'I'm proud of what I accomplished': Mathematician ends interview after recruiter spends 15 minutes questioning master's degree
A post on Reddit’s r/recruitinghell talked about a remote job interview for a mathematics role that the original poster was apparently fully qualified for, greeted by a department head sitting on his couch in a white T-shirt while they had dressed professionally for the occasion. Then the interviewer pulled up the resume, apparently for the first time, and immediately fixated on the graduate school.
“I’ve never heard of that,” the interviewer said, in what the original poster described as a demeaning manner.
What followed was fifteen minutes of the interviewer questioning the legitimacy of a master’s degree from a 125-year-old public university in Colorado, demanding a list of every class taken seven years ago, expressing confusion that the programme took only 1.5 years, and suggesting the degree might be “illegitimate” because everyone in his department had two-year programmes.
The original poster explained the shorter duration: it was during COVID, and they graduated early with a 4.0 GPA, a completed master’s thesis, and a full presentation.
It was still not enough.
The interviewer then launched an impromptu knowledge quiz. The original poster answered the first question correctly. The second question made no sense, and when they said so and asked for the answer, the interviewer didn’t know it either. When he started on a third question, the original poster stopped him.
They told him it was a waste of time to spend the entire interview on a degree from seven years ago while ignoring six years of full-time professional success as a mathematician. They said they found his comments insulting. They said they were proud of their education and their accomplishments. Then they ended the interview.
“The sad part is that I am 100% qualified and was willing to join and help his team,” they wrote. “Instead of asking me about what I have accomplished as a professional, he spent 15 minutes insulting me and I stood up for myself.”
Reddit’s verdict
The thread was unambiguous in its support and offered some sharp observations alongside the solidarity.
“Sounds like you won the ‘dips*** for an interviewer’ lottery,” one commenter wrote.
Another went further, suggesting the outcome may have been predetermined regardless: “He would have found some other excuse not to hire you. They don’t care about your meeting or exceeding every qualification anymore, and it has gotten to the point where there’s really no coherency nor consistency to what they do care about now. You see how they nowadays interview people without having even seen their resume, zero logic to the process anymore.”
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One commenter talked about the possibility that the interviewer may have felt threatened: “Sounds like you were gonna outshine the master, which I think breaks rule 1 of the 48 Laws of Power. My friend took a job with that situation and the team was floored when they let him go after 3 weeks for no reason.”
And one commenter offered a summary of why the original poster made the right call: “You made the right call. This isn’t someone you want to spend your time working with every day.”
The degree is not the issue. The interviewer is the issue. And an organisation where this person runs the department is telling you, before you even start, exactly what it would be like to work there.
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