My job interview this morning was a complete disaster. What was your worst job interview ?

This was at a job fair sort of setting where you spend 30 minutes with an interviewer.

It was apparent pretty quickly that the woman interviewing me had no interest (not sure why she scheduled the interview). She would ask questions off a list and then look around. At one point, I said something about Satanic worship and the woman just asked the next question.

I've been part of the interview team for quite a few interviews and thankfully i don't have to do that anymore.

I can't go into too much detail, but we've interviewed one guy that was so drunk that he barely made it into the chair and walked into a wall leaving the interview.

A really nervous guy was racing on and choked to the point that we had to take a break while he composed himself.

One young, grossly underqualified guy starting trying to hook-up with the senior female staff member on the interview team upon finishing the formal interview.

Just a few that come to mind.

dodged bullet wrote:

I wouldn't worry about a bombed interview. Every school/program/employer I've ever really wanted to attend/work for has had a very casual and conversational interview. I figure that if an interview is stressful enough to be bombed, I probably didn't want to work there anyway.

Interviews are a bad way to judge an applicant's abilities, anyway.

This is correct except for the last line! Most of these bad interview people seem to be blaming themselves, but in most cases it's the interviewer's fault. A good interviewer knows how to put a subject at ease, use the right tone of voice, ask good follow up questions that actually give them insight into the applicant.

A bad interviewer just reads off a piece of paper and then listens while you ramble, freeze, They learn absolutely nothing that way, it's just a waste of everyone's time. Those might as well be written application questions.

A good interviewer susses out the interesting things you have to say. Things you weren't even thinking of saying and might even surprise you.

If there is more than one interviewer, forget it, they have no idea what they're doing, unless it's an acting or musical audition.

Got up and walked out. Gut reaction. Never reacted like that, ever. Instinct told me simply this was not a person you'd want to be around.

Interviewer was deliberately aggressive and condescending. Couldn't see myself sitting next to, working with and being supervised by someone like that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Had a coaching interview with a relatively small college in the middle of nowhere. Their campus had a real, post-WW2, concrete & steel vibe. No character nor beauty. I immediately felt depressed.

The initial part of the interview was with the FORMER AD (retired) who was involved in the process because they had not been able to fill her former administrative position (for well over a year...a big red flag). I later was shown around, introduced around to staff/faculty, and taken out for meals with the acting AD (who I later found out was interviewed for the AD gig but was passed over...stating to see a bad trend).

The school had been advertising for a Director of XC/Track but it turns out that they'd just hired a head XC coach (who lasted about 18 months before realizing what a disaster the athletic department was becoming) who was told they he'd be operating independently. WTF?

I knew very quickly that the situation was not conducive to successful coaching. Too many issues and conflicts. My long drive home from the multi-day interview was spent being glad that I already had another tolerable job to go back to.

The hardest (most cringeworthy) part of the process was when the former AD called a few days later and offered me the job. I politely turned her down. She didn't appreciate it. She got a little aggressive about why I turned it down. I explained that the lack of a cohesive, stable administration within the athletic department was very concerning and I suggested that situation should be resolved before addressing the coaching vacancy that had its own structural/leadership quirks. She didn't like that either. As she was getting all lathered up to come back at me a second time, I politely thanked her for the interview, the consideration, and the job offer but I was declining and hung up quickly before she could launch into another tirade.

The program is still a s***show to this day.

Once went to interview with a slight cold. At some point the during the interview I started sneezing loudly. To make matters worse I couldn’t stop. It went on for at least 10 minutes. I had snot and saliva all over me. To be fair the women who was interviewing me was wearing nasty perfume. Yeah I didn’t get the job.

Once, I had a bloody nose while driving to the interview.

The worst was having had a colonoscopy the day prior. The sedative given during the procedure had amnesic qualities. This was for an IT Systems manager position at a climate modeling lab, so it was an extremely technical interview. Many of the answers to the interview questions were on the tip of my tongue. I knew that I knew the answers but I couldn't find the answers and words in my head. Ughhh! It was so embarrassing.

My wife sat in on an interview board for a software testing position. The guy had the technical skills and experience to to the job, but the team was focused on personality/fit. The candidate was asked to describe an experience where he had a conflict with a co-worker and how he resolved it. He described a previous conflict with a coworker which culminated with "I slashed her tires in the parking lot". 0=

"Thank you for meeting with us today"

"Security!"

In college I only bombed an interview when I was asked technical questions for how to persist data in a database before I knew anything about databases.

But my better story is a couple years after college I had two interviews on back-to-back days when moving to a new city. They both had me answer a technical question on how I would write code to solve some problem. The first interview I solved it, I did it right. Then we discussed some ways that I could have made it even more efficient and simpler. Then the next day at the next interview they asked me a question, it was the exact same coding question as the day before. I answered it with the efficient solution I had discussed the day before. I accepted the second job, still work there 5 years later.

When I was at university I interviewed for a job at a (at the time, early 2000s) very cool skate/surfwear store.

One of the questions was "if you were an animal, which one would it be and why?"

I stupidly responded with the first thing I thought of, which was: "Are you seriously asking me this question in an interview?"

Got the job. Don't think it mattered one bit what I said, you just had to look right. It wasn't the most boring job I ever had, but it was close.

