Think their issue might be with you? ;)

Your lip service about finding diamonds in the rough and catering to candidates who are nervous or can't think on their feet leads to just one comment: "Put up or shut up."

The OP has given us a very good, concrete example of his interview process, the traits it reveals in candidates, and how he tailors it to meet individual candidate reactions. Until you do the same your comment here is nothing but five paragraphs of whining about how some people don't interview well.

To which I reply, "Duh."

We all know the 45-60 minute interview is imperfect, and that both interviewer and candidate are just trying to make the best of a very contrived interaction to begin with. So, please, lose the attitude and give us something we can learn from rather than bashing the OP with vague generalities.

I understand, I've felt bitter about interviews before, I'm sure some interviews were unfair. But I also recognize this bitterness is a weakness of mine, unproductive, unattractive.

The way the author indulges in this resentment would make me very cautious about recommending him regardless of technical capability. An employee who has low tolerance for the massive randomness/unfairness in the world probably would get sick of most companies pretty quickly.

I'm not talking about the difference between just wanting a job and over-acting like it's the only thing in the world. I'm not talking about fawning over the interviewer or pretending like there are no other jobs. I'm talking about people who come into an interview with an overtly negative attitude and say things that make it explicitly clear they could care less about the job and make it explicitly clear that they expect less experienced people to adapt to their ways and not the other way around. This is not the norm of my experience, I am referring to the worst interviews I've ever had, and summarizing the reason in what I thought was diplomatic language.

I suspect you're getting confused by my trying to use mild language and be somewhat nice and forgiving about the kind of interviews I've had. When I say I've interviewed people who don't appear to want the job very badly, I am exaggerating in the positive direction. These (few) people were outright antagonistic to the idea of being adaptable and getting along with others.

There's no way you could know these things based on what I wrote. But there's also no reason you need to assume the worst either.

1. You are responding to these kinds of interviews as though the interviewers are malicious, self-aware of their biases and intentionally trying to personally offend you. But it's not personal and not all interviewers are trying to conspire like this. Consider that what you're feeling and perceiving may not be intended by the interviewers.

2. As a corollary, your relationship and responses to these interviewers are retributional and deconstructive instead of educational and constructive. You're writing off companies because their interviewers offend your sensibilities. But just as interviewers don't have enough information to know why you're reacting the way you are, you don't know if they're trying to be as demeaning as you feel they're being.

In other words, not all companies with suboptimal interviewing methods are shitty companies. Probably most are not! Given that, the way you're reacting isn't just a sensitivity to personal offense, it's getting in your own way professionally.

But there's more than a hint of narcissism in the writing. Which is incredibly toxic to work with, because every interaction becomes less about solving problems and more about aggressive assertions of dominance and superiority.

On the upside, if he's as smart as he wants to be, he'll be able to solve his problem.

I've interviewed dozens of people over the years and the easiest way to be disqualified is to come across as being difficult to work with.

I understand your position, and your frustration, but I'm sure you could have found a more pleasant way to phrase what you said above.

They gave you plenty of criteria; they gave you a book, and the understanding that they wanted you to be able to talk intelligently about the material that the book covers. If you're so incapable of self-introspection that you can't accurately judge how well you understand material without external validation, then you should probably work on developing some self-awareness before getting upset that a company doesn't respond to arbitrary requests for meaningless information.

As an interviewer, I get frustrated if the candidate wastes time writing excessively prolix text while missing the meat of the question. This is by no means an excuse for hostile conduct, and the additional context here makes it clear the interviewer is kind of a jerk in addition to being narrow-minded.

You are being thoroughly rude and arrogant and oblivious I suggest, and I'm going to stop responding to your posts because I am just getting angry. I suspect that I am not the only one here to feel that way.

Stop waving your willy at me and others, and go back and read what you have written, carefully, as if it had been written TO you not BY you. If you did not intend to be a troll then I suggest you should revisit how you communicate.