This recent college coed turned down a job offer after comparing the CEO’s hiring process to an “abusive ex.”
On Monday, Olivia Bland had a two-hour job interview for a communications assistant position with tech firm Web Applications UK in Manchester, United Kingdom. While she was offered the job, she ultimately turned it down because of the “humiliating” hiring process with the company’s CEO, Craig Dean.
And so she wrote a searing email back to the company, and shared it on Twitter.
“The two hours I spent in that room with Craig Dean yesterday felt like being sat in a room with my abusive ex,” wrote Bland, 22.
She also shared details of the interview, in which she claimed that Dean picked apart her musical tastes and said that he went through her Spotify playlist.
In another interaction, Bland said, Dean looked over her resume and said she’s “an underachiever.” He then asked her how she thought the job interview went.
“He said ‘I’ll tell you how it went’ and listed off everything bad he thought I did in the interview,” she said. “He told me everything I did was wrong, everything I said, the way I sat, my body language, everything that he could do to attack me.”
She also told Cosmopolitan.com that Dean brought two other women into the room to watch the interview.
“It was so uncomfortable,” she said. “It was so humiliating because they weren’t asking any questions, they were just there to watch me being embarrassed.”
Bland’s tweet has drawn outrage on social media, where users called for the company to apologize.
The tech firm released a statement on its website, saying they carried out an internal investigation and found “no bullying or intimidation occurred.”
Dean also tweeted an apology.
“I have no desire to see anyone hurt; and can only [apologize] if anything I’ve done has had that effect; it was not my intent,” Dean said.
Bland says she’s received a flood of messages from people who’ve gone through similar interview experiences.
“I’ve had so many women saying to me, ‘I wish I had the power or the strength to do this,’” Bland told Cosmo. “It’s important for people to say when something’s not right, because everyone has stayed quiet for too long.”
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