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

I’m talking phone screen. My dogs went crazy in the background when a deer came into our yard and the two cleaning ladies at my house had a screaming match in Portuguese. I actually ended up slipping on the floor while on the phone that they had just mopped. It was so bad I actually drank two nips during the call because I was like, forget it, I’m not getting this one.

Ended up getting the job at a better $$ than I asked for. Life is funny in some ways😀

A job interview is a terrible way to hire a person.

I hit post too quickly...

The way most interviews are done are horrible ways to hire someone.

Luv2Run wrote:

A job interview is a terrible way to hire a person.

The way most interviews are done are horrible ways to hire someone.[/quote]

And yet that is how candidates are selected. The best interviewee is the person to get the job. Now think of the number of people in positions who are ill suited for them. How did they get the job? Were they always that incompetent and just happened to be a great interviewee or did they become that incompetent over time?

when i was 23, one of the first interviews i had out of college was with an international conservation organization. there was no one in the office when i got there. the interview was at 10, and i waited until 11. this was before the age of cell phones taking over everything and i called the dude's number and i heard the office phone ring.

at 11 i went home and saw he had sent me an email at 9:30 saying he had to postpone the interview by a day because the office was going on a field trip.

so the next day, i show up at 9:55 a.m. at 9:58, the secretary had me fill out paperwork for 15 mins, which i assumed had been coordinated with the manager i was interviewing with. they never said anything about getting there early to do that. when the secretary finally brought me in.

the manager was maybe a 26 year old dude. he took one look at me, got up from behind his desk, and started speaking rapid fire french. and not parisian french, it was some regional dialect that threw me. the job ad had required "written proficiency in french" - which I know the basics of - it said nothing of mandating conversational fluency, which is a totally different thing. after a 30 second spewing, he turned to me and waited for me to answer. i answered in basic french that i hadn't understood him, then said in english that my proficiency was in written french.

the dude literally turned and walked out of his office without a word.

he came back 10 minutes later, clearly fuming, and said really snottily: "ok, let's start over. let's forget that you dressed improperly for this interview, and that you lied about knowing french on your resume, and that you were 15 minutes late. tell me about yourself."

i remained respectful, politely explained to him about the difference between written knowledge of french and conversational fluency in an obscure dialect. the rest of the interview was fine. they set up a follow up interview which i declined. i get an email 2 weeks later saying "you're not the right fit for this position......." i'm glad i said no -i found out later that the job i'd interviewed for was actually higher level than i'd realized, and they were paying absolute horrific wages to capable but clueless college students to do the work.

^ should've added that i was wearing a brand new shirt and tie haha. i left my jacket in the car because it was midsummer in DC and 99 degrees that day.

serious question? wrote:

runhills wrote:

Despite preparing for the interview the last 2 days, I still bombed it. They asked me 9 questions but had only 25 minutes to answer them (2-3 minutes per question). I bombed 4 of the questions because I couldn't think of a good answer given the amount of time given. I felt rushed and nervous. Anyone else had the same experience?

I don't know a person that hasn't bombed an interview before. You learn from it and move on; happens to almost everyone

agreed. it happens to everyone. it only gets better from here. you get a muscle memory for these sorts of things. no matter how uncomfortable you were, your mind and body will adapt. feeling that discomfort is actually a good thing. think about it in running terms. if you wanna run a sub-15 5k, you need to train for months feeling very uncomfortable running 72-73 second quarters in order to get to race day when running the first couple 73s feels like a jog.

I'm not sure that i actually have the same view of interviews as the general perception of a job interview. At least according to my experience, a few realities may need to be disclosed.

A fairly good number of interviews are some employer going through the motions to satisfy hiring regulations. They already have someone in mind for the job but must satisfy internal or external rules for compliance. Sometimes it is just done for appearance so it doesn't look like nepotism or an "inside" job. And unless you know someone in the organization, you can never know if that is the case. This happens to be true more often with higher level positions, But often you may glean insight by follow-up and checking who got the job....

Sometimes things that have little to do with your qualifications may have a large bearing on who gets the job. All kinds of things come into play regarding an organization's goals and what they want their workforce to look like.

There is such a thing as being over-qualified for a job, and in fact, it is quite common that the most qualified person will not be selected for this reason.

In the interview, how you come across is often times as important or more important than the correctness of your answer. Some questions don't have one right answer, they just want to see how you think and organize a perplexing problem.

All of which points to downplaying the significance of any given interview unless that job happens to be your dream job. Interviewing well is truly an acquired skill, and I wouldn't dwell on a bad one. Learn from it and get back in the ring. A rejection is not necessarily a judegement on you at all. For that reason, I would think of job-hunting and career advancement as a process rather than a lottery with only one winning ticket.

