# Meridian Hiring Partners — Candidate Fit & Communication Standards (Internal)

**[SATIRE]** — by The Satire Desk · inspired by an accent rejection, a final-round family question, and an interview for a filled role

MERIDIAN HIRING PARTNERS — CANDIDATE FIT & COMMUNICATION STANDARDS
Internal. Sharing this with a candidate would constitute feedback, which we do not provide.

ACCENT STANDARD
For any role, deem it client-facing. A candidate is “clear” if their accent is American. An accent that is not American is “strong.” An accent that is neither American nor absent is recorded as “a barrier to communication” and closed at the screen. None of this is written down, because writing it down would be documentation.

FAMILY PLANS
In the final round, ask whether the candidate intends to have children in the next two years. Make it the last question. If they decline to answer, close your laptop audibly, stand, and leave the room without speaking. They will understand the interview is over. They will not understand why, which is the point.

PRESENCE
Interviewers may join in whatever they slept in, muted, walking through a shop. Candidates must be punctual to the minute. We recommend calling one minute early, then closing the file when they cannot answer — see our earlier guidance on punctuality as a character test.

OPEN ROLES
Roles are frequently filled before they are posted. Post them anyway. Interview five external candidates and reject all five. This satisfies the appearance of a process and keeps the calibration data fresh. The internal candidate has been doing the job for a year; the external candidates are the control group.

CLOSING
Notify no one. Where notice is unavoidable, send it as a form rejection, and never the name of the person who decided.

— Meridian Hiring Partners. We look for fit. Fit is whatever we cannot legally say.

*Source: [Inspired by recent recruiting stories (via r/recruitinghell / r/interviews / r/developersIndia) · fiction — Meridian Hiring Partners is invented](https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1wugz90/hr_rejected_me_because_i_dont_have_an_american/)*

> ⚠️ SATIRE — clearly labelled fiction. Do not cite as real events.

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