You probably dodged a bullet. I'd be cautious about working for a company that has an aggressive, mechanical and highly regimented hiring process. You can probably extrapolate from that process what it's like to actually work there year after year. Maybe this is a highly technical field and that's how it's done. I don't know. And I don't know what kind of questions they were (e.g. asking you to do coding problems, which makes more sense if you're applying to be a coder, etc.) but this is a red flag to me.

Three that I can remember. In succession.

Just out of college and only had bio as a minor, including one summer of field school, but no internships or paid field experience. I applied for a tech job and 5 minutes in the 20 minute interview the guy just stopped and said that I didn't have enough experience for the job and that he was tired from interviewing people all day and not so politely said, "we're done here."

Toward the end of grad school applied for a pretty high-level state job and they asked about predator control to improve game populations. I gave a science-based answer and said that it would be controversial and you also have to be in tune with public opinion in-state and beyond, not just the hunters. It was a panel with three or four and the assistant director just got up and walked out of the room.

Applied for a professor/lecturer position at a small college and presented my research, and made a joke invoking Ghostbusters re: animal interactions (re: cats and dogs living together). The Dean got up and walked out. I knew it was over. As a formality they had a couple junior faculty take me out for a dinner before I went on my way and I ordered a beer on the college's tab while my hosts didn't order a drink. That probably sealed the deal.

Was in Los Angeles, interviewing to be a personal assistant for some car gurus. Had been a professional assistant for a few years so knew the ropes. Went to a house in the Hollywood Hills. Exotics on big driveway through the gate being worked on by mechanics. One of em says “just go inside she’ll meet you there”. So I go in the front door and am greeted by life size mannequins of Freddy Krueger, Jason, a Xenomorph, and a Chucky stabbing at my leg right inside the door. So I knew I was in for something interesting. Lady comes to greet me, we sit down in the living room and everything seems typical and genuine. Then one of the other guys comes in and says “look I only got one question for ya. If I come in here runnin, drop a gun on your lap, and 5-0 is on my tail, what do you do?”. It took me a second, and figured he was totally serious, so I said “take the heat?”. He laughed and said “I like you man”. And he walked off. Lady said she’d let me know. I didn’t get the job. But it was the wackiest interview I ever had. Turned out most of them were from West Coast Customs.

Yg111101 wrote:

Got up and walked out. Gut reaction. Never reacted like that, ever. Instinct told me simply this was not a person you'd want to be around.

Interviewer was deliberately aggressive and condescending. Couldn't see myself sitting next to, working with and being supervised by someone like that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

smart move

people undervalue gut instinct and write it off as superficial emotion.

i read this somewhere:

"your gut feeling is a lifetime of experience being processed in a split second. trust it"

it's not always right, but never ignore or completely discount a strong gut feeling. put a high value on it. your subconscious is smarter than you are

Once took the morning off for an interview at like 8:00am, thinking it would only last an hour or two. I was stuck in a conference room for four hours and met with a dozen people in various size groups from one on one to a few people at a time. I barely made it back to work on time (next time, just take off the whole day!)

They never called me back, then three years later I get a call from the guy that replaced the hiring manager, and he said while going through some files he had noticed that I was never released from that search, and was just calling to tie up that loose end. Huh? So you’re calling to say that I didn’t get the job that I had basically forgot that existed? Yep. That’s it. Well, seems unnecessary, but thanks for the call, I guess.

Interviews in my field are mostly technical questions which are easy to navigate.

Then an HR person comes in with a curve ball like "how do you handle conflict".

I said "well, I'm always willing to try yelling before I go hitting anyone". They either thought I was joking or had little say since I got the job.

I interviewed at a large Biotech firm. I was a few years out of college and from the job description, it sounded fairly junior level and I could learn everything in short order. One of the requirements was having experience using pivot tables. Prior to the interview I downloaded two years worth of MLB data and used pivot tables to come up with some parameters to create my own fantasy baseball rankings. The interviewer gave no reaction, but seemed a little annoyed and perhaps worried that I wasted time on espn.com when I should be working. He then handed me a TI-85 calculator and read off a math problem that he wanted me to solve...

Not as bad as some of the other stories, but I'm normally pretty calm during an interview. The second that TI-85 was handed to me, my arm pits started to sweat profusely.

Don't feel bad...I once filled out a job application for a job working with valuables and after lying my azz off the owner told me the next step was a polygraph administered by an ex FBI agent, the guy started asking me questions and I was so nervous the machine showed I was lying when I told him my name, the needle was jumping around so much I thought the damm thing would break...

For some reason I didn't get the job....

Was interviewing a few places for my first job as a teacher, and was willing to work anywhere. I guess I ate something I shouldn't have the day before or something and started having bad gas on a 2.5 hour drive to the interview. I stopped and tried doing a 2, but no dice nothing was coming out and I couldn't stop farting. I should have called and cancelled and turned around, but was so desperate for a job and so poor that I was determined to press on. I must have reeked. In the interview, I was doing my darkest to hold it in, but that wasn't going to help at this point. The sad thing was I was nailing the questions better than I ever have in any other interview before or since. After the interview the administrator told me I could walk around the campus and do a tour alone if I liked. I thought that was really weird, but it let me know if blown it. It's small consolation that I finally dropped the load on the way home and stopped and had a really great trail run.