[Closed] Really bad interviews? Cheer me up!

I had one bloke sit across from me (not sure if he had his feet up, but he was [i]that[/i] laid back) - spent the whole first half hour telling me how great he was.. oh yeah - it started badly - drove there for about an hour and a half in bright sunshine. As soon as I pulled up into the car park it absolutely pissed down for about 15 mins. Luckily I was nice and early, so sat out the rain, then went for a stroll. Round a corner comes a taxi and [i]sploosh![/i] straight through a massive puddle soaking me from head to toe. Dig through the car finding bits of tissue to dry my jacket and tie off. When the fella arrives in reception I make a humourous remark as to why I look such a state. Not a blink of recognition. "This way" says mr big-shot.
He basically spent the rest of the interview destroying any confidence I ever had and it took months to get over it! Tosser!!

In your situation i'd have closed the meeting quickly OP. I had a bizarre interview where it seemed the bloke just wanted to meet with me to see what industry gossip I had. After 20mins I said 'well nice to meet you I have to be on my way now whilst standing up'.

I think it was the opening line that he needed authorisation to hire but wanted to meet with me anyway that set the tone.

Or Michael Page 'I can get a Grad with 6months experience why should I hire you'? I don't think he was happy with the "well thats why big agency staff are all one dimensional, script reading estate agent lookers"? 😀

What's my worst?

I had arrived early for my interview, and so went to a local cafe for coffee and toast. I put strawberry jam on my toast which I don't normally do.

I then went in to meet the people interviewing me, and noticed when I sat down in the chair that I had dropped jam on myself. RIGHT ON THE FLY of my suit.

I went to the toilet to clean it off, and spent the rest of the interview trying to sit in such a way as to not let people see: a) the big wet spot on the front of my trousers, then b) the sugary stain left behind once the water had dried.

I didn't get the job.

I'm being interviewed by two people, one of whom hasn't had chance to read my CV

TBH that shouldn't really matter. You've got the interview, the CV's done its job at that point.

The bit that was most irritating was he fixated on one part of the role where I lack experience, and kept interjecting with "but you're experience is mostly on the technical side, yes". At no point did the questioning go down a route of "how would you do this job" or even "why this job", it was all looking backwards.

I got the impression he'd rather employ someone who in all likelihood has a degree but in something unrelated and that they'd not applied to their work (English, Geography, whatever and now working as an estate agent) rather than someone qualified to do something technical.

Ohh and the office puppy kept chewing my hand/shoelaces/trouserleg.

I actually really wanted this one too!

Walked into the interview room, three oldish guys ready to interview me. Shook hands with them one after the other. The last guy gave me what turned out to be a "Masons Handshake" which was a) super creepy and b) probably sealed my fate that I didn't return it 🙂

At the end of the successful third interview for an interesting role for an organisation I'd like to work for, I was told;

"We're having some budget challenges at the moment so we don't have budget for this role anymore...we'll continue to push internally, but we might need to go for someone with less experience"

Cheer me up!

The weather and temperatures are set to improve dramatically over the nest few days. 8)

'You're an excellent candidate, and we'd love for you to work in our London office, unfortunatley we only already had an internal applicant for the London role lined up, how would you feel about working in Shanghai?'

Bollocks, and I really wanted that job (in that location!)

5am start. 😐
3 hour drive. 😕
1 double espresso to perk me up. 😯
The feedback said that I came across as nervous. 🙄
I've not seen or heard anything about the company, so I don't think it was all bad. 😀

Years ago I pulled a sickie to attend an interview with a firm around the corner. Turns out my interview was in their 'overspill' meeting facilities directly opposite my office. My existing boss and I made eye contact across the road the very second I sat down for the interview and I knew I had to get the job. I did. Phew.

Used to drive an old landy. The hard top was in my girlfriend's garden. Summer storm overnight meant I drove through rush hour traffic in a topless '72 plate Landy in a suit and my housemates postie jacket. Turned up like a drowned rat. Didn't get the job. Married the girlfriend though!