Was this by chance Adrian College in MI? Your post WWII description of a depressing concrete/steel campus vibe in the middle of nowhere reminds me of that college. I interviewed there and was immediately depressed looking at the campus. Then the AD who interviewed me hadn't even looked at my resume before the interview and was asking me super basic questions about my background that could easily be answered by reading the resume (like "I see you ran for Univ of..." "I see you've been coaching for 4 years now..."). Then they had extremely high work commitment expectations with very limited days off for a job that basically paid less than minimum wage. It was a very easy job to turn down. lol

Both of these remind me of a sketch interview I was set to do, but thankfully skipped out after realizing how sketch everything seemed. It happened around the same time frame back in maybe like '09-11ish. Someone contacted me through Facebook or my school email or something saying my "friend" so and so recommended me for this job. The "friend" was a classmate who I was friendly with, but would consider to be more of an acquintance than an actual friend. I thought this was odd since we didn't know each other super well, but for some reason believed it must be legit since someone I knew recommended me. They wouldn't tell me much about the job and wanted me to interview at at empty warehouse on a not so great side of town in the big city. I was told I'd learn more about the job at the interview. It seemed a little sketch so I asked the "friend" about it and turns out she did not know this person at all and did not recommend me for anything. I did some searching online and realized how sketch the job location was and that a lot of the info I was given was fake etc. No idea what kinda scheme this was, but I can't imagine it was good or a legit job. Inviting young naive women into an empty warehouse on the back side of town under false premises to interview for a mystery fake job can't possible be a good situation. I'm embarrased I even set up the interview and had planned to go before realizing it was super sketch and ghosting on them. I never heard back after ghosting.

I can't say I've ever had a really terrible job interview, but I did get that age-old, "What are your weaknesses?" question, to which I replied: I don't think that's a useful interview question (still got the job offer).

Now, I have done some interviewing that has been enlightening. One candidate for a position in a pharmacy reeked of marijuana, an illegal drug here. Another played a game on her phone while waiting for her interview...with the sound on, in the reception area. This was for a six-figure professional position. And one candidate showed up about 20 minutes late with no explanation...but for some reason, I let that slide. I hired her anyway, and it was a bad decision. She was chronically late, disorganized, and lacking respect for others' time. So that sort of thing I do think you can tell from an interview. The same old canned questions, not so much!

As far as bombing the interview, I would just use the experience as practice and don't let it affect your next one.

I hear you, pal. That’s a tough one b

My uncle interviewed to get into art school in the 1930s, it didn't go well. I don't remember what all went wrong, but he was a changed man after that experience. He was very talented. I can assure you that the world would be a different place if he was let in.

I reckon interviews have changed alot over time.In the past they were fairer and more objective. Nowadays I always find that the interviews are almost more of a formality than being actually real.Usually the employers already have someone in mind or in the background they would like to give the job to,but they just hold the interviews to hoodwink the rest of the world.In situations where they have someone already they will sabotage interviewees in disguise through facial expressions,nuances and just off putting behaviour which will no doubt make them fail the interview. Just accept it and move on and do abit more research on the company you are applying to and the position itself.

Many years ago I applied for a rep job with a well known shoe brand out east. I made it to the final round of interviews thinking I was one of maybe 2 or 3 final candidates. Turns out they had 8 final candidates and put us all in the same car from the airport to the hotel (that was awkward) then the next morning all of us dressed in our interview-best walked about 2 miles from the hotel, across the highway, and over an overpass in driving snow to get to the office for our interview. In hindsight it was inconsiderate AF of them to not send an Uber to pick us up, but I’m sure they knew we were all young and desperate for this one job so they could treat us however they wanted lol.

For some reason from the get-go I had a not great feeling about the whole thing, I was just really uneasy. We did multiple rounds of interviews with multiple people (several of whom showed up really late) in multiple break out rooms. 2 of said interviews started with “sell me this pen” (how nauseatingly cliche can you get?!). Finally after about 3 hours of hurry-up-and-wait shuffling us from room to room to wait for the various interviewers, they assured us we would all be hearing back yes or no within the next couple of days and we proceeded to hike back to the hotel in the snow. Never heard from them again. Not yes. Not no. Not even an automated generic rejection email. Ghosted.

I was dumb enough to apply for a completely different position with them a couple years later and had an nearly identical experience because I’m an idiot and didn’t learn the first time. Thankful to have since then ended up with a far better company. Stuff works out.

One time I forgot to look up what the company did. It was really awkward when they asked "So what do you know about company x". Uhhh

I showed up for an interview. Office was a mess. It was a kind of tech startup. I can understand not being totally spick and span, but it was just way too gross.

They make me wait on a couch for 20 minutes. They weren't interviewing other people and I was right on time.

They had asked me to do a pre-interview assignment that was very, very vague. I actually did a decent job in my opinion and my friends' opinions. They hated it because it wasn't exactly what they're business does, even though I had no way of knowing that. Without going into too much tech detail, imagine if an automobile firm asked a candidate to "draw a vehicle" and the candidate draws a small car, gets to the interview, and they say, "Why did you draw a car? You don't know we ONLY do trucks? Are you crazy?"

They then tell me they can't pay me for a few months to make sure I'm a good fit.

Here's where I lost it. They opened up a storage closet, stacked with server and display components on utility shelves. In there is one kid. He's the intern. They left me with him for a few minutes to speak about the role. I discovered he was clearly somewhere on the spectrum, as he really, really struggled to communicate and make eye contact. They closed the door on him when I was done.

Insane.

their***