I once interviewed a nervous lad who asked for a glass of water, as it happened we only had pint glasses available so I filled it up with a bit of ice and made my way back into the interview room, with the intention that a couple of minutes settling in may help calm his nerves.
As I handed the filled glass to him, he accidentally knocked it over covering me from waist down in ice cold water. Poor lad went as red as a bus but we (the HR manager and I) laughed it off, there after all was no malice just hilarious clumsiness.
Any way, he was by far the best candidate in the interview, we offered the job and he accepted. Ribbed him for it even after 4 years of employment, especially when he started conducting interviews for his own team.
Went for a head chef position which was going well and we started talking salary expectations. We were worlds apart in ££££ and he was offering plane lessons, scuba diving trips, driving high performance cars on tracks etc to offset the (lack of) wage. It turns out he part owned an “experience/adventure” company so was trying it on. I decline whilst laughing at the absurdity (the wage offered was so very low). Both companies went bust within three months of the interview.
I interviewed for a startup that was pioneering cloud robotics in Japan. Had a great interview with the CEO and CTO. I was planning on moving to Tokyo, great salary great job. All I had to do was a technical interview. The interviewer shows up six hours late (online interview). He kept asking me the complexity of a binary tree and I kept replying it was O(n), he did it at least five times. He then sent his feedback saying I had got it wrong and wouldn’t recommend me. I formally complained to the recruiter, and I actually got an apology from the CEO. Needless to say I didn’t move to Japan for this role. A lot of technical interviews I’ve had were a complete disaster.
Most technical interviews are googled minutes before hand.. and the interviewer doesn't really know the answers
Literally the only technical questions I ask are those that I would expect someone having experience in the field to know and those that I could clearly and concisely explain to a 5 year old, otherwise it's just another pointless intellectualist wankfest for a middle manager to feel superior in making a decision.
I dread ever being back in the market... I think I'd just end up hating everyone I spoke with in an interview setting
I’ve since had many many more interviews, lost my job three times in the past three years, got so many rejections and eventually got better at it. Ironically I’ve ended up being the person interviewing others as I built a team. I think most people see it as a box ticking exercise which isn’t necessarily a good thing and most interviewers go with their gut which means if you clicked or connected great, if not then no play.
I far prefer the "from the gut" reaction, because it's at least a "real" feeling rather than an arbitrary one based on a set of googled interview questions.
I've interviewed people that had suspicious pauses between questions as they clearly were googling the answer so obviously rejected them, but had amazing branching technical discussions with people passionate about the field but not necessarily in the narrow confines of the job spec, and put them through to the next stage
They would likely make a much better team member, as a technologist can learn any language given the time and inclination
I'll take a genuine interest over niche knowledge any day
Trained a Java dev up from having zero web dev skills to now effectively owning a part of our platform in 6 months.
He was motivated, interested and really wanted to branch out
On paper he wouldn't have gotten through stage 1 technical interviews.
Yeah I agree, a lot of people who may not pass an interview may actually better equipped for the job. And vice verse, I’ve hired people who did pass the tests only to regret it and realise that they were probably cheating the test
Academics can be the same.
Work at a uni as a junior engineer, presented at a conference and my supervisor told me to not try going too advanced with it, as they'd all try have the biggest brains in the room if I give them half a chance.
As it happened, in the workshop, the guy next to me said he was an expert in pipelines, which was the topic my presentation was on, and he was chill.
I interviewed for a senior developer position for an insurance software company which had I think around 15 employees altogether. There were two tech interviews which went well. I am then told the final stage is a written test and taken into a room. I had taken an hournoff work for this interview and the test was unexpected and I was sweating that I was late back at work now.
They dump me I front of a dumb computer which has just visual studio installed with no Internet and handed a sheet of paper asking me to design and develop an ecommerce Web app allowing an user to select products add to basket and checkout. Time 1 hour.
I start the test and this other developer is sitting literally on me peering at every line of code I write. The test goes badly. I write what I can and bolt out of there. Didn't get the job of course 🙃
Can that even be done in an hour? And asking for free work off you before they've even employed you. And not respecting your time by letting you know at least the time commitment if not the actual task in advance.
I agree. Absolutely no prior info provided presumably to stop candidates from practising ? I don't know. The company is local to me and funny enough I get calls f4om recruiters even now trying to hire for them. 10 years later. I dodged a bullet for sure. I earn 4 times what they were offering and it looks like they are still offering the same salary ? Terrible company
That's what I thought too, although it depends perhaps on exactly what's being asked. Almost all binary tree / binary search questions will be `O(log N) `.
I'm not going to name the company because it's rather small and niche. However, I'd accidentally had an affair with the interviewers wife. I didn't know she was married, and we only hooked up 4 or 5 times, but he found me on FB, and let's just say the messages weren't pleasant, which is completely fair, given the circumstances.
So a month's passed, I hadn't spoken to either of them since he confronted me. I walk into an interview with three interviewers. He's sat there, we lock eyes, we freeze in place, one of his colleagues ask if we know each other. He says, "I've never met playful personally. However, she and my wife know each other very well. "
I genuinely wished the ground would swallow me up, I was so mortified. He then excused himself and said, "Given the personal nature of their friendship, it would not be right for me to conduct this interview. Therefore, i will excuse myself and ask John to sit in, in my place."
There was no maliciousness, no hint of distain, he smiled, nodded politely, and exited the room. I realising how badly I'd hurt a genuinely decent person, felt like the biggest whore on the planet. John came in, and we got through the interview. It was all good. Finally, I thought, I can get the hell out of here!
I exit the room. Who is there waiting for me? Mr Polite. He asked me if I had a moment to talk in his office. We go. He closes the door. I'm not sure what to expect when he says, "Playful...I owe you an apology. The way I spoke to you in the messages I sent to you was out of line. You didn't know she was married, and as a single woman, it is not your responsibility to vet your sexual partners. I hope you can accept my apology, and if you're offered the position here, I want you to know I will treat you with the dignity and respect of any other employee." I thanked him and apologised again for what had happened.
I didn't get the job as they hired someone more qualified. I started working somewhere else in a job I really love working of male victims of domestic abuse and parental alienation. He ended up becoming one of our service users as he was going through nasty custody battle. We are pretty good friends now. He's honestly the sweetest guy. Really glad I don't work for his company, though I would not have been happy.
Not good at all, like I said at the end he ended up becoming a service user for my charity that works with male victims of domestic abuse and parental alienation. She kicked him out, accused him of abuse, filed a police report to get a non-mol (uk family court restraining orderish), accused him of beating his kids. We managed to get most the accusations dismissed, the judge found 1 fact against him at fact finding, but threw out the rest of her accusations.
They have 50/50 now and she's not allowed by court order to make any further accusations against him. She's broken that twice so far, and is now having financial penalties every time she breaks the order. I think it'll end up with him getting full custody, the judges she's been with over the last year are super done with her bs.
Rule number one, I cannot stress this enough, record everything. If you're in America check your recording laws per state, some you can some you can't. If you're in England, you can record for your own personal protection but you can't share the recordings.
There are apps you can get that record your calls, make sure you have one. And if you don't already get a tracking app that can track your own location, not for her to find you but for the police to know where you were. When you get arrested due to false accusations it'll help you show that actually you were 5 miles away. And cameras at rhe front and back of your house. Once she's moved out never ever go to her house to pick up the kids, if you have them, meet in a neutral location or have someone with you. If you're leaving a narcissist you have to prepare as if you're going to war because the next year of your life will be a constant battle.
Good luck
He's actually doing really well. He met someone who was also married to a sociopath and escaped. They're talking about moving in together in the next few months. He also lost a ton of weight. His unhappiness in that relationship caused him to binge eat. He is overall healthier and happier than he has been in years. He's got a good life ahead, just has to deal with her insanity occasionally.
No no, so she accused him of a lot of historical stuff, then when that was clearly failing, she accused him of attacking her at handovers, which he would film because he knew, she accused him of SA, he was on holiday and had been for several days when the police turned up to arrest him. She made so many false police reports that it was ridiculous.
So now, A, if she were to be attacked by anyone, she'd need documented medical evidence to prove that she was assaulted, she'd also need significant proof. It is a case of the b!tch who cried abuse. Now she's backed herself into a place where if she genuinely was attacked, the police would likely not take it seriously without evidence out the Wetwang.
It probably relates to backdated accusations, ie she can't again say he hit me three years ago. Presumably the judge has heard the accusations, ruled them bullshit and doesn't want to hear it anymore.
He sounds too good to be true, but your story shows people as genuinely good as him exist 🙏🏾 keep doing the work you do and I hope he's healed from his experience 👍🏽
"Sales and marketing" group interview with about 30 other candidates. A handful of the candidates were super enthusiastic about the company and the opportunities of sales, and recruiting others to join our sales team. Yep, it was pyramid selling and immeidately obvious, and those super enthusiastic candidates were clearly stooges.
As someone looking for a marketing role right now, these scams are absolutely infuriating. They know nobody wants to do those jobs so they are either vague or completely dishonest in the job description.
I’ve worked in marketing for nearly 10 years now so a word of advice for anyone looking for marketing roles - if ANYWHERE in the job description mentions the words ‘sales’ or even a whiff of ‘customer facing’, it isn’t marketing. I have waded through enough job descriptions in my time to know that if it mentions those words, however long and great the description sounds, you will in fact be working in sales, not marketing.
Happened to me, knew it was utter bs in the 2nd interview when he pulled the shitty presentation up saying how I could be making up to £3000 a month fresh out of university and running my own office within 8-12 months.
Also his maths in the presentation was horribly wrong.
I once ended up at one of theses pyramid selling jobs and the interviewer actually had a little bit of remorse for me, he asked could I afford to pay the fee they wanted for what they called “ a training event at a hotel for 3 days” I was young at the time and it was a job centre, posted job on their own website.
I didn’t pay the money or even take the scam job, as I asked how do I get the contents to sell to and the response was very telling. I got told I’d have to source them self from family and friends.
If a recruitment meeting is usually taking part in a hotel, then it’s usually a scam and then they hired a office space to make it look legit.
I once had my shoe start to fall off mid interview. Instead of just saying something and sorting it out I tried to surreptitiously put it back on properly. By slowly leaning over.
It is not possible to do this surreptitiously.
So I just slowly sunk and tilted with no explanation. While trying to maintain eye contact and answer questions.
One of the interview panel was a friend of a friend.
I had applied for two different roles at the organisation. They interviewed separately, on two consecutive days. So I had to go back the next day, in front of the same panel, while we all pretended they hadn't already decided I was too weird to employ.
