Had a weird job interview experience a few days ago, for a pretty senior-ish PM position. This was the first round interview with the team after a basic recruiter round.
Hiring manager joins the call on his phone with camera off. Sure no problem.
He was presumably on AirPods with terrible sound quality, and his internet connection was terrible too. I could hear 2 out of 5 words.
I pointed it out immediately, thinking that he would change his internet connection or something. But it continued throughout the interview.
I kept telling him that I can't hear him to either repeat himself or point out that its his internet connection.
This ended up breaking the flow of the conversation.
He turned on video during the interview, I even told him to switch off his video to improve the quality. Barely improved even then.
Still told him that I can't hear him. He even changed his room to see if it helped. Didn’t. He should've been embarrassed by now?
He didn’t suggest an alternative — to move to a phone call or reschedule later, wondering whether I should have. I've never faced this before, so didn’t know what was appropriate.
Then towards the end, puts on his video again and I see that he is eating something. 💀
I don’t know if this is normal???
If he was so busy, he could've possibly rescheduled instead of wasting both our time. He chose the time.
I know it's an employer's market, but how bad is it?