Halfway through the interview call, the request arrived. It was not a technical question and it was not about the role. The interviewer wanted to know whether the candidate would be comfortable working under a different name than his real one — a name that would allow him to serve several US clients at the same time.
The candidate was, in effect, being asked to become two people on paper. He said he was not comfortable.
Then he did something he says he had never done before: he ended the call. Not finished it, not let it trail off into an awkward goodbye. Ended it. Some interviews test whether you can do the job. This one tested whether the candidate would agree to disappear from it — to be the name on the contract who is not the person in the room. His answer was a hang-up, delivered for the first time in his working life. It was also, by the sound of it, the only correct answer the process offered.