Setting:
Interviewing an internal candidate for a job opening.

Characters:
Her, just graduated form college, with our company for about 5 months.
Me, HR Rep, in the workforce for about 15 years.

Scene:
Me: Tell me about a major accomplishment and your role in it.
Her: In college, my advertising club worked on a project for a contest sponsored by Yahoo! We identified an underulitized market, 13-17 year old teens, and came up with a strategy to get them to use more of Yahoo’s services.
Me: Which services did you focus on?
Her: Well, Yahoo! has an instant messaging service, kind of like AOL AIM.

She paused here. I motioned for her to continue, to go on. “It’s a computer service…” I looked at her, about to tell her that I know what it is (how could anyone not???) and she floored me with this comment:

“Maybe your kids know what it is.”

What??? She thinks I have 13-17 year old children. She thinks I don’t know what instant message is? Such a career limiting move.