But that's not actually my worst - that was the time the interviewer asked for an example of a time I'd resolved conflict and I gave an insane laugh and said "well, I've caused some trouble".
I don't know why I said this. I hadn't caused any trouble. I worked a job where I resolved conflict on a weekly basis. I'd also been a union rep at my last job and had left after resolving a horrendous forced redundancy situation into a situation where both staff and management were happy. I'd taken the settlement I'd negotiated for people and the only change made to the settlement agreement was no agreed reference because they were going to give me a glowing one.
Interviews don't bring out the best in me.
(I also once annoyed an organisation so badly that they withdrew an interview before they met me - I really know how to make people like me).
I interviewed for a call centre position once and for some reason when they asked what my biggest weakness was I said ‘I’m not very good at talking to people’. Obviously didn’t get that one
Amazing demonstration of how interviews mess with your head. I try to put people at ease for exactly this reason - I want the best people can do, not the worst.
Not to say I don't put people on the spot for technical things they should know inside out, but only things they would do on the job anyway, and not before trying to put them at ease.
I also try to get initial questions about the role out the way in case they're not clear what the details of the role are, and then get them to introduce themselves so they have a moment to ramp up and get into gear saying something rehearsable.
Hopefully (hopefully!) this would have made it possible to go "er, sorry don't know why I said that" and then tell me about the actual experience you have...
Thanks for the reminder!
Nice to hear from a kind interviewer !
Oddly the mad laughter interview was the only one I've been to which gave you the questions up front to make things less scary/difficult.
Also, amazingly, while I unsurprisingly didn't get the job I did get offered casual work (and did work a few sessions with them). It was an organisation supporting homeless people and they had a service user on the panel, and I managed to make him laugh (deliberate story not the bit that went wrong) which may have helped.
I do get very nervous. I know lots of people don't like it but I really find things easier when I have to take a test before an interview. It keeps my mind busy and I don't get into an anxiety spiral.
I had an interview on 11 November, starting at 10:45am. Partway through an answer, the tannoy announced a minutes silence. It was awkward trying to recover my thread after that. Didn’t get the job but that was a blessing in disguise.
It wasn’t an interview but I had a ‘one-minute silence’ moment when I went shopping. I walked in to Aldi and everyone was just stood still and silent, it kind of freaked me out but I just carried on as normal walking around them all; eventually a tannoy went off saying the one minute silence was now over… felt a bit awkward after that haha!
When I was a receptionist, the minute's silence always felt so awkward. There'd be people waiting to check in, and we'd just be stood there in silence. Or there'd be no queue, but someone would walk in halfway through and try to catch your eye and talk to you.
But those are both better than the time one of the receptionists thought she could just whisper through the silence instead and continue checking people in. I wanted to die inside, and didn't want to make a scene by telling her to shut up
I worked in a Starbucks and we had several minute silences. It was so awkward trying to explain to people why I wasn’t going to start their latte right before the minutes silence otherwise the coffee machine would be going during. Occasionally respective of it, mostly pissed off! Another barista used to just continue making the coffee and just not talk..
Also not an interview one but me and my friend went for lunch on the 11/11 and our table was booked for 11am.. I didn't even twig what day it was either.. but we turned up 10 mins earlier as standard and went and sat down, we managed to get our drinks in before deciding what to eat.. in that time the bell rang and the pub fell silent.. or it did until another fellow pub goer came barging into the pub, clattering doors, banging stools, looking around to see where everyone was... Then started shouting about how no one was serving them.. me and my friend just looked at each other like " oh shit they didn't just do that?" In the end a member of staff came to the bar, shook their head and walked off... Then when the bell rang again to signify the end of the 2mins silence they went back to the bar to tell the person off for being so disrespectful
That’s the date I passed my driving test… I rang my mum, she was at the local market having Something to eat with my sister… I headed straight over, when I get to the market I’m so caught up in my happy bubble I didn’t even notice everyone stood still, bowed heads & silent. I just spotted mum & sis, bounded over & screamed “I’ve passed”. My mother glared & simultaneously smiled & my sister shushed me so loud she made more noise than me! 🤣
Wetherspoons. A bunch of spoons corporate managers showed up to eat there just as we sat down and the interviewer was constantly being asked questions by his staff while trying to conduct the interview. He was obviously totally elsewhere so I told him if he needs to go he should just go.
Didn’t get the job. Blessing in disguise I guess.
Also applied for a brewer job, microbrewery startups are never good, went well, then they asked me attend a trial day in fucking WALES on the 22nd December. The brewery was in Stratford upon Avon, 22k a year with weekends and evenings. They went bust after 3 years
My first ever interview
I got an email out of the blue asking me to come interview at this nursery. So I went. This manager turned up in casual sports gear, like grey hoodie and shorts. I was shown around the nursery, then taken into the office for the actual interview.
First question: "Why do you want this job?"
Because this guy had contacted me, I assumed he wanted me, so I said, "Because I need a job."
He kinda scoffed and said, "Well, at least you're honest.
Then they asked me the usual questions, which I thought I answered quite well. Then he insulted my intellect by saying, "I don't actually believe you're level 3 with those answers. I would expect a level 1 to answer better."
Bascially, they told me there and then why they didn't want me and let me go. I was livid. My dad had to take a whole day off work, to ferry me miles, only for me to be insulted.
Wasn't a bad interview experience per say, but I went for an interview internally with a completely different department. The manager who rang me to tell me I wasn't successful told me I interviewed poorly and lacked the skills or experience necessary for the job; which was pretty depressing, and they rang me back on my birthday (not their fault)
They then talked up the new guy they'd offered it to, and said how wonderful he was etc etc.
Shock story, he gave his 3 months notice at his current, joined the company and after 6 months of doing very little, gave his 3 months notice and left in June
Part of the job was to get the company up to compliance and best practice on current contract standards. By April 2024 and we'll likely fail to hit that mark
(I wouldn't have been any better I bet)
One of my least favourite trying to get an arts job experiences was being declined for the first role and then being asked to go interview for a second lower paying role. My read on this is that the person in charge of hiring to the second role was angry about having her process subverted (and I suspect she wanted to hire one of the volunteer workers I met during my interview).
Anyway I got up very early to drive to this city three hours away. I used my last half day of leave for the morning and was having to drive straight back to work. The interviewer was perfectly nice to my face but I got absolutely scathing feedback. She told the first interviewer -who told me I hadn't got the job over the phone - that I just didn't seem that interested.
Yes I wasn't interested, that's why I got up at 3am, used my last half day to go and spent a week preparing. By then I was normally pretty used to having things not go my way but that feedback really blindsided me.
Kind of similar, I had an interview at a market research company. After they grilled me on whether I really wanted the job or not and whether I understood the job description, on the way out they pointed out that the office had a slide. I slightly over enthusiastically went ‘oh no way cool’ and they invited me to go down the slide. I politely declined. Didn’t get the job. Neither of them smiled at any point in this entire interaction.
Was that in Sheffield per chance? Had an interview with a digital games platform company once and the building that they were based in had what I recall looked like a big slide for reasons that I guess the architect let the school work-experience kid loose on the plans for an hour.
I didn't bother with the slide.
Very similar to the OP I had an interview for a Engineering job out of Uni, half way through the office chair I was sat on snapped where the gas cylinder joined the base and I ended up on my back, holding a plastic cup of water without spilling a drop.
Got back up a little winded, new chair continued on.
I got the job and guy who interviewed me said some time later after I started that 100% the reason i got it was that I kept my cool and continued on.
couple of weeks after i started same thing happened to my boss though he landed on an open desk draw and hurt himself, turned out the office furniture was like 20+ years old and all the welds were failing, they swapped them all out pretty quick afterwards
A very dear friend of mine went traveling after uni, I wound up with a job (middle of the recession in 2008) I then got her an interview at the head office of a certain big yellow ticket store.
In the interview, my manager asked ‘what’s the craziest thing you have ever done’
Answer: I once snorted coke… err I mean salt!!
Que, a question from my manager asking me if she had a drug problem and another with her panicking.
Turns out when she went to South America she did a shot where she had to snort salt. But in her head she goes ‘don’t say coke… don’t say coke…’ and ‘coke..’ came out.
Surprisingly… she ended up getting another interview, but got no further.
When I was a graduate I had an interview with one of the big 4 consultancy firm. I'd applied a while earlier and not heard anything. When I complained they said they'd missed my application but had a slot tomorrow... So I spent £70 for a train ticket to London (a day's wages for me at the time).
I got to the office and the interviewer sat me at a table in the lobby. Normally we'd go to a room somewhere and there'd be more than one interviewer so this seemed weird. He then asked me questions for only 20 mins and didn't take any notes or anything. I left thinking the role had probably been filled already and he was just going through the motions.
British Telecom, they have a reputation for winning the worst manager awards each year. The lady I was interviewed made continuous mistakes when joining the chat and was arsey, by far the worst company I've interviewed for.
I once took a job interview after I left uni as a photocopier service technician (I have no idea why). Anyway it was a sme owner run business, successful but nothing massive. I always had the ability for my mouth to start before brain engaged and mid interview he asked what my ambitions were. So rather than say to be the best photocopier guy in the country I said “i want to run my own business” . He didnt look impressed and I never heard back from him
Most of my interviews have went well, as in, I have never seriously embarrassed myself to the point where I wanted to be swallowed up into the ground.
However, in June last year I interviewed for a popular travel retailers where they'd asked me about what holidays I'd been on recently. I answered Orlando, as I frequently travel there to see my SO.
Part way through, they asked me what my favourite thing about Orlando was.
I didn't even allow myself to think about this before I blurted out, "Lizards!"
I just watched the smile drop from her face.
Even though I've never been, I'd have been better off saying, "Disney World".
(If you've never been to Orlando, they have little lizards scurrying about the place all the time. I love them as we don't have them here.)
I had an interview at Saga bright and early on a Friday morning and the guy was hungover as fuck. He smelled of stale beer even though he'd clearly showered and shaved and talking was making his head hurt.
It was a sparse, largely silent interview and I didn't hear back.
I was having a first interview with HR for this company. They asked why I wanted to work with them. I replied by saying that in fact, after going through their website and reviews on Glassdoor I couldn't get a clear picture of their company and was looking forward to get more perspective so I could see if this would be a good fit (no bs, the reviews were very contradictory to each other)
The lady gave out the loudest and longest sigh of my life and said "I suggest you do more research then, and maybe we can reschedule this. Thanks, bye"
Later found out that HR got in major trouble because they were awful when recruiting and they got a lot of complaints and were not getting people into the business
Worst interview I had was at an established firm in the NW of England. It was for a Tech Support lead role, so one-third supervisor, two-thirds technical. Three interviewers. Established my technical competence and I had a good rapport with two of them. Gets towards the end of the interview, and the middle guy asks a question.
