That Word Salad dump sounds like something politicians will sometimes do in a media interview. In that case, I guess they want to project an image of having a response, and also hit voter emotional notes and party talking points.
In job interviews, I guess part of the problem could be that we've institutionalized "interview prep" rituals now, and people train for the rituals, including things like the "correct" answers to behavioral questions, and even the right keywords to hit.
So, people not being confident of the answer they're trying to get correct might kinda spam the Word Salad of keywords, either as panicked flailing when they think they should be talking, or because it's a conscious last-resort tactic (like the standardized test prep classes that teach you what to do when you don't know the answer but want to maximize your score anyway).
One time I remember going kinda Word Salad myself, was in a non-interview meeting, when I was escalating a serious issue through official channels, a long time ago. The official in the meeting was (unbeknownst to me, when I was going to a ton of work to get this meeting) secretly misaligned with their ostensible role, visibly very hostile to me from the start, and misunderstanding something. There was insufficient bandwidth to keep up with correcting them, and I realized that the situation had just taken a very bad turn... so I started desperately using rapid vague hand-waving generality high-level summaries. Maybe this Word Salad-ish instance has some overlap with some job interview Word Salads -- it's not necessarily always that the interviewee doesn't know the answer, but maybe the interviewer isn't getting something, or is asking a poor question, or seems negative towards the interviewee?
In job interviews, I guess part of the problem could be that we've institutionalized "interview prep" rituals now, and people train for the rituals, including things like the "correct" answers to behavioral questions, and even the right keywords to hit.
So, people not being confident of the answer they're trying to get correct might kinda spam the Word Salad of keywords, either as panicked flailing when they think they should be talking, or because it's a conscious last-resort tactic (like the standardized test prep classes that teach you what to do when you don't know the answer but want to maximize your score anyway).
One time I remember going kinda Word Salad myself, was in a non-interview meeting, when I was escalating a serious issue through official channels, a long time ago. The official in the meeting was (unbeknownst to me, when I was going to a ton of work to get this meeting) secretly misaligned with their ostensible role, visibly very hostile to me from the start, and misunderstanding something. There was insufficient bandwidth to keep up with correcting them, and I realized that the situation had just taken a very bad turn... so I started desperately using rapid vague hand-waving generality high-level summaries. Maybe this Word Salad-ish instance has some overlap with some job interview Word Salads -- it's not necessarily always that the interviewee doesn't know the answer, but maybe the interviewer isn't getting something, or is asking a poor question, or seems negative towards the interviewee?