The Aunt of all interviews

Well, in July, I had the Mother of all interviews. Had one today that is quite a close competitor to that one.

As usual, one totally cooked up resume came up for interview. Two of us were interviewing him - one in person and me on the phone.

Some 5 minutes into the interview, my co-panelist asked the guy what software he'd used for defect tracking. Normally people respond with one of the fancy tools available in the market or quite often the answer is that only MS Excel was used.

This guy belonged to the latter category. He said, "Sir I have used excel".

Then....

Me: Ok , can you tell us in detail about your defect tracker?
Him: Sir, its an excel file.
Me: Ok.
Him: It has more than 55000 rows.
Him (continues): There will be 255 columns.
Him (still): And when you open the file, there will be 3 worksheets by default!!!

So basically, this guy just told us what excel is. I think its quite safe to assume that after so many years in the industry, even a person with my limited intellectual prowess knows what an excel file is.

When this guy said this, I quicky hit the mute button and started laughing. People outside the meeting room would have wondered what happened to me, but I didnt care.

Thankfully, my co-panelist understood why there was no response from me and somehow wound up the intrvw after another 5 minutes.