Its an interview panelist's turn this time

Yesterday, I had gone to office to conduct interviews for recruiting experienced folk. There were people from 2 other departments as well and the whole thing was being coordinated by some 4-5 HR folks.

At one point, my panel got the profile of a candidate whose experience was completely in the Performance Testing arena. Both of us panelists were not qualified enough to evaluate her on that skill set, but we decided to go ahead with the other generic aspects of testing. We found her to be not fit enough on that count.

But, we felt that since she had nearly 5 years of experience in Performance Testing, we should have her evaluated by someone from that field. So, I went to the war room where the HR folks were arranging things and told one of the executives about the situation. While I was talking to that HRE, my peripheral vision registered the presence of a guy.

I knew only a couple of the executives and looking at the crowd in the room, I couldn't segregate the HR executives from the Project Managers from so many departments. So, I didn't know who this entity was. But he turned out to be one brilliantico and the proof can be had from the conversation log, reproduced here to the best of my ability:

Me : [To HRE]: This girl has worked only on Performance Testing and both of us panelists cannot ask her questions.
HRE : [Grasping what I was telling her]
Specimen : Then ask her questions in Performance Testing
Me : [Shocked and gave him the best of my glares]
HRE : No, this is for (my department name)
Specimen : Oh. Then you ask her questions on tools no.
Me : [Talking with clenched teeth to HRE, completely ignoring the specimen] I cannot select/reject this candidate; I need a second round of interview to be conducted by someone with a Performance Testing background.

Thankfully, the Specimen didn't take any further part in my conversation with the HRE. My initial impression was that the Specimen was some support staff for the HRE, because his remark was so callous that I didn't expect a Project Manager to make such a statement.

I found out a little while later that he was also a panelist representing another department. God bless the souls who work for him and also those who had the misfortune of being interviewed by him.