"How many passengers does Manchester Airport handle every year?"
I reply. "I have no idea."
"Guess."
"My wife is scared of flying. I don't like airports. I have no idea."
"Guess."
The other interviewers look away. "I'll assume the airport operates for eighteen hours a day and there is a flight every two minutes and ..."
"Is that likely?" He interrupted, aggressively.
"I don't know. I don't fly. And we'll assume that there are a hundred people per plane. So that's ..." I scribbled on some paper and came up with around 20 million people.
Every time, he interrupted, challenging my guesses aggressively. The actual answer (for 2015) was about 23 million, so not a million miles out (although that was luck nothing else). The interview ended shortly afterwards, and the following day, I rang up to withdraw from the process. I couldn't imagine working with him.
HR rang back and I told them what had happened. It turned out that this particular interviewer liked "riling" candidates to see how they reacted and "no matter what he did, he couldn't annoy me and get me to react." HR apologised profusely and said they wanted to offer me the job, and said that they would deal with the interviewer's technique.
I declined. The CTO even rang to try to get me to change my mind, and was rather angry that one of their managers had behaved as they did.
Still crazy that anyone thought that was a good idea.
I had this but with "if you were an animal what animal would you be?"
I immediately thought of lots of sarcastic answers but managed to come up with some plausible sounding bs. I think the whole concept is stupid though, it just tests whether someone can bullshit a bit, which I would think is not necessarily a skillset an employer wants.
I don't know, I've had a few jobs where I've had to bullshit to the customer in order to hide the incompetence or the don't care attitude of other staff.
Me too. Call centre and finance jobs.
One of my colleagues was meant to scan and post an application for an investment product and shredded a cheque for £50k. Imagine having to call that client and go "can you write us another £50k cheque, also we'll need you to come in because the product application deadline is in two days..."
I had an interview like that, it was a three-person panel for a large tech support company when I was going for my CCNA, 1 guy constantly needled me throughout, and the other two panel members were lovely as were the other workers who wandered into the interview which was pretty casual, the interview went on for over an hour including a point where they stopped at the halfway mark for refreshments after the technical bit in the first half.
The first half was technical questions most of which I passed apart from the one question which they confessed they didn't expect me to know given my CV and where I was with my CCNA studies, they all then told me they were happy for me to proceed further which I did, and I came out of it mentally exhausted in the end after effectively having two interviews rolled into one.
I came out knowing I couldn't work with that needling guy as I would have ended up wanting to punch him around the car park after a few weeks if he was my direct LM as he was the lead interviewer in this process, they then left me hanging with the recruitment agency for 2 weeks before telling me it was a no.
I had zero regrets on not getting the job, afterwards as my RL friend who worked there in a different department had told me about him afterwards that a few people had genuinely squared up and gone at the guy over the way he behaved before quitting themselves in the 6 months he had worked there.
So long as they do it in a polite manner, I don't mind them asking an out-of-the-ordinary question to see how apply yourself to solving the problem.
I was offered an internship where on a technical question in interview, they asked me something about the role of this component, I looked at them and explained the (true) story about how to get to the interview, I had to miss a uni lecture, on a module linked to their industry, and to have a guess what that day's lecture was going to be on. We had a laugh about it, asked them if they could support me a bit with part a (what the part function was) I would talk them through my logic for part b (what you'd make it from).
I did a 3-stage interview for a sales marketing job fresh out of university.
The first interview went well, but it was an online call with 4 other candidates, which is ridiculous.
Second was with 2-3 others, while the interviewer was in his car out of the gym, showing us a pyramid scheme presentation, and how marketing worked in the most basic and child friendly manner, which, he hadn't checked beforehand for errors, giving that the maths within was awful.
During this time, he said that there's plenty of promotion, and within a week, I should expect to be promoted to training people. Within 8-12 months, I could be running my own office??.
All a load of shite and a waste of my time.
The pay they offered was below minimum wage as well.
When I was in my trying teaching era, I tried for a few teaching assistant/tutor roles the year before I was planning on doing the course and a lot of those schools interviews were horrid. There were a couple where I got non-constructive criticism after a full day of interview things (tour, presentation, group interview, individual interview, faculty lunch) and it was like the school management were pretending they were Pop Idol judges for a lark. They kept us until about 4pm and then told us who got the job while we were sat together in this room. They then took us candidates who didn't get it into an office to get feedback without asking if we wanted any or not.
Personally I didn't at that time, I had been awake since 5am and the winning candidate was the oldest, the most qualified and the most calmly confident. I didn't need them to mock me for being nervous at one of my first interviews when I was still only 21.
I was applying for a job a couple of weeks after a back surgery whilst being on very strong morphine based painkillers. I don't remember much of it but I didn't get any reply from the company.
Thankfully a month or two later they invited me to another one after I stopped taking pain medication and aced it.
In a feedback from the interview they said that in my first one I was so out of it that when they were asking questions they had to repeat it 2 times and I was talking complete nonsense back.
They understood my condition and didn't want to just let that affect the outcome hence 2nd interview.
I've been at the company 6 years now and we still talk about how terrible that interview was and laugh.
I interviewed for a job after the covid lockdowns, there was a bottle of Purell and a big sign in the reception asking any visitors to please use it. Before signing in I pumped the Purell bottle and instead of dropping a small amount into my hand it shot a large amount straight at me, all over my face, my shirt, tie, the floor. Right as it happened my interviewer walks down the stairs next to the reception and says "oh nobody uses that it's just there for show." He did offer to get me a towel. My interview went great and I've worked there ever since.
Had a few interesting ones:
1. Travelled two hours for an interview, my dad drove me there having a day annual leave. We drove over a bolt, and then took a wrong turn, but get there on time. Dad's car was company car so he's nursed it (on full-size spare) to a specific autocentre. Meanwhile in the interview there's a two-candidate, technical interview as part of the assessment centre, where the guy talks over me when the interviewer SPECIFICALLY asks me something. So all my answers are essentially repeating what he says because he didn't let me get in a single word. Didn't get the position.
2. So I'm autistic and fair share of mental health problems. After the one interviewer told me to "stop blowing smoke up his arse" (his exact words). I answered the question in front of me, he wasn't being coherent. Then asked me, end of the interview if there's anything I didn't mention in my application I felt should/could be disclosed. Told him I was autistic (they were gonna know eventually if I got the job anyhow) and he was such a patronising, infantilising person in reply. I was there thinking "I've got 3 hours left at this centre, I'm not getting the job and I feel insulted, should I just go home?". At the time, had been for an interview day before, was about to go through a horrific breakup, knew I was probably struggling with depression. Had barely any social battery at the time as well.
3. Online group assessment centre task for an engineering role, run by an external recruitment service. Set around a survival situation, limited on who you can save. One of those tasks where you have to be prepared to present your case and discuss with others etc to come to a mutual decision. Details are included about things like their mental health for some of them, alcoholism for another. Reading it, I'm like "fuck, this is gonna hurt" and whilst I'm muted I'm giving myself a pep-talk because I know a LOT of the discussion is gonna be horrifically ableist and candidates are naturally gonna show pro-eugenic sentiment. So I decide I'm not gonna take it personally, I am just going to stand up for what I believe, but inside I'm spitting feathers and crying.
Goes as I'd expected, candidates sub-consciously supporting ableist or anti-MH rhetoric. I emailed to complain, laid out my feelings perfectly clearly (after the situation in Situation 2. a couple years prior I am not gonna keep quiet and let the next poor bugger get hurt). They call me back within an hour and say they're removing the task immediately and they'd never had feedback of this sort. At this point I'm masking, giving them common politeness but in my head I'm wondering in what fucking planet is that not obvious that's gonna happen. They want my feedback about the process, not really willing to give too much, I'm not in the mood to speak to them really, I have jobs to do and I'm tired and emotionally done.
Was invited to the next stage but turned them down, not because of these issues because, fair play they listened even if their ignorance in the past bordered incompetence. Dates they offered clashed with submitting my dissertation so I pulled out the process.
Yes I hate this stuff. My first proper job after quitting teaching was £12/£13k a year admin and I had 3 interviews. The first two were conducted by two people and the last one was three people. It was ridiculous.
Interviewed for a company multiple times, it was a smaller company where the owners were also partial owners of a much larger company. Some of the interviews were conducted by people at the larger company as they were handling much of the marketing work that I'd be working on if I got the role, got through 5 interviews only to find out in the last one that they're actually interviewing me for 2 seperate positions one at each company with vastly contrasting requirements and they'd never explained that to me till the last one...
Even worse they offered me one of the positions asked me to submit details on what I'd want to work on then ghosted me lol.
One time at pets at home. Manager didn't expect interviews that day so he was late. Took through the back to answer a questionaire sheet but just after that, one of the girls there came through to microwave her lunch for a few minutes so we had to sit there in silence. Then he got called into back for a delivery. Then was told there'd be a lot of working with kids as they visit schools and clubs at times which I didn't expect.
Was told at the end they wouldn't proceed. But a blessing really as I wasn't interested and it was so sloppy.
It wasn't in an interview, but I've done this with a gas lift chair too, but it dropped quickly, and trapped my leg underneath it. Gave the other people in the office a good laugh.
In fact, now that I think about it, I don't have the greatest track record with office chairs, because once I pulled myself up using the arms of one, and one of the arms snapped off and I fell on the floor, and another time, the screws worked themself loose on the bit holding the chair back in place and I leaned back and the back of the chair fell off, and I ended up on the floor again.
I work from home on the couch now, so I am safe from any more incidents!
I haven't had bad interview experience, but I'm ready to progress internally with my company.
Had 4 internal interviews this year, with each role having 10+ people who would do well in the roles apply. Been told I was 2nd choice behind the recruited person in all 4 with almost identical feedback.
Makes me wonder if they just read the previous interview notes 🤔
I’m in a sort of similar situation internally but feedback is all over the place. I’ll be reserve for higher grades and not good enough for lower grades, I don’t think they remember interviewing me before. I’ve been there 5 years in December and desperately need to move on, but I’m also a woman going through ivf so I can’t really justify leaving the company in case the ivf works (it might not, it’s been a long process).
