After over ten years of working full-time, I can say that I’ve seen quite a number of interesting interviews, both from an interviewer as well as interviewee standpoint. I’ve been in interviews where the interviewee has been extremely arrogant or insecure. I’ve seen candidates do hand stands and discuss why they preferred crunchy versus smooth peanut butter. I’ve been interviewed by stone-faced people and those who want to make it seem like the interview is more of a casual chat rather than a situation during which they’re being evaluated. I’ve also felt like at one time, I was being hit on during an interview. But what I’ve never seen is a candidate who felt so comfortable chatting with me that she would ask me what office gossip I have to share or ask if the room we were in was bugged because she’d previously been in rooms that were bugged, and words she shared privately were being exposed. This actually happened this afternoon as we were interviewing a potential candidate for an open role on our team.

I realize that in 2018, especially in a city like New York, we’re really in an employees’ market when it comes to hiring and retaining talent. Now is actually a really good time to be looking for a new job. But if you are feeling so comfortable during an interview that you would actually ask about office gossip, regardless of whether you are joking or not, which introduces questions about the toxic culture you could potentially bring into an organization, don’t you kind of think you’re crossing a line?