A job interview turned invasive when the HR rep asked about the candidate’s family background.
Corporate brand professionalism gets a bad wrap, and for good reason, the boxed, cheap store-bought communication and mannerisms are laughable in any context, and especially those outside of a corporate office where everything is draped in various shades of dull grey. Still, it stands to reason that professionalism has its place. It’s a base level meeting ground of how to think and act so that nothing you do or say could possibly be taken as offensive. The resulting blandness, the sterility devoid of any and all humanness, is seen more as a feature, a function rather than a negative.
Now, you can achieve inoffensiveness and be kind towards other people without corporate blandness. We used to call this respect and implied social contract. Some would argue that this lack of respect has gotten, and is getting, worse. That has been argued by every aging generation in at least the last 70 years. Maybe they’re all right. Maybe that’s not just something that the aged have always felt, and we really have been losing something with each generation slowly as Western society gently descends from its high in delicate silken slippers.
Certainly, the collective effects of social isolation, created by the internet and the lack of walkable communities with communal third places, have led to a modern world where we know nothing about and share nothing in common with our neighbors, and have no direct connection to the communities in which we live.
But, I digress, you should act respectfully toward others, especially when there is a massive power imbalance like in an interview setting. It’s important to act prudently. This interviewer shared no respect toward the candidate from the outset and it’s hard to imagine working for or with them.
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