The idiots that didn't read my CV and assumed I'd had a year out in industry and asked random questions about my 'year out' I hadn't done.

The interview by wrote from a tick box psychometric test that was surreal. He passed it to me at the end and said 'read it and weep'.

The one where I sat in the MDs chair...

Fortunately all 20 years ago, not had one in 10 years now. Might get some more practice in.

A timely thread. I have two interviews this week.

Some useful pointers on here to avoid:

Jam on fly - check
Too much coffee - check

The great advantage of getting older is the knowledge that with a bit of luck I'll never have to go through the whole sorry charade again. Though if I do, there's always Spud's approach eh?

Interviewed by a nutter, internal systems vacancy in the bank. Straight away she insisted I had no relevant experience despite my CV being full of it. I was an advanced user of the process they ran and I'd worked with her team for years, I'd spoken to her personally on the phone loads of times working together fixing problems and the like; she flat out denied that I could possibly have done so... Basically it became obvious she didn't really understand who she dealt with in the wider bank.

Finally, I dragged her kicking and screaming round to understanding that her team wasn't a little island that never contacted anyone else, rubbed her nose in the fact that I knew what I was talking about... But in the meantime decided I wasn't going to work for this zoomer regardless.

Week later, I was on the phone to her twice in the morning working through cases; in the afternoon she phoned up to tell me I hadn't got the job because I had no relevant experience. Absolute [i]nutter.[/i]

Also in the bank, I went for a job in HR where it turned out they'd listed the wrong job profile. I was totally unqualified but I felt like I got bonus points for at least figuring out why all the candidates had been so inappropriate- they had no idea and I was IIRC the 3rd person interviewed, nobody else had said "wtf are you talking about" 😆

Sit down for interview.

Chair: "The first 10 minutes will be your presentation followed by a Q & A"
Me: "erm presentation?"
Embarrassed silence.
Me:"right we've got a white board and some pens, what was the topic then?"

Got the job.

interviewer rather than interviewee...

woman comes for interview, business is based on the 1st floor, two flights of stairs to get to the office, she had to take a breather on the landing....(she was ermmm...built for comfort not speed) Became clear that despite what it said on her CV she hadn't a clue...interview was painful, she burst into tears...then had a panic attack....

Worst. Interview. Eva

after doing PGCE applied for loads of jobs did 3 interviews in one week 0 job offers, did one following week the 2 other candidates had pulled out having got jobs, my interview continued... and the remaining candidate failed to get the job !! 😳

Couple come to mind.

Firstly, an internal audit vacancy where I was accused of lying about my qualifications. I was a mite confused especially as they had a verifiable copy of the certificate for the qualification in question...

Secondly, the other side of the desk. I was interviewing a person for a role, when responding to a question about professional challenges, the interviewee started talking about a relationship breakup in the past and started to cry. There was a little bit of WTF about the moment, but mainly I felt a lot of sympathy for them. Even nearly 10 years later I think about them very occasionally and hope they are back on track.

Got through first interview with hr and engineering manager, then had to have a second with the md even though I'd been offered the job, sat waiting in a gold fish bowl of a boardroom for 20mins, guy walks in looking like a tramp, sticks his feet on the table and the opening line is "we've got a problem, your cv is shit"

@Tina - don't bet on it; some people are just shit at this stuff.

My first ever interview out of uni was with a really hostile, physically intimidating (he liked to imagine) bloke who was the head of the (NHS) department.
I got a little bit bolshy back and ended up leaving thinking "what a tosser and what a waste of a day".
Ended up being offered the post but had already been offered one elsewhere - was a pleasure to turn him down 😀

There is one absolute stand out interview, I still look back and think "did that actually happen?".