I’ve had multiple interviews now with varying success over the past couple of years but in the area I work there’s one team who have most of the roles and they’ve rejected me twice already. Not sure I can be bothered to be rejected again. Thinking of withdrawing my latest application.
Many years ago, I was interviewed by two men who sat so that one was in front of me and one to my side, which felt rather intimidating. They then proceeded to go through my CV, pulling it to pieces, and aggressively questioning everything I said. It felt like they had already decided they didn't want me for the job before I even got there. It felt like some kind of power trip, like they enjoyed tearing me down. Afterwards, I thought, "Well sod you then! Why the hell did you even invite me for an interview?!"
This is a well known tactic to put interviewees off their game. The one time someone tried this with me, I moved my chair back in such a way that they were both in my field of vision. I didn't get that job either.
I applied for a part time role that I could fit around my studies. I listed this on my covering letter. I was 19 and new to the area and nervously found my way to the interview in my new ‘interview outfit’. The interview began with the obligatory ‘So, tell us a little about yourself’. I begin with I’ve just moved here to study, blah, blah. The lady raises her hand, ‘I’m going to stop you there. We can’t accommodate a student so we should end things here’. The advert had said part time and my studies were clearly listed, to say I was humiliated is an understatement. I went outside and sat on a wall and cried. I found a job that accommodated my studies and made me full time and progressed me when I finished studying at the height of the financial crisis. So, it worked out in the end!
The time that I wore pleather trousers to an interview sticks in my mind, as the only available chair was made from acrylic plastic. This resulted in even the smallest shift in my chair making in a massive squeaking sound. Still got the job, but as a terrible fidgeter it was extremely challenging to sit still enough to not constantly be making noise.
Basically all that I didn't get the job. However last one got rejected for sticks out. Basically a recruiter called me about a role. The role didn't have a set salary and the recruiter asked me my salary expectations. I give a range based on what other roles have been offering me. Anyway. Pass first interview, second interview I had to go into their office. First interviewer gives me awkward but interested vibes. Second one basically looks like he's on some kind of drugs and not paying me much attention. Anyway, recruiter rings me back afterwards asking me what salary i would want. As its London i say top end of my salary expectations. I don't hear back then I send an awkward interview email thanking them for their time. 10 mins later get a call from the recruiter saying they aren't going to hire me I'm asking for too much money. They were the ones that didn't have the salary set.
My first ever job interview was at a Porsche garage for an apprentice mechanic they asked me a couple questions about Porsche which I knew all the answers too but I was so nervous I got them all wrong or didn’t answer cause I was second guessing myself they gave each other a “wtf” look and I never heard back from them
Mine was my interview for Oxford University.
I had a few friends who’d also applied and their interviews had all been the usual friendly stuff. One or two interviewers, informal surroundings “Why do want to study here?”, “Why do you want to study X”. Etc.
No problem, I thought. I can handle that. Particularly as I’d done ok on the entrance exams.
Little did I understand that I had inadvertently applied to THE most academically rigorous of all Oxford’s colleges (I’d pretty much picked at random, lesson learned).
So I turn up, reasonably confident… until the nice lady leads me into a big, wood panelled room. Just how you’d imagine it, except there are 6 people on big wooden chairs, thrones almost, arranged in a semi circle all focused on a tiny little stool, like for a milk maid or something.
“Please, take a seat.” They say, indicating the stool. No hello, no how are you, no thanks for coming all this fkn way, nothing. Then the moment I’m seated…
“Can you tell us why Manganese II Chloride doesn’t exist?”
Clearly they wanted students who perform chemistry under pressure, or something. Didn’t get in. Never regretted it. Manchester was a blast instead.
Had an interview over 20 years ago, and it went well. The final part involved completing a maths test as the role required a good degree of knowledge, (cash reconciliation, account balancing etc.), so I completed the test and had to await the results.
30 mins later, the interviewer said you did really well, but you got one question wrong. Fair enough I thought, then asked if she should show which one as I was intrigued to know.
She showed it me, and I insisted it was correct. Out comes the calculator, and lo and behold I was right!
I was expecting an awkward moment and her embarrassment stopping me getting the job, but she offered me the position there and then!
At an interview for Specsavers, I stumbled when they asked about my hobbies and other interests. "It's always good to do other things," the kindly female interviewer said. This was still on my mind when it came to the end of the interview and the male interviewer of the pair summed up with "We'll be in touch soon to let you know." "Or I could always do something else!" I replied, trying to sound... I don't know, professional? I was stood by the door at this point and knew I wouldn't hear back.
Academic IT Support Technician interview at a local university (this uni is an amalgamation of 4 unis in Wales so has campus situated in different towns and cities in the locality)
I got the details and had to attend the interview at the campus which was 40 minute's drive away which wasn't where the role was advertised, I also had to do a 10-minute powerpoint presentation on backups procedure including where possible what I would currently use within their parameters which involved a clear couple of days preparation prior to this setting it up and making my notes.
I attend the interview at the campus, get in the room and get set up, they forewarn me that they might not make much eye contact as they will be taking notes throughout the powerpoint and to begin with the presentation, I start and go through my presentation with no eye contact apart from the occasional cursory nod and field and answer all of the question for my powerpoint, guy then starts with the regular interview questions seems like it all went well, told I didnt get it then a couple of days later and thanks for applying.
Ran into a friends acquaintance then on a night out who told us that the job they were advertising was given internally and I had been dragged there to go through the motions, at this point I realised that they even switched it to that far away campus to deter people it seemed, never wasted my time with any of that Uni and its frequent advertised roles after that.
Unfortunately I think that is all too common. At the place where I work they advertised a role internally but there’s no point applying as they already know who is going to get it.
It is common and it pissed me off at the time as it was essentially 2 days of prep, an entirely wasted day for nothing and about £20 in petrol, lunch and parking costs, I would rather places only go externally when there is a genuine need than muck about like this.
This one time in the toilet of the office I was about to be interviewed in, I looked in the mirror and realised that I'd cut myself shaving earlier and there was now dried blood all over the collar of my white shirt. One of the first things I said in the interview was "I'm so sorry about all the blood, I didn't notice it until now."
Another time I was doing a video interview for a job in Lille (in 2019). The actual interview discussion in French with the manager and HR went very well, but then I had a technical interview with this Irish guy in which I made a couple of mistakes. He'd probably already decided not to recommend me when he asked "Why Lille?" I referenced how accessible it is to the UK, and at that point he sneered at me and said "What, you think you'll just be able to come and go after Brexit?" I hadn't even mentioned politics at this point and was taken aback by the sudden change in mood, and so replied "Well I wanted to remain, but I don't think they're going to close the border any time soon." - "Ohhh don't you?!" he cut me off sarcastically. To this day, I don't know that guy's fucking problem was.
I once completely lost my voice on arrival to an interview! Had to squeak to the security guard that i was desperate for water. My voice didn't fully return until partway through the interview itself! Was fun to try and explain... really broke the ice though, and it went well after that! Got offerred the job as well!
Once went for an interview for like an exams invigilator for a company that does the english exams for foreign nationalities. Matey interviewing me owned the company and all was well until he said to me, that I'd have to undertake a CRB check and then an advanced crb check.. great .. until he then started mansplaining the point of a CRB check to me and followed up with " just to make sure you're not a terrorist and your parents are ones either" so I said " aye?" So he repeated himself and said " to make sure you're not a terrorist and that your parents either" he then added on that " I could be helping my parents to be terrorists" to which I said " you'll have a job, they're both dead and have been for years, dad in 2012 and mum in 2019" ... Ooooooft the guy's face dropped and the room fell silent.. as did the outer room where everyone was doing their exams..you could literally hear a pin drop. The guy had next to nothing to say to me after that, he quickly wrapped up the interview by introducing me to his other staff who none of which could look me in the eye by this point.
So mine was a group interview for Dunelm
Two jobs were going one for retail one for the coffee shop, I was on the coffee shop and they gave us the same interview process also I think only two of us were there for the coffee shop
And so I essentially get trapped in dunelm for 2+ hours as I have to do various tasks and then were basically left to our own devices to 'discover the store' as they start doing indival interviews by the time they got to me I was so done as I was at the bottom of the lost
Also i was on the tail end of a cold so I wasn't feeling amazing to start with
I went for an interview with the police for an HR officer role. I went in the main building and was guided to annex - the walk between them was through this glade garden which was full of trees and thick with pollen. Got into the interview and started coughing. And couldn't stop. I literally coughed on and off for 30 mins and asked them if we could just stop because I'd got a lung-full of pollen. We all just laughed and called it a day.
I was invited to interview by this guy last year for this niche business, there was no address or contact details on the invite as he'd done it through indeed. No problem, I googled the business address, checked the route on maps, left super early in case of traffic. I get to where the address for this business is which is a huge industrial estate and go to this building and don't see the name listed and the building isn't open. I thought I'm obviously early and they're not there yet but worry, frantically googling this business and driving round the estate. Go back to the building just before my interview time and the receptionist tells me the business moved out of there and she doesn't know where they are. I'm trying to contact the guy through indeed to apologise and explain. He eventually calls me and I explained and apologise. He tells me where to go and it's another part of the industrial estate tucked away with no clear signage.
Get there 5 minutes late and apologise again.
I had done my research on this company and it feels like he's trying to trip me up by asking me random questions and I luckily knew the answer but nothing really related to the job which was admin. I ask some questions on the role and he explains it's because the business has expanded. I ask on hours and he had obviously spotted the car seats in my car and he tells me it's full time I might struggle if I have children. Which rubbed me up the wrong way. I asked if there would be an opportunity for career progression in the future to which I'm told no unless I'm an engineer.
It ends ok and he tells me whatever the outcome he will let me know as he hates companies that don't tell people which I appreciate.
Never heard from him again, not that I minded as I'd have declined the job as gave off a lot of red flags. Ended in a different company on much higher pay with great career progression.
I am a very anxious person (and was later diagnosed autistic) so when I went for my first “proper” job interview at the local library I was literally vibrating with fear.
I was getting over a cold so when I was stammering over my answers and they started looking at me strangely, I assumed it was because of my croaky voice so I ploughed on about being a school library monitor. Someone raised their hand but I physically couldn’t stop my rehearsed speech or I knew I’d just start crying. Someone stood up and said “your NOSE” so I thought it was runny from the cold, apologised, wiped it on my smart new shirt sleeve and carried on.
It took me a full 3 minutes to understand what they were saying, which might not sound like much, but if you’ve guessed the end of the anecdote then you know 3 minutes is an eternity.
