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Why didn't you just call him out on it? I'd have told him that what he was doing was rude, disrespectful, and unprofessional and I would not work for a company that would hire such failures.
Fuck HR.
Actually this guy was the president of the company, not hr, but this happened to me last week with a MD of an ER group too.
Doodling on your resume? Lol if so!
Happens all the time dude, you're really not that important - if someone gets an email while you're rattling on about P/E multiples, do you really think his reading is going to interfere with whether or not he can listen to you? What do you think guys do when they're on conference calls?
Also, I've never found it to be correlated with receiving an offer or not.
I agree with drexelalum. I had one interviewer seem completely uninterested and ask me how long I had been in there five minutes into the interview. I still got the next round to my surprise.
Got offers before from guys who were on their blackberries while I was answering questions. Apparently at least one of those guys was vouching for me big time even though I didn't think he listened to a word I said.
I agree with Ocho, same thing happened to me, and the same guy was the one who made the offer to me the following week.
Who knows what they were doing during my phone interview. I think my guy was on a plane doing sudoku.
It's about handling uncomfortable people/situations. I had an interview one time 4:1 panel style. They all had these blank uninterested faces. I even tried to crack a little joke and they were like robots. Apparently they liked me and I made it all the way to the final round.
I went through this. One interviewer was playing with his pen, doodling on my resume, and not really paying attention.
Funny because I actually work at that firm now. I ran into said interviewer just a few days ago.
If the interviewer isn't looking all that interested or bored, I would have just changed the subject. Obviously whatever you're talking about is going in one ear and out the other. Interject with a question about their career path and why they are doing what they are doing. What their career ambitions are, etc. etc. Find something you can relate to and run with it.
One thing I've learned is that people love to talk about themselves.
How to deal with lack of interest from interviewer? (Originally Posted: 10/15/2017)
How do people approach interviews where the interviewer seems totally disinterested and asks maybe 2-3 questions before expecting you to lead the discussion?
Is this always a bad sign? Had an interview last week where the MD seemed to like the sound of her own voice and started the interview all over the place. She was vaguely talking about aspects of working at the firm but not really asking questions..After a few questions, I carried the interview by asking about 6 questions which, to be fair, she took her time to answer well.. This was the second round, so I'm not sure if she felt that I had already been tested on the technicals and may have just not had time to prepare for the interview.
probably has nothing to do with you, she might have been swamped and then had to do an interview with someone she doesn't know/doesn't care about
all you can do is answer to the best of your ability, try to steer the convo (which you did, so good), and do well enough to move onto the next round
I wouldn't worry about it- interviewers are also people at the firm, who carry the same workload and stress as everyone else
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