This was a technical interview for a programming position. It was not a senior position but the candidate comes in and immediately boasts about his deep knowledge of multiple languages and how he expects to be put into a senior/leadership position and has ambitions of being an architect soon.

Fine. Maybe he's not a good fit for the position he came in for, which was a jr position, but we could use him somewhere else. He's coming off a cocky in my opinion, but we give him a chance.

We begin the technical interview with some basic questions. Beginner questions, "do you know how to write a "hello world" in the language?" kind of questions. We always start with easy questions and then work up to harder and harder ones to see how much they know. Plus candidates tend to loosen up and relax if they get a couple of questions right in the beginning.

Except this candidate is getting every basic question wrong - after boasting about how skilled he was and how he wouldn't accept anything less than a sr position. He got every single beginner level question wrong. Not even slightly wrong, but very very wrong. Not even close. I'm getting second hand embarrassment for him. I don't know how he got past our phone interview, he really should have never been called in - and maybe that's on us for not screening him better.

He starts getting angry as he continues getting questions wrong, getting frustrated, criticizes the way we ask the questions and tries to argue his incorrect answer despite most of the questions being pretty cut and dry, and us never having a junior candidate much less a senior ever struggle with most of these questions. Eventually he's pissed. I cut the interview short early and thank him for his time, he doesn't bother to shake our hands as he heads for the door. So uncomfortable.

Of course we didn't hire him. Even if he was an excellent programmer, nobody wants to work with a person like that. The thing is, we've had some junior candidates come in and miss some of the easy questions before but they won us over with their attitude and personality and we hired them anyway.

We should have been able to filter someone like this out before they got to the in person interview stage as well. It was a complete waste of everyone's time, including the candidates.

So lesson learned? If you're trying to hire, please do a thorough phone screen beforehand with at least a few technical questions. And if you're looking for a job, don't overestimate your abilities and feel entitled to positions you're not qualified for.