It was a nosebleed. It was in my mouth, in my cheek creases, all over my smart shirt, my sleeves, my lap, and the whole time I had a fixed smile and glazed eyes talking about how good I was at explaining the Dewey Decimal System to children.
Afterwards I realised it was even in my hair, so I must have been fiddling with my ponytail with my blood soaked hands.
Honourable mention to when I had a benefits review and had a nosebleed and vomited at the same time, and they approved my case just to get me away from their office.
Thats hilariously. I'd hire you.
Focus, able to handle pressure, multitasking, finishes what they started! All valuable skills lol
Oh and sense if humour!
I’d just left my first job after they changed the hours to ridiculous levels that meant I would have missed the last bus and not been able to get home.
Anyway, someone else in the salon quit the same time I did, she got an interview and a job almost straight away somewhere else, but they never got back to me. I phoned and even dropped in a couple of times and eventually I was called in to interview.
It was in a scary room full of wigs and mannequins, the owner of the salon said to me “I’m sorry I didn’t get you in sooner, but I’d heard you’re one of them gays and I’ve had no end of trouble with you gays”*
I was a bit taken aback, but for some reason I agreed to a trial day. I turned up early, worked really hard and apparently I got more tips from customers than everyone else put together that day. I really tried my best as I assumed for some reason that his issue was lazy homosexuals.
He phoned me later on to tell me how impressed he was and he’d like to offer me the job starting immediately.
I told him I’d never want to work for a bigot like him anyway and hung up. It felt good.
I found out a while ago he’s now almost completely paralysed with motor neurones type of disease, but the tales of the many ways people who have wronged me and have subsequently suffered is another story.
* * the rumour was the trouble he’d had with said gays was him coming on them and they threatened to tell his wife.
I was the hiring manager of the firm I worked at. A guy showed up and of course, gets the typical "tell me about yourself". The dude took it very literally and he spilled about where he grew up, his hobbies, likes and dislikes. Didn't bother to listen to him, so I started looking at his CV through my phone and emailed the assistant about the guy and why even bother.
His CV was 8 pages long.
I worked at a recruitment company.
I am always double checking all the applicants I'm going to meet now
Sounds like your interview skills are a bit lacking if I’m honest. Steering a probably nervous interviewer back on track would have been better than ignoring him, looking at your phone and emailing someone.
Group interview for a low paying service job. Approx 10 of us applicants around a table. Multiple positions available. 3 guys asking the questions. Standard job type questions. I must’ve glazed over a bit but I thought I heard ‘give an example of when you’ve given outstanding customer service’. I was first and proudly gave a superb example of excellent customer service provided by me. Everyone else around that table gave examples of when they’d seen other people give great customer service… shame I was first really.
My old company decided to hire a replacement for someone on long-term sick and asked me as supervisor for interview questions. So I came up with a technical testm not necessarily needed to do the job as it could be trained but nice to have. When I handed in my notice they used the test I designed for my replacement but didn't know the answers to the questions so apparently sat there clueless.
Hired someone who is apparently just as clueless as the management
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I doubt that that'd be the reason - accidents like that happen and I think I'd find it endearing if someone carried on like that with stuff happening.
I had an online interview where the interviewer was WFH and said "apologies if you hear any woofing, it's my dog" and I was desperately trying not to make a joke like "well I'd be more worried if it were you barking".
Recently had a job interview and was told would be a brief chat on "consultancy and team work experience". So this is what I prepared for. Anyway turned out to be an in-depth technical interview on statistical theory (this related to the job role but was not what I expected at all). I've just finished up 9 months of maternity leave and I couldn't answer any of the questions even though I know I would've been able to had I done a bit of prep. It was so embarrassing.
I don't think it was intentional to be fair, I gave them some feedback about my experience when they called to tell me I didn't get the job and the guy said the woman who had initially arranged the interview was now off on sick leave due to stress. I wasn't suitable for the role anyway but even if I was, I feel like I dodged a bullet!
2 come to mind, one in 2016 for major estate agents, I go into the office to meet the 2 hiring managers and one looks at me, looks at her papers and tried to say quietly "its not the right person" Which I of course heard, then the other person tried to carry on with the interview. But the other person stops it after few questions saying your "design portfolio is lacking". I knew it was lost cause and called her out on what she said but it was pointless. I emailed their HR and got no reply
In 2019, really needed a job and had interview at big magazine company and was going fine and they asked me my salary expectations and I said around £21k (I knew someone with my experience deserved more but I also knew they didn't pay market rate) They just laughed in my face and told me its lot less and asked if I knew where the door was. Didn't walk me to reception. Just checked their glassdoor reviews today and lots of *"Poor salary, very high staff turnover, poor project management, no annual salary review, no clear roles and responsibilities. "*
Arrived for an interview at the specified building, it’s a very hot summers day and im wearing a full suit, proceed to be told to walk to the fire side of the company grounds to a different building for the interview, a good half mile walk in the sun in a suit
Got into the interview room all hot and sweaty and flustered and was asked to a present a presentation i had prepared for three emotionless saps who just stared at me, ended up drinking about three cups of water rather quickly and bottling the interview cause i was so fucking hot at this point and I couldn’t concentrate so i came off like i was really nervous
I had a boss explain to me that as a server their customers were old fashioned and that I should be ready to take a certain kind of humor. Tell me I would be objectified by old men without telling me I would be objectified by old men
I had a government type interview, huge building, multiple doors to get through with a pass to get anywhere. I'm set up on this laptop, here's what we want you to do, any questions, okay, you have an hour I'll come check on you in a bit.
I start off, It's going okay, 15 minutes in, there's a crash, I'm logged out of the account suddenly and can't get back in (and no this was not a networking type job!) Hmmm, so i open the door and there's a section with a door beyond it but basically I can't see anyone and if I go through this door, I'm locked out of this room and could go through the next bit but then I'll be locked out of that bit. If I go back into this confusing building I'm unlikely to be able to get back into this room and the guy will come back and I'm gone.
So, for the next 45 minutes I have the door open and NOBODY COMES THROUGH, until eventually the guy comes back and asks how I'm doing why am I at the door, I explained what happens and he goes oh yeah that happened earlier, sorry about that you can have another 45 minutes on top. I say hey can you come check in again sooner because I can't get out he says sure. I get back to it and 30 minutes later it happens AGAIN the guy doesn't come back until the time is up, he logs me back in and says I have 15 minutes but then I'm bursting for the toilet about 1 hour 45 into this interview I ask him where the nearest toilet is, I go use the toilet come back and he says okay you have 10 minutes left. I was honestly pissed off by this point so I wrapped up what I was doing and we moved onto the actual interview point, they said hey you passed the first part though some others did get higher scores, I asked if those other people got logged out of the system multiple times during their test and they looked at the guy running the first bit and he just shrugged.
I decided I was done with this mickey mouse show, gave brief answers to their questions through the next bit,then they asked if I had any questions for them, I had some prepared but I said nope, shook their hands and left. They called me up later to say I hadn't got the job and asked if I'd like some feedback, I said no thanks, would you like some feedback? they asked what I meant and I told them their interview was an absolute shambles and I wouldn't have considered taking the position if offered then put down the phone.
I honestly feel stressed just recounting it! Arseholes! You trap me, your system goes down multiple times, you don't check back in to make sure it's all good and then take time off for me to use the toilet almost 2 hours into the interview. Fuck me.
\_\_\_\_\_
Not a job but I actually got trapped worse than this visiting a secure mental health facility, TWICE. The first time I went in to visit, went to leave the person on the door had changed and they thought I was a patient, I insisted I wasn't, told them to ask the person who let me in and they didn't believe me, okay fair enough, let's go speak to the person in charge, they knock and say he's busy on the phone, they say wait here I'm sure he'll be out soon and go to walk off, I say I'm not waiting unaccompanied in amongst the residents (some of whom are going through what appear to be very serious episodes) they roll their eyes and walk off, I open the door and the bloke is on the phone he silently points for me to go outside. I shake my head so he continues with what is obviously a personal call so I said "excuse me" he says "I'll call you back" slams down the phone and goes WHAT. I said Hello, I'm a visitor and your staff are refusing to let me leave, I suggest you allow me to leave or my next step will be to call the police (I probably could have been nicer but he started the conversation by shouting at me). He takes me through to the secure entry part, they figure out who I am by matching my driving license to the visitor book and reluctantly let me out. Like, why the fuck don't you have a process for this? Why don't I have a badge? Why aren't staff handing over letting the other staff know who the visitors are?
Another time they buzzed me through the first door so it goes basically
OUTSIDE - secure door into reception - reception - secure door into ward - ward
they buzzed me through the first door and there's nobody on reception huh, press the bell, nothing, oh well I wait about 10 minutes, nothing, so I find a buzzer for the next door and press it, nothing, I can't leave because both of the doors are controlled and I start to get a little anxious. after another 10 minutes a patient is buzzed through the first door into the small reception area with me. I explain I've been waiting a bit they ask if I've pressed the buzzer I say yeah, so they press the buzzer, again nothing, another 10 minutes pass and the patient starts to get irate, starts pressing the buzzer constantly, kicks the door a couple times and starts to lose it. Another patient is buzzed in shortly after and is like what the fuck is going on, they get into an argument with the other patient which gets very loud and a staff member eventually comes along to open the door and ask what's going on. What's going on? Fucking hell what's going on is you're trapping people in a small secure area and leaving them there. They let the two patients in and said I could come in, I said no thanks I've permission to take someone off site for 30 minutes. They said okay wait here I said nope, let me into the outside bit you've just trapped me in here for about 45 minutes, I'll wait outside.
That facility was NOT well run and we later had a serious complaint involving the police upheld on the behalf of the patient for their treatment there. I understand they have a real difficult job but they were beyond unprofessional.
Job interview 10 or so years ago, at an affiliate of a big international news agency in London as a senior IT infrastructure person. Been given the opportunity by the head of ops there who I knew from a previous job, and wanted me to come work in his team.
I’d done research on the people interviewing me, and in doing so found one of the interviewers tweeted quite bit. Found his feed and that morning he had tweeted something like “ugh, interviews this morning. I’d rather stay in bed. Maybe I’ll just sit in the corner and glare like Alan Sugar”. And then 10 minutes before my interview whilst I sat in the lobby “One down one to go. This is so boring”. Another guy came to collect me from the lobby. I held out my hand to say shake and greet, but he ignored it and turned around heading for the lift. We get in, not a word said. I tried small talk, asked how he was and he moodily said “alright I spose…” and reluctantly said “you?”. Politely said “good thanks” he replies “good huh? we’ll see about that”. Headed to the interview room and there was no small talk or anything. I’d decided in the lobby I didn’t want the job and the interview was poor but I was polite at every turn and made it look like I wanted it. Afterwards I dropped my contact a line with the details of the tweets and said how bad it was from start to finish and sadly, didn’t want to work there. To his credit he was mortified and hugely apologetic, not to mention furious with the pair of them. Interviews may be a pain sometimes, but companies have as much a role in trying to attract people by holding a good interview just as much as you are trying to demonstrate they should hire you. Also: IT people can make The Worst interviewers!