Long story short, about ten years ago, I was invited to interview for two roles, one as a consultant, the other as a departmental manager - the latter I explained was a more junior role in terms of responsibility AND salary to the one I was already in. The employer was - is- a very big player in their field and I was somewhat taken back by the sheer bravado, but that wasn't the most controversial event of the day...

...the consultant role was to be interviewed by one semi-senior manager, supposedly held in high regard. I turned up for interview and my interviewer got through the preliminaries, quizzed me on my experience before she gave me a tour of the office building and departments.

Finally, with just the two of us left in the office, my interviewer started flirting with me...now I'm not a bloke who normally picks up on "signals", but this was pretty blatant - fluttering of eyelashes and arm touching.

I still can't work out if I was pretty darned hot, or if the interviewer employed this technique to entice people into accepting a job offer.

I turned both of the roles down.

I once had a candidate turn up wearing sunglasses and cut off 3/4 jeans.
To be fair to him, he did lift his sunnies off his eyes and perched them on his head once he'd sat down.

He didn't get the job. The job wasn't professional surf boarder before you ask!

Jimolops, were you ex IBM interviewing for Apple? Lol!

IBM Towers, Hamburg The early 90's

As a fresh-faced student, I go for an interview for a placement with Big Blue.

For the first test which seems to be a random series of letters, I have to check my English-German dictionary to find out what "buchstabe" means.

It turns out it means letter. Woohoo, I'm rocking and rolling.

The second test is, I am fairly sure, a test of mathematical reasoning. I have almost finished translating the first question when the time runs out.

Fsticks.

I get to the post-awkward-lunch interview. I look over the table, I check out my scores for the maths test. 3 points for a correct answer with working out. 2 for a correct answer, and award a total score of -1 points for Cranberry for a single wrong answer with no/incorrect working out.

The interview continues, and I manage to talk myself into a dead-end, language-wise - I run out of German, mid-sentence.

...

..
..
..
..
..
..
"errm"

"Oh, don't worry, Mr Cranberry, you can talk in English if you want"
..
"F"
"Errm, I meant, whoops"
..
..
*plenty of chat in English, including me asking how the interviewer had perfect English*

I walk out of the door.

Take a deep breath and consider what else I might do with my life.

Then get a letter from IBM and everything with a start date. I start, continue, the Banking and Finance dept suggest I might want to stay and do their net admin/management permanently.

Having worked for IBM as a student pays for the next 2 decades.

The moral of the story: an interview can seem seriously screwed, but it is not over till the fat lady sings.

But you might end up learning more about OS/2 than you had planned.

I had one through a recruitment agency which basically lied about the job on offer (claiming it was technical support for a chemical company).

I negotiated an hour or more of awful Bradford traffic, found the place, introduced to the interviewer who promptly started asking questions about marketing. The interview became more and more painful until we both realised that we were wasting each others time. Then to cap it all off I got a call from the recruitment agency a day or so later telling me I hadn't got the job.

That's because you ****ing lied about what it was just to get some throughput of interviewees you cretins!

CIBA? S'gone now. I nearly got into a fight at an interview once. I'd clearly not got the job. I was ok with that as it was a sidestep that I didn't really want but the interviewer insisted on really aggressive interview strategy. Lots of fist banging and shouting, then he insisted on knowing where I'd want to be based if I was successful. I said I was fairly open to anywhere within the county, he demanded I list top 3 base stations, I asked which stations the role could be based at (the role was not available at all bases), this sent him into a rage about me not doing the research, so i asked him if he knew where the role was based. He didn't, he got very angry, HR laughed at him, I laughed at him. Possibly told him it was a good job he only worked in the quiet east patch and not the bus central/ west patch. I was a bit of a know it all knob, but it was fun.

This wasn't me being interviewed, but I was involved in the process. We interviewed 6 project managers. Offered the job to the best candidate, HR told everyone else they'd been declined, best candidate wasn't happy with teh pay package and refused the position (we quote a salary range but will only ever pay the bottom of the range, it's total bullshit tbh) Second person does the same. So 2 weeks later we go out to 2nd loser and offer him the job, having already told him he's not good enough. Awesome.

