Job seekers call out CEO for manipulative interview tactics: Playing mind games

Here’s another reason why breakfast might be the most important meal of your day.A CEO’s “manipulative” job interview tactic has people divided — as he insisted, “Life is like that.”Walt Bettinger, who served as the CEO of Charles Schwab from 2008 until retiring at the end of last year, revealed the situation he would orchestrate to observe people’s behavior.In a resurfaced interview with the New York Times, he shared some of the tactics he used to determine a person’s character when considering job applicants.The big boss shared that when he asked an interviewee about their greatest success he paid close attention to their answer to determine if “their view of the world revolves around others or whether it revolves around them.” Then asking the opposite, the CEO would listen to hear if the person would blame others or own to their mistakes.

Sometimes the most orchestrated part of the interview would come before everyone had even finished their coffee.Bettinger shared that some days he would schedule breakfast meetings and order the servers to mess up his guest’s order for a good tip to test if the person would scramble or boil over when their eggs were served incorrectly.

“Life is like that, and business is like that.It’s just another way to get a look inside their heart rather than their head,” Bettinger explained.

“We’re all going to make mistakes.The question is how are we going to recover when we make them, and are we going to be respectful to others when they make them?” The leader added that questioning and testing job candidates in these ways helped him hire the best candidate because he’s “most concerned with the kind of person they are, their character.”Several years after the NY Times interview was published, it went viral in tweets resurfaced in the Daily Mail.

The X user argued that bosses could reach the same conclusion without messing with their interviewees but simply by watching how they interact with th...