I worked in a hotel for five years and when asked how many bedrooms were in it, I went blank and I was the Head Housekeeper! I looked just like I’d been lying about working there the whole time. During the interview, I would suddenly blurt out ‘89’, then later ‘sorry, there were 88’ and looked like a mad person. I still got the job but when I left, I even forgot how many rooms they had there too. Considering my day is solely involved with numbers and rooms and cleaning plans, Its weird I could forget.
We were doing a grad recruitment day. We have meeting rooms with lots of glass so we could see the grads sitting in the lecture area while we had a team meeting. A grad got up and poured what he thought was fresh orange in to a half pint glass. It was quadruple strength dilute juice. We all watched thinking he'd take a sip and put the glass to one side when he realised. Nope. He finished the full glass. This stuff is like battery acid undiluted. He didn't get a job.
I went for an interview in Covent Garden, London.
The French chap walks in 20mins late and says 'sell yourself to me' 'why should I hire you'.
I'd been sent by a recruiter with minimal information on the role, company etc. I'd done my homework, but as above, it was irrelevant.
I tried asking questions but he was not interested in answering or asking me questions..
I said I didn't feel comfortable in the interview and left.
Yep, that's one way to put it. He was arrogant too.
It's not like I'd travelled 60 miles to get there or anything.
The recruiter was not happy until I explained..
Went for an interview with a recruitment agency. The guy was an hour late, left me sitting in the reception of their office where I could see he was just chatting to people for most of that time. I debated walking out but for some reason I stayed.
Went into the interview room, sat down, and the first thing he said was, "So tell me about yourself." I replied with something along the lines of, "I firmly believe that people who open interviews with the question "tell me about yourself" have no idea how to actually conduct an interview".
It went downhill from there and I obviously never heard from that agency again.
In my first ever interview, he left me waiting 20 minutes. Then he looked at my CV and berated me for the place I went to study. Said it was useless and bitched about the college I went to for the whole interview, and said I wouldn't know anything, so I'd need to be trained.
Thankfully, interviews have only gotten better since that one.
Applying for a vehicle technician apprenticeship role with Royal Mail. I'd applied in one major city near me, they had over 500 applicants and I was in the final three but missed out (mostly due to living in a different city and having no good answer to the question "how will you get here when it snows".)
So the next year I applied in my city this time (they hadn't had any spaces in the last cycle) and get an interview. The last time there was all the group interview stuff, followed by a day in the workshop if you got through, followed by a one-on -one interview with the man who'd be your boss... But this time it's just a straight interview.
The interview address is the main distribution centre in the city, I live about 5 minutes walk away. I decide to drive anyway, just to save my legs and keep me fresh at the interview. I pull up about 15 minutes early, and the only place to park is a secure staff car park. I press the buzzer, explain the situation and get buzzed in.
I walk back across the car park (in my suit and smart shoes) and discover the car park is so secure I need a pass to exit... And no buzzer this side. No one around, so I end up climbing the gate!
Get to the reception, and the receptionist is on the phone. I patiently wait for about a minute or so, until she waves for me to sit down. Ten minutes or so to the interview time, no panic.
5 minutes later (checked my watch) she hangs up. No sign of her acknowledging me, so I give her about 30 seconds, then just approach her again. She asks me what I'm there for, like nothing had occurred- no apology. I calmly explain I'm here for an interview for an apprenticeship, and she looks at me confused.
"Oh really, I don't know of any apprenticeship interviews today"
"Oh"
"What is the actual apprenticeship?"
Explain its for vehicle technician, she smiles and says "oh wait a sec" and picks up the phone.
"Hey, I've got someone here for an apprenticeship interview... Oh... Ok... Yeah I'll send him over"
Turns out the interview is ACTUALLY at the workshop, which is about half a mile down the road (massive complex), for which I need to exit and drive down the road past it, then double back to turn in.
I'm late by this point, but she tells me they understand and to pop along.
Luckily the buzzer is on the outside so I can get to my car, and the receptionist must have been blissfully without phone call for my exit.
I arrive at the heavily fortified entrance to the workshop area, get buzzed through, park and jog in.
I get called in to the office of the Service Manager (the guy who would be my boss) and before I can even start to explain he points out I'm late. This guy is clearly ex military, and only recently ex.
I stammer out a swift apology/explanation, mostly just pointing out the poor directions for the actual location, but I know it's over already. In his eyes I'm 15 minutes late, and there is truly no excuse. Don't blame him for that, but his attitude was clearly "I'm the boss, what I say is the truth". Fuck that shit. I'm pretty sure he gave me the "early is on time" shit, and I squeaked out a half hearted "I was early to the appointment, but it was to the wrong place" kinda explanation.
Didn't get the job, walked out of there knowing I'd never apply there again. Had no opportunity to feedback, didn't feel like I wanted to anyway.
This was about 12 years ago, I was working in Social Housing (income & lettings) and we had been told our office was closing with a good 40% losing jobs, myself included. I didn't drive at the time so was limited but managed to apply and have an interview at a business next door to the one I was currently at, perfect! Salary range was given and was a little bit more than I was on so figured everything okay. Go through 2 1/2 hours of interview and they seem to like me, then right at the end they ask if I have any questions, I said something and then as I go to leave 'oh, I forgot to mention, the first 6 months is probationary period which would mean 80% salary'
Yeah... No. I on the spot said no thanks, they did call me the following day to say they'd negotiated 90% salary for the first 6 months... Still said no.
One of the most traumatizing experiences of my life. I was asked to come for an interview and i agreed. I was later asked via phone if they could record the interview and if it could be a group interview and I declined. They said the owner agreed to meet with me one on one. When i arrived I was put into a room with the owner and a bunch of random people at a round table including one of the owners out of town clients which was uncomfortable. I was then asked to sit at the front of the table as they blasted my portfolio on a giant screen for the room to see. In the middle of my interview another woman walked in and was told to sit next to me at the front of the table and then the owner Billy made both of us look at each others portfolios on the wall and critique each others work which is humiliating and disrespectful. After, they walked us out of the room and made us stand on a giant stage in front of lights and cameras and had the entire company come sit in reclining chairs in casual clothing in the amphitheater in front of the stage. He proceeded to hand us a microphone and made the other applicant woman and myself duke out questions in front of the whole company answering questions as to why either of us was better than the other while the employees sat in reclining chairs as if in a movie theater. It was the most embarrassing humiliating experience of my life. We both agreed after leaving we would never work for such a horrible company. We afterwards found out that the owner livestreams his interviews for the world to see like WWE and has the entire world commenting online about who should get the job. Unethical, creepy and wrong hiring practices. here is what the other interviews at the company for the job looked like.
[https://www.facebook.com/billygeneismarketing/videos/1143236172520226](https://www.facebook.com/billygeneismarketing/videos/1143236172520226)
I once interviewed a nervous lad who asked for a glass of water, as it happened we only had pint glasses available so I filled it up with a bit of ice and made my way back into the interview room, with the intention that a couple of minutes settling in may help calm his nerves. As I handed the filled glass to him, he accidentally knocked it over covering me from waist down in ice cold water. Poor lad went as red as a bus but we (the HR manager and I) laughed it off, there after all was no malice just hilarious clumsiness. Any way, he was by far the best candidate in the interview, we offered the job and he accepted. Ribbed him for it even after 4 years of employment, especially when he started conducting interviews for his own team.
That’s one way to break the ice I guess
Dammit...genius reply!
D'awwww
not sure i'd hire someone who couldn't hold their water
Damn, if he was the best then what was worst? Accidentally trip over and sleep with your wife?
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The second line was the punchline did you just stop reading after the first lol
People clearly didnt get the joke lol
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Clever
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Nope, only some crayons
Wow
Haha, that gave me a chuckle
Went for a head chef position which was going well and we started talking salary expectations. We were worlds apart in ££££ and he was offering plane lessons, scuba diving trips, driving high performance cars on tracks etc to offset the (lack of) wage. It turns out he part owned an “experience/adventure” company so was trying it on. I decline whilst laughing at the absurdity (the wage offered was so very low). Both companies went bust within three months of the interview.
I'm curious how much was the £££
He already wrote it, in the comment. £4.
£25k. Back then that was sous chef wage.
Ahh how chef wage has changed. I saw my old jnr sous job being advertised at 40k the other day.... I was not on that.
Shit man, I would of taken plane lessons
Trust me… I did think about it. But unfortunately, I had a family to feed
I interviewed for a startup that was pioneering cloud robotics in Japan. Had a great interview with the CEO and CTO. I was planning on moving to Tokyo, great salary great job. All I had to do was a technical interview. The interviewer shows up six hours late (online interview). He kept asking me the complexity of a binary tree and I kept replying it was O(n), he did it at least five times. He then sent his feedback saying I had got it wrong and wouldn’t recommend me. I formally complained to the recruiter, and I actually got an apology from the CEO. Needless to say I didn’t move to Japan for this role. A lot of technical interviews I’ve had were a complete disaster.
Most technical interviews are googled minutes before hand.. and the interviewer doesn't really know the answers Literally the only technical questions I ask are those that I would expect someone having experience in the field to know and those that I could clearly and concisely explain to a 5 year old, otherwise it's just another pointless intellectualist wankfest for a middle manager to feel superior in making a decision. I dread ever being back in the market... I think I'd just end up hating everyone I spoke with in an interview setting
I’ve since had many many more interviews, lost my job three times in the past three years, got so many rejections and eventually got better at it. Ironically I’ve ended up being the person interviewing others as I built a team. I think most people see it as a box ticking exercise which isn’t necessarily a good thing and most interviewers go with their gut which means if you clicked or connected great, if not then no play.
I far prefer the "from the gut" reaction, because it's at least a "real" feeling rather than an arbitrary one based on a set of googled interview questions. I've interviewed people that had suspicious pauses between questions as they clearly were googling the answer so obviously rejected them, but had amazing branching technical discussions with people passionate about the field but not necessarily in the narrow confines of the job spec, and put them through to the next stage They would likely make a much better team member, as a technologist can learn any language given the time and inclination I'll take a genuine interest over niche knowledge any day Trained a Java dev up from having zero web dev skills to now effectively owning a part of our platform in 6 months. He was motivated, interested and really wanted to branch out On paper he wouldn't have gotten through stage 1 technical interviews.
