This is all helpful and very good to keep front-of-mind while interviewing, but I imagine all but the most obtuse hiring managers are going to know how to not ask these kinds of questions. What I think would be an insightful follow-up to this article is how, as a hiring manager, to spot transphobic assessments after an interview panel/round has taken place.

When interviewing in the tech field, it’s common to go through several rounds of interviews: one interview with an HR representative to sniff-test the candidate and ensure compensation expectations are in-line, one interview with the hiring manager to see if they think you’re a good fit for a full interview loop, then the full interview loop itself (3-6 individual interviews with potential coworkers assessing various aspects of your talents). After that interview loop, the interviewers all meet to discuss how you did and share their assessments. The flaw here is that there’s no verification that any particular interviewer is providing a fair or accurate assessment; you just have their word. If an interviewer is made uncomfortable by my appearance, they can claim that I didn’t answer questions correctly, or that I didn’t speak with sufficient confidence and authority, or any other kind of misrepresentation or half-truth and no one would be the wiser.

Hiring managers should have tools in their toolbelt to spot indicators of this. The biggest red flag I’ve seen is if the interviewer refuses to use the candidate’s name or pronouns when sharing their assessments, like speaking in lists or incomplete sentences. Instead of saying “Susan didn’t seem like she was adequately prepared for this interview,” they might say “Wasn’t ready for the interview. We don’t need people like this.”

There’s more stuff like this: body language, not being able to produce notes on the interview, etc.

I wonder if Transvitae takes article submissions.