He wasn't good enough, as it turns out, but we kind of knew that already, and couldn't hold it against him.

Had a good one a couple of years ago.

Was interviewing from a scientific role at the grade I was already working at, this was in a department I trained at and worked for 5 years. I was very qualified and experienced and the main reason for applying was it would reduce my co mute by 2 hours a day and let me see the kids more. I went for the initial visit to look around about a week before the interview, on going in the lab many of the people I would work with came up and gave me hugs and said they were happy I was coming back and my private chat with the manager got interrupted with by another staff member coming in to say hello.

In the interview I answered 10 technical questions all spot on, and fumbled with1 question about delivering projects which at that grade wasn't a deal breaker. When i said I was hard working an interviewer snorted and towards the end I was asked "I know we shouldn't ask this but come on, we know you, how have you changed?"

They left it for 4 days and phoned at 5.20 on the Friday afternoon and left a voicemail, when I spoke to them the next week one reason given was that they didn't think I would fit into the team...

Fast forward 2 years and I get appointed 2 grades higher and bump into the interviewers (husband and wife) at gatwick on way to an international meeting. There is a shuttle to take all delegates to the various accommodation. I get dropped off at a very swish hotel a pharma company are paying for and they walk across the street to a flea infested hole, the wife then gets lashed at a dinner and makes a fool of herself giving me a lecture about something or other

It was a dodged bullett but felt pretty crap at the time.

I had 2 interviewers argue!

One walked out and the other said "Do what you can".

I got by phew.

Then I finally got to 3rd and final stage: The MD interviewed me and asked if I wanted to continue my interview process.

I said "No". Which shocked her and she demanded why...

I had one for a police job and the HR person on the panel (which also had a CI and a Sgt) asked me some utter nonsense question. I said I wasn't sure what she was asking so she tried rephrasing it but it was still gobbledygook, so in the end I just had to say 'Sorry, I have no answer to this question'. Assumed I'd flunked it, turns out the other two approved of that answer 🙂

Hah. Good interview- my current boss asked me for something I was passionate about. I said BIEKZ! Then did some positive riffs about community involvement, event organising, etc. He lapped it up. Every other candidate said "Education!" or "Customer service!" or some such bright eyed bollocks, and he went "yeah [i]right[/i]"

Many many years ago when I was straight out of university and looking for a job I managed to get through to the second interview stage for a sales job. The person who had interviewed me at the preliminary stage seemed a decent enough sort and the company seemed a good place to work. In the second interview I was interviewed by the guy who would have been my line manager. He was clearly a pillock and impressed by his own opinions. When he found out I went to university in Cambridge he said "Oh yeah, Cambridge, full of tossers on bikes. So tell me what sort of sports are you into?"

My response was simply "I'm a keen cyclist". The look on his face was priceless and I may as well have called the interview to a close at that point. So glad I didn't get the job. Many interviewers forget it is a two way process and quite often we're sussing them out as well.

I had an interview in the afternoon after working the morning temping on a building site lugging flat pack furniture about, a job I'm not built for at all. Turned up covered in bruises and aching only to be told to fill in the exact same application form I'd competed to get the interview in the first place. Eventually met the interviewers, one of whom was basically monosyllabic, the other spent every two minutes moaning about the parking in the area. I don't drive. A total farce.

My favourite bad interview was before I qualified, and I was looking for a vacation placement. I was in my first year at university, so borrowed a suit from my Dad, and went in. It's fair to say I didn't have a Scooby.

Highlights included, when asked to name three reasons why I wanted to vac scheme there, "nice offices, good canteen, and I can't think of a third".