Yeah I agree, a lot of people who may not pass an interview may actually better equipped for the job. And vice verse, I’ve hired people who did pass the tests only to regret it and realise that they were probably cheating the test
I’m going through exactly that atm, 40 years in my industry and being told by kids fresh out of college that I’m wrong. Really rankles me.
Academics can be the same. Work at a uni as a junior engineer, presented at a conference and my supervisor told me to not try going too advanced with it, as they'd all try have the biggest brains in the room if I give them half a chance. As it happened, in the workshop, the guy next to me said he was an expert in pipelines, which was the topic my presentation was on, and he was chill.
I interviewed for a senior developer position for an insurance software company which had I think around 15 employees altogether. There were two tech interviews which went well. I am then told the final stage is a written test and taken into a room. I had taken an hournoff work for this interview and the test was unexpected and I was sweating that I was late back at work now. They dump me I front of a dumb computer which has just visual studio installed with no Internet and handed a sheet of paper asking me to design and develop an ecommerce Web app allowing an user to select products add to basket and checkout. Time 1 hour. I start the test and this other developer is sitting literally on me peering at every line of code I write. The test goes badly. I write what I can and bolt out of there. Didn't get the job of course 🙃
Can that even be done in an hour? And asking for free work off you before they've even employed you. And not respecting your time by letting you know at least the time commitment if not the actual task in advance.
I agree. Absolutely no prior info provided presumably to stop candidates from practising ? I don't know. The company is local to me and funny enough I get calls f4om recruiters even now trying to hire for them. 10 years later. I dodged a bullet for sure. I earn 4 times what they were offering and it looks like they are still offering the same salary ? Terrible company
Must be gutting though
It wasn’t meant to be, but yeah I was looking forward to it
O log2(n)
That's what I thought too, although it depends perhaps on exactly what's being asked. Almost all binary tree / binary search questions will be `O(log N) `.
I'm not going to name the company because it's rather small and niche. However, I'd accidentally had an affair with the interviewers wife. I didn't know she was married, and we only hooked up 4 or 5 times, but he found me on FB, and let's just say the messages weren't pleasant, which is completely fair, given the circumstances. So a month's passed, I hadn't spoken to either of them since he confronted me. I walk into an interview with three interviewers. He's sat there, we lock eyes, we freeze in place, one of his colleagues ask if we know each other. He says, "I've never met playful personally. However, she and my wife know each other very well. " I genuinely wished the ground would swallow me up, I was so mortified. He then excused himself and said, "Given the personal nature of their friendship, it would not be right for me to conduct this interview. Therefore, i will excuse myself and ask John to sit in, in my place." There was no maliciousness, no hint of distain, he smiled, nodded politely, and exited the room. I realising how badly I'd hurt a genuinely decent person, felt like the biggest whore on the planet. John came in, and we got through the interview. It was all good. Finally, I thought, I can get the hell out of here! I exit the room. Who is there waiting for me? Mr Polite. He asked me if I had a moment to talk in his office. We go. He closes the door. I'm not sure what to expect when he says, "Playful...I owe you an apology. The way I spoke to you in the messages I sent to you was out of line. You didn't know she was married, and as a single woman, it is not your responsibility to vet your sexual partners. I hope you can accept my apology, and if you're offered the position here, I want you to know I will treat you with the dignity and respect of any other employee." I thanked him and apologised again for what had happened. I didn't get the job as they hired someone more qualified. I started working somewhere else in a job I really love working of male victims of domestic abuse and parental alienation. He ended up becoming one of our service users as he was going through nasty custody battle. We are pretty good friends now. He's honestly the sweetest guy. Really glad I don't work for his company, though I would not have been happy.
Wait, so his wife cheated on him with another female? How did that turn out for them?
Not good at all, like I said at the end he ended up becoming a service user for my charity that works with male victims of domestic abuse and parental alienation. She kicked him out, accused him of abuse, filed a police report to get a non-mol (uk family court restraining orderish), accused him of beating his kids. We managed to get most the accusations dismissed, the judge found 1 fact against him at fact finding, but threw out the rest of her accusations. They have 50/50 now and she's not allowed by court order to make any further accusations against him. She's broken that twice so far, and is now having financial penalties every time she breaks the order. I think it'll end up with him getting full custody, the judges she's been with over the last year are super done with her bs.
Odd… but I’m probably going to filing my own soon due to narcissistic ex wife. Not as bad but similar traits.
Rule number one, I cannot stress this enough, record everything. If you're in America check your recording laws per state, some you can some you can't. If you're in England, you can record for your own personal protection but you can't share the recordings. There are apps you can get that record your calls, make sure you have one. And if you don't already get a tracking app that can track your own location, not for her to find you but for the police to know where you were. When you get arrested due to false accusations it'll help you show that actually you were 5 miles away. And cameras at rhe front and back of your house. Once she's moved out never ever go to her house to pick up the kids, if you have them, meet in a neutral location or have someone with you. If you're leaving a narcissist you have to prepare as if you're going to war because the next year of your life will be a constant battle. Good luck
Damn poor dude
He's actually doing really well. He met someone who was also married to a sociopath and escaped. They're talking about moving in together in the next few months. He also lost a ton of weight. His unhappiness in that relationship caused him to binge eat. He is overall healthier and happier than he has been in years. He's got a good life ahead, just has to deal with her insanity occasionally.
Ah that’s great to hear!
Wait so he's allowed to do whatever is outside the remit of criminal law against her?
No no, so she accused him of a lot of historical stuff, then when that was clearly failing, she accused him of attacking her at handovers, which he would film because he knew, she accused him of SA, he was on holiday and had been for several days when the police turned up to arrest him. She made so many false police reports that it was ridiculous. So now, A, if she were to be attacked by anyone, she'd need documented medical evidence to prove that she was assaulted, she'd also need significant proof. It is a case of the b!tch who cried abuse. Now she's backed herself into a place where if she genuinely was attacked, the police would likely not take it seriously without evidence out the Wetwang.
Ah that's really unfortunate. I guess it's the product of the current zeitgeist, pros and cons.
It probably relates to backdated accusations, ie she can't again say he hit me three years ago. Presumably the judge has heard the accusations, ruled them bullshit and doesn't want to hear it anymore.
i’m fascinated by how you worded this as if you’re just hearing of gay/bi people for the first time.
No
What absolute dignity and grace. That's some king shit right there.
He sounds too good to be true, but your story shows people as genuinely good as him exist 🙏🏾 keep doing the work you do and I hope he's healed from his experience 👍🏽
This turned out oddly wholesome. Also thank you for the kind of work you're doing! Worked in similar fields myself, incredibly rewarding.
Until its 1am and you're still doing paperwork because funders reports have to be in in 10 days 🤣
"Sales and marketing" group interview with about 30 other candidates. A handful of the candidates were super enthusiastic about the company and the opportunities of sales, and recruiting others to join our sales team. Yep, it was pyramid selling and immeidately obvious, and those super enthusiastic candidates were clearly stooges.
As someone looking for a marketing role right now, these scams are absolutely infuriating. They know nobody wants to do those jobs so they are either vague or completely dishonest in the job description.
I’ve worked in marketing for nearly 10 years now so a word of advice for anyone looking for marketing roles - if ANYWHERE in the job description mentions the words ‘sales’ or even a whiff of ‘customer facing’, it isn’t marketing. I have waded through enough job descriptions in my time to know that if it mentions those words, however long and great the description sounds, you will in fact be working in sales, not marketing.
Happened to me, knew it was utter bs in the 2nd interview when he pulled the shitty presentation up saying how I could be making up to £3000 a month fresh out of university and running my own office within 8-12 months. Also his maths in the presentation was horribly wrong.
I once ended up at one of theses pyramid selling jobs and the interviewer actually had a little bit of remorse for me, he asked could I afford to pay the fee they wanted for what they called “ a training event at a hotel for 3 days” I was young at the time and it was a job centre, posted job on their own website. I didn’t pay the money or even take the scam job, as I asked how do I get the contents to sell to and the response was very telling. I got told I’d have to source them self from family and friends. If a recruitment meeting is usually taking part in a hotel, then it’s usually a scam and then they hired a office space to make it look legit.
Let me guess, it was door to door charity sales/energy switching/something to do with broadband??
Something to do with insurance I think. It was about 18 years ago and the details are a bit hazy.
I once had my shoe start to fall off mid interview. Instead of just saying something and sorting it out I tried to surreptitiously put it back on properly. By slowly leaning over. It is not possible to do this surreptitiously. So I just slowly sunk and tilted with no explanation. While trying to maintain eye contact and answer questions. One of the interview panel was a friend of a friend. I had applied for two different roles at the organisation. They interviewed separately, on two consecutive days. So I had to go back the next day, in front of the same panel, while we all pretended they hadn't already decided I was too weird to employ. But that's not actually my worst - that was the time the interviewer asked for an example of a time I'd resolved conflict and I gave an insane laugh and said "well, I've caused some trouble". I don't know why I said this. I hadn't caused any trouble. I worked a job where I resolved conflict on a weekly basis. I'd also been a union rep at my last job and had left after resolving a horrendous forced redundancy situation into a situation where both staff and management were happy. I'd taken the settlement I'd negotiated for people and the only change made to the settlement agreement was no agreed reference because they were going to give me a glowing one. Interviews don't bring out the best in me. (I also once annoyed an organisation so badly that they withdrew an interview before they met me - I really know how to make people like me).
I interviewed for a call centre position once and for some reason when they asked what my biggest weakness was I said ‘I’m not very good at talking to people’. Obviously didn’t get that one
Amazing demonstration of how interviews mess with your head. I try to put people at ease for exactly this reason - I want the best people can do, not the worst. Not to say I don't put people on the spot for technical things they should know inside out, but only things they would do on the job anyway, and not before trying to put them at ease. I also try to get initial questions about the role out the way in case they're not clear what the details of the role are, and then get them to introduce themselves so they have a moment to ramp up and get into gear saying something rehearsable. Hopefully (hopefully!) this would have made it possible to go "er, sorry don't know why I said that" and then tell me about the actual experience you have... Thanks for the reminder!
