The Job Interview Script
There is a script for job interviews, and everyone follows it, knowingly or not.
The interviewer plays the gatekeeper. The candidate plays the supplicant. The whole thing is a managed ritual of submission.
I once had an interview for a social work position. The interviewer fixated on one question:
"Why did you study a master's in Philosophy instead of Psychology, after your BA in Social Work?"
I gave the real answer.
"Because I like philosophy."
She frowned. No practical value. No commercial utility. She wanted something that fit her script, a justification that made me a predictable, profitable hire.
Then came the sarcastic follow-up: "Do you plan to have philosophical conversations with clients?"
"It depends."
A pause.
She wanted a longer defense.
I quietly thought to myself, because clients are not Lego sets, and said to her:
"Philosophy helps me or my clients understand their situation and change it when possible, or perhaps change how they see it."
That was the moment the interview ended, not officially, but in spirit. I had broken the script.
The refusal to justify studying philosophy as a "useful" career choice had already disqualified me. She was not looking for a candidate; she was looking for compliance.
I thought of Schiller's critique of the Brot-und-Butter-Gelehrte, the scholar who values only what brings immediate financial return. The narrowing of knowledge to what is profitable is not a new fashion.
To her, education was valid only if it increased market value. Anything beyond that was eccentric, maybe even threatening.
Thinking for yourself is dangerous. It disrupts certainty, forces confrontation with ambiguity, and threatens the comfortable order of things. That is why society does not reward independent thinking. It rewards compliance.
A job interview is not an exchange of ideas. It is a test of submission.
You are expected to fit into a structure already decided. The interviewer does not expect truth; they expect conformity and confirmation. You are not evaluated on thought, but on obedience.
The interviewer was not really asking about my education. She was asking:
Are you one of us?
Do you accept the world as we see it?
The moment I refused to answer on her terms, the interview was over.
Not because I was unqualified.
But because I refused to play the game.
In the end, job interviews are a microcosm of life's absurdities: a series of games where the rules are rigged.
Decide for yourself which games you want to play, and which ones you prefer to skip.