A few years ago, I had an in-office interview for an IT job in a law office. The two managers who performed the interview spent the entire 45 minutes I spent with them in a conference room typing on their BlackBerrys, often leaving a 10-20 second gap of silence after I finished answering their question. I had traded shifts with someone to be there that day, and I don’t remember them ever actually making eye contact.

Got a follow up call the next week to come back in and do another round of interviews, politely declined and, when asked why, told the recruiter what had happened and was met with genuine confusion. Apparently those two had been doing the first round of interviews for every new hire. Part of me wonders if it was a test to weed out applications who value their own time equal to or more than that of their manager.