The most amusing thing was that when that firm subsequently ran training courses for prospective applicants, they gave a 15-min presentation on how not to apply, and quoted from my interview and application form verbatim, to the point that my handwriting was projected onto the wall for all to see (thankfully anonymised!).

Other highlights include two interviews for a senior role, got to offer stage, only to be told I'd have to be "a bit more flexible" about pay (i.e. take a pay cut) when they'd known all along how much I was on and looking for (i.e. not a pay cut).

As interviewer, I've come across some classics, including (fully-qualified) candidates regularly breaking down into tears because they can't answer technical questions, but my favourite was one unfathomably dull chap who tried to relate everything to experiences he learnt in his school and club rugby teams, and waxed lyrical about the time Dean Richards (former Quins and now Falcons coach) came to his school. Anyway, getting a bit bored by this point, we fell back on a stock "who is your role model?" question, to which he unswervingly answered "Dean Richards". At which point I asked what exactly was it he admired about the coach that had just recently been suspended for 'Bloodgate' (faking a blood injury to allow a substitution)?

He didn't get the job.

I was invited to a panel interview for a Head of IT role in a large German manufacturing company a few years ago.

They flew in the IT director from Germany and another Head office IT person and I was to report in to the IT director and to the UK FD. There was clear tension between them which even I picked up during the interview and I didn't fancy being caught between them (been there before) so when they finished asking me questions they said is there anything I would like to ask them.

I asked (not quite so directly but not far off!) If that was the end of the interview and pretty much got up and left feeling like it had been a wasted day.
They called me later that day and offered me the job!!! I declined and the UK FD himself rang me to ask me to reconsider. I explained why and although he tried to play it down he understood.
Not quite my worst interview but interesting!

some bad interviews

We advertised for support staff roles, interviewed a dozen or so people, settled on one and informed HR we'd like to take them on. HR then sent a decline letter to the one successful candidate and twelve congratulations letters.

That was an awkward day on the phone. 🙄

I've had a few as an interviewer.

Sat in with a HR bod doing the stock interview questions. "What are your strengths?" - easy bit, sell yourself. "What are your weaknesses?" - some pearling answers. One guy said, "well, I have anger management issues, I got fired from the last place for punching my boss."

Had one young lad in for an internal IT role whose CV was a gnat's willy off being written in crayon. Looked him up on Facebook beforehand (because everyone does these days, right?), and his public feed is full of BS about him being this l33t hacker and boasting about all the systems he'd cracked / crashed. Yeah, I want you in my server room.

One of the best candidates I ever interviewed had long blonde hair halfway down his back, looked like a viking warrior. Every tech question I asked him he knocked out of the park, even when I went off piste and threw him some stinkers. Then it came for the manager to do his bit, first thing he said was "you should know, company policy is for male employees' hair to be no longer than collar length." So Thor stands up, goes "well, I don't think there's any point in either of us wasting each others' time any further" and walks out of the interview. Good lad.

Waiting for an interviewee named "Satnam." Cue me and my colleagues spending twenty minutes before the interview making satnav jokes and getting very giddy indeed. Our man duly arrives, we go to meet him, and my colleague a stride ahead of me goes to shake his hand and says, "hi, I'm Bob." *beat* "Did you find us all right?" I had to make a sharp exit stage left into the server room to recover.

As an interviewer looking to hire US sales people - always an interesting experience in seeing how they present themselves.

Guy comes into the interview. First question "Tell me a little about yourself". Him "I'm like a great white shark. I hunt down customers and I eat my competition whole". The next 25-30mins continues with one liners like this and him being unable to answer any technical questions.

We get to the end. "Is there anything else you would like to say?". "Yes it's a pity that you didn't video this interview. Since if you did you could use it to should other people how to do the perfect interview"!!!!!!

We could hardly keep a straight face / die laughing until he had left.

