To be fair, with the job I finally got (which is pretty great, thanks for asking), the interview wasn’t much like this, which might be why I finally got myself a position.

In any case, the following still stands:

Interviews are total bullshit. Having had seven before I landed myself a job (if I look so good on paper, and in the knowledge of my high levels of capability, what exactly changes when I turn up and have an actual conversation with real people?), I feel like I can attest to this from recent experience.

If you’ve actually managed to claw yourself to an interview in this brutal economic context, congratulations. It’s worth noting that your success thus far probably has something to do with privilege. Your success from here *definitely* has to do with privilege.

Your success in an interview relies on your ability to take up space in a confident way and to frame your experiences in ways which commodify them and you so as to make your labour more marketable than everyone else’s.

To put it bluntly, in general, interview processes privilege straight, white middle class cis men.

You can *learn* how to perform in an interview, but the privileged have access to this training throughout their whole lives.

Moreover, interviews test how good you are at answering questions under pressure. Which would be a great gauge of whether you’ll be good at a job if your job is answering questions under pressure. If your job will not primarily involve answering questions under pressure, in the best light it’s not a great measure, and in a less generous light it’s another of the multitude of ways of funnelling the privilieged into spaces they already believe they should occupy.

Fuck interviews.