It’s absolutely not. Putting people in a vulnerable position and then pressing them for information you don’t need and should not ask for is a good way to demonstrate that you are an unethical or at best incompetent interviewer.
It might be a good way filter for candidates that have a high tolerance for being mistreated, though, if that’s the goal.
Also a great way for candidates to filter out employers who play bizarre mind games and think personal trick questions are appropriate in an interview.
Literally he’s saying to behave inappropriately in a professional interview and see if the candidate plays along. Might as well see if you can get the candidate to offer a bribe or sexual favors for the job since we’re going all in on entrapment.
The opposite. Are you breaking the rule to leave your private stuff home just because the other side is or are you capable of keeping out of such sources of interpersonal conflicts, take over and redirect the discussion back to a professional level?
Of course it depends for what field and role you apply. For any leading role or customer contact point the capability to stay professional is essential. If you flip burgers at McDonald's then it's your right to be grumpy.
You are literally saying it’s a good idea to attempt to entrap potential employees by intentionally behaving the way you want them to not. It’s like pouring margaritas for you and the interviewee and then after they take a sip you say you don’t hire people who drink on the job.
This is unethical and it’s also a shitty filter because they people you want to hire (the ones why won’t talk personal stuff at work; or won’t drink on the job) are likely to write you off because they also don’t want to work with the guy who wants to drink margaritas and chat personal trauma at work.
I am literally saying that the role the person applied to was for a "founding engineer at a mental health startup".
This is a leading role(!) in the mental health(!!) industry. That should give some clues. They also announced that the follow-up interview as a "non traditional - a ~90 minute culture fit chat" dropping more hints.
Unfortunately he also "fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics".
I bet the exact wording was open enough to leave enough room to not "felt completely emotionally drained" afterwards.
I think the interviewer did him a favor. He is just not able to handle a leading role in the mental health industry in a way that would have been mental healthy for him.
If an interviewer, who has the power to deny you a job unless your answers are satisfactory to them, is unprofessional enough to abuse that by pressing you for inappropriate personal details during the interview, then there actually is no correct answer.
You can't assume that person is going to act in good faith about anything else in that situation, so even refusing to take the bait is still ultimately a roulette wheel that can just as easily be labeled as "difficult" or "combative."
If it would be unprofessional to bring those things up freely, then it's actually more unprofessional to coerce people about them as a screening criteria -- whether that's coercing them into putting on a show of dancing around the issues, or coercing them into giving you honest answers.