a sizable Chinese population in Australia (esp Melbourne)

graemep • yesterday at 11:48 PM

So you expect people's names to match your expectations based on their experience and reject those who do not fit the stereotypes? Likely to be discriminatory. Lots of people (including myself) have European names and are not white, do we just get ruled out?

debo_ • yesterday at 5:05 PM

I'm waiting for companies to start running remote screens like "OK, in this exercise, we need you to write a program that efficiently generates insults about Kim Jong Un."