Once interviewed a young graduate for a job after having seen about ten other candidates who were all as green as the grass.
His CV was pretty good, he'd worked during the summer for a couple of big players in the industry and had done a summer placemnt overseas with one of them
First impressions were mixed. Nice shiny shoes. A brown suit which didn't quite fit properly, probably borrowed. A full bushy beard which was a bit unusual at the time as beards were not fashionable, like what they have been recently.
He was from somewhere deep in rural Ireland and I put the beard down to being a bit of a country bumpkin vibe. All cool so far.

Myself and my boss interviewed the guy and he was knocking everything out of the park. Every question we threw at him he was straight back with perfect answers. The job was his. In the bag.

A bit of small talk to round off the interview went a bit like this...

Boss: Doing anything nice at the weekend?

Beardy kid: Yeah, me and my fiance are going (somewhere irrelevant)

Boss: Fiance? When are you getting married?

Beardy kid : In July. Really looking forward to it.

Boss : A big church wedding is it?

Beardy kid : Nope, it's in the mosque.

Boss : Cool.

What followed next left both me and the boss agape and incredulous.

Beardy kid, completely unprompted, went off on a ten minute rant about George W Bush, Afghanistan and how the imperialist pigdog infidels were oppressing his Muslim brothers.

We thanked him for his time and let him go.

Then the Boss said to me, "Well?"
I said back " You first."
He countered with " Do you think we can employ this guy?"
My carefully worded response was that we probably couldn't employ the kid but I was very clear that it wasn't as a result of the beliefs that beardy kid held. It was as a direct result of the beliefs that were held by the hairy arsed Rangers / Celtic supporting builders that we already employed.
If we sent this kid on to a Glasgow building site he wouldn't last a day.

Skype interviews are great fun - I interviewed a lady who claimed her camera wasn't working, not to worry we will continue, her photo sent with the cv so we had an idea of what she looked like, at some point during the interview she must have clicked her camera on, and there was someone 40 years older than the photo we had sent smoking a fag.

Weird, and not employed.

My partner in crime at work and I had to interview dozens of folk via Skype, and on the odd occasion, we would mix up times, or get the time zones wrong, not all our fault.

On a Saturday evening, around 10pm, we were continuing a rather long days drinking session when we suddenly went "shit we have an interview" having already received a bollocking for missing one the previous day, we charged down to the office to carry out the interview, pouring some whisky into two coffee cups on the way down.

A fantastic interview was had, the candidate was a wonderful person, would make an excellent hire, perfect of for the job, loved to talk, etc etc.

Turned out to be an absolute nutter who left after a year.

I interviewed a lady who on asking why she wanted to work at the school told me that she didn't really, there weren't any other jobs going that she thought she would get.

Another simply wouldn't answer any questions we asked, kept answering them with bizarre anecdotes totally unrelated.

Finally, I had the fresh graduate, who informed me he had turned down two NQT positions in two very good schools to return here. On asking him why he was so desperate to return here, he told me about his girlfriend out here. That made sense, how long had they lived apart - 3 years. He was prepared to work in a shitty language school to get back out here.

So why is another year going to kill you to get fully certified and find a job after that, surely that makes more sense than throwing away all this training. "I think she might have another boyfriend so I need to get back"

I once had an interview for an insanely BIG job. Account manager for a petrochemical firm in South Africa, based in Johannesburg with international travel, £100k+, accommodation allowance, private schooling allowance for kids, relocation allowance, healthy bonus & retirement scheme, the lot.
The first I knew I was being interviewed was when the receptionist said to me "Mr so-and-so will see you now". I was just tagging along with some work colleagues because I had a free day and fancied some lunch on the company expenses.

Also: Guy Goma

I was in an interview when the chair of governors, a vicar, asked me if I felt like 'a rat leaving a sinking ship' (the school I had been employed in was being closed down). I withdrew from the process. He also asked another (very well qualified) candidate who happened to be Irish, whether he was a supporter of the IRA. The job went to someone who was the least well qualified but for some reason it was thought his face would fit.