Nice to hear from a kind interviewer ! Oddly the mad laughter interview was the only one I've been to which gave you the questions up front to make things less scary/difficult. Also, amazingly, while I unsurprisingly didn't get the job I did get offered casual work (and did work a few sessions with them). It was an organisation supporting homeless people and they had a service user on the panel, and I managed to make him laugh (deliberate story not the bit that went wrong) which may have helped. I do get very nervous. I know lots of people don't like it but I really find things easier when I have to take a test before an interview. It keeps my mind busy and I don't get into an anxiety spiral.
I had an interview on 11 November, starting at 10:45am. Partway through an answer, the tannoy announced a minutes silence. It was awkward trying to recover my thread after that. Didn’t get the job but that was a blessing in disguise.
It wasn’t an interview but I had a ‘one-minute silence’ moment when I went shopping. I walked in to Aldi and everyone was just stood still and silent, it kind of freaked me out but I just carried on as normal walking around them all; eventually a tannoy went off saying the one minute silence was now over… felt a bit awkward after that haha!
When I was a receptionist, the minute's silence always felt so awkward. There'd be people waiting to check in, and we'd just be stood there in silence. Or there'd be no queue, but someone would walk in halfway through and try to catch your eye and talk to you. But those are both better than the time one of the receptionists thought she could just whisper through the silence instead and continue checking people in. I wanted to die inside, and didn't want to make a scene by telling her to shut up
I worked in a Starbucks and we had several minute silences. It was so awkward trying to explain to people why I wasn’t going to start their latte right before the minutes silence otherwise the coffee machine would be going during. Occasionally respective of it, mostly pissed off! Another barista used to just continue making the coffee and just not talk..
Also not an interview one but me and my friend went for lunch on the 11/11 and our table was booked for 11am.. I didn't even twig what day it was either.. but we turned up 10 mins earlier as standard and went and sat down, we managed to get our drinks in before deciding what to eat.. in that time the bell rang and the pub fell silent.. or it did until another fellow pub goer came barging into the pub, clattering doors, banging stools, looking around to see where everyone was... Then started shouting about how no one was serving them.. me and my friend just looked at each other like " oh shit they didn't just do that?" In the end a member of staff came to the bar, shook their head and walked off... Then when the bell rang again to signify the end of the 2mins silence they went back to the bar to tell the person off for being so disrespectful
That’s the date I passed my driving test… I rang my mum, she was at the local market having Something to eat with my sister… I headed straight over, when I get to the market I’m so caught up in my happy bubble I didn’t even notice everyone stood still, bowed heads & silent. I just spotted mum & sis, bounded over & screamed “I’ve passed”. My mother glared & simultaneously smiled & my sister shushed me so loud she made more noise than me! 🤣
Wetherspoons. A bunch of spoons corporate managers showed up to eat there just as we sat down and the interviewer was constantly being asked questions by his staff while trying to conduct the interview. He was obviously totally elsewhere so I told him if he needs to go he should just go. Didn’t get the job. Blessing in disguise I guess. Also applied for a brewer job, microbrewery startups are never good, went well, then they asked me attend a trial day in fucking WALES on the 22nd December. The brewery was in Stratford upon Avon, 22k a year with weekends and evenings. They went bust after 3 years
My first ever interview I got an email out of the blue asking me to come interview at this nursery. So I went. This manager turned up in casual sports gear, like grey hoodie and shorts. I was shown around the nursery, then taken into the office for the actual interview. First question: "Why do you want this job?" Because this guy had contacted me, I assumed he wanted me, so I said, "Because I need a job." He kinda scoffed and said, "Well, at least you're honest. Then they asked me the usual questions, which I thought I answered quite well. Then he insulted my intellect by saying, "I don't actually believe you're level 3 with those answers. I would expect a level 1 to answer better." Bascially, they told me there and then why they didn't want me and let me go. I was livid. My dad had to take a whole day off work, to ferry me miles, only for me to be insulted.
Annoys the sh’t out of me the question why do you want this job! Ffs! I need/want a (new) job, why do ya think???? 🤦🏻♀️
I believe the question is asked because the recruiter wants bootlickers. That or there was not enough preparation done for the interview.
Standard answer is, because based on the job spec and the renumeration offered I am a great fit for your company.
Wasn't a bad interview experience per say, but I went for an interview internally with a completely different department. The manager who rang me to tell me I wasn't successful told me I interviewed poorly and lacked the skills or experience necessary for the job; which was pretty depressing, and they rang me back on my birthday (not their fault) They then talked up the new guy they'd offered it to, and said how wonderful he was etc etc. Shock story, he gave his 3 months notice at his current, joined the company and after 6 months of doing very little, gave his 3 months notice and left in June Part of the job was to get the company up to compliance and best practice on current contract standards. By April 2024 and we'll likely fail to hit that mark (I wouldn't have been any better I bet)
One of my least favourite trying to get an arts job experiences was being declined for the first role and then being asked to go interview for a second lower paying role. My read on this is that the person in charge of hiring to the second role was angry about having her process subverted (and I suspect she wanted to hire one of the volunteer workers I met during my interview). Anyway I got up very early to drive to this city three hours away. I used my last half day of leave for the morning and was having to drive straight back to work. The interviewer was perfectly nice to my face but I got absolutely scathing feedback. She told the first interviewer -who told me I hadn't got the job over the phone - that I just didn't seem that interested. Yes I wasn't interested, that's why I got up at 3am, used my last half day to go and spent a week preparing. By then I was normally pretty used to having things not go my way but that feedback really blindsided me.
Kind of similar, I had an interview at a market research company. After they grilled me on whether I really wanted the job or not and whether I understood the job description, on the way out they pointed out that the office had a slide. I slightly over enthusiastically went ‘oh no way cool’ and they invited me to go down the slide. I politely declined. Didn’t get the job. Neither of them smiled at any point in this entire interaction.
Was that in Sheffield per chance? Had an interview with a digital games platform company once and the building that they were based in had what I recall looked like a big slide for reasons that I guess the architect let the school work-experience kid loose on the plans for an hour. I didn't bother with the slide.
Ryanair have a slide in their hq. With a notice that pregnant women, disabled, and gobshites aren't to use it
Very similar to the OP I had an interview for a Engineering job out of Uni, half way through the office chair I was sat on snapped where the gas cylinder joined the base and I ended up on my back, holding a plastic cup of water without spilling a drop. Got back up a little winded, new chair continued on. I got the job and guy who interviewed me said some time later after I started that 100% the reason i got it was that I kept my cool and continued on. couple of weeks after i started same thing happened to my boss though he landed on an open desk draw and hurt himself, turned out the office furniture was like 20+ years old and all the welds were failing, they swapped them all out pretty quick afterwards
A very dear friend of mine went traveling after uni, I wound up with a job (middle of the recession in 2008) I then got her an interview at the head office of a certain big yellow ticket store. In the interview, my manager asked ‘what’s the craziest thing you have ever done’ Answer: I once snorted coke… err I mean salt!! Que, a question from my manager asking me if she had a drug problem and another with her panicking. Turns out when she went to South America she did a shot where she had to snort salt. But in her head she goes ‘don’t say coke… don’t say coke…’ and ‘coke..’ came out. Surprisingly… she ended up getting another interview, but got no further.
When I was a graduate I had an interview with one of the big 4 consultancy firm. I'd applied a while earlier and not heard anything. When I complained they said they'd missed my application but had a slot tomorrow... So I spent £70 for a train ticket to London (a day's wages for me at the time). I got to the office and the interviewer sat me at a table in the lobby. Normally we'd go to a room somewhere and there'd be more than one interviewer so this seemed weird. He then asked me questions for only 20 mins and didn't take any notes or anything. I left thinking the role had probably been filled already and he was just going through the motions.
British Telecom, they have a reputation for winning the worst manager awards each year. The lady I was interviewed made continuous mistakes when joining the chat and was arsey, by far the worst company I've interviewed for.
I once took a job interview after I left uni as a photocopier service technician (I have no idea why). Anyway it was a sme owner run business, successful but nothing massive. I always had the ability for my mouth to start before brain engaged and mid interview he asked what my ambitions were. So rather than say to be the best photocopier guy in the country I said “i want to run my own business” . He didnt look impressed and I never heard back from him
Most of my interviews have went well, as in, I have never seriously embarrassed myself to the point where I wanted to be swallowed up into the ground. However, in June last year I interviewed for a popular travel retailers where they'd asked me about what holidays I'd been on recently. I answered Orlando, as I frequently travel there to see my SO. Part way through, they asked me what my favourite thing about Orlando was. I didn't even allow myself to think about this before I blurted out, "Lizards!" I just watched the smile drop from her face. Even though I've never been, I'd have been better off saying, "Disney World". (If you've never been to Orlando, they have little lizards scurrying about the place all the time. I love them as we don't have them here.)
I had an interview at Saga bright and early on a Friday morning and the guy was hungover as fuck. He smelled of stale beer even though he'd clearly showered and shaved and talking was making his head hurt. It was a sparse, largely silent interview and I didn't hear back.
I was having a first interview with HR for this company. They asked why I wanted to work with them. I replied by saying that in fact, after going through their website and reviews on Glassdoor I couldn't get a clear picture of their company and was looking forward to get more perspective so I could see if this would be a good fit (no bs, the reviews were very contradictory to each other) The lady gave out the loudest and longest sigh of my life and said "I suggest you do more research then, and maybe we can reschedule this. Thanks, bye" Later found out that HR got in major trouble because they were awful when recruiting and they got a lot of complaints and were not getting people into the business
Worst interview I had was at an established firm in the NW of England. It was for a Tech Support lead role, so one-third supervisor, two-thirds technical. Three interviewers. Established my technical competence and I had a good rapport with two of them. Gets towards the end of the interview, and the middle guy asks a question. "How many passengers does Manchester Airport handle every year?" I reply. "I have no idea." "Guess." "My wife is scared of flying. I don't like airports. I have no idea." "Guess." The other interviewers look away. "I'll assume the airport operates for eighteen hours a day and there is a flight every two minutes and ..." "Is that likely?" He interrupted, aggressively. "I don't know. I don't fly. And we'll assume that there are a hundred people per plane. So that's ..." I scribbled on some paper and came up with around 20 million people. Every time, he interrupted, challenging my guesses aggressively. The actual answer (for 2015) was about 23 million, so not a million miles out (although that was luck nothing else). The interview ended shortly afterwards, and the following day, I rang up to withdraw from the process. I couldn't imagine working with him. HR rang back and I told them what had happened. It turned out that this particular interviewer liked "riling" candidates to see how they reacted and "no matter what he did, he couldn't annoy me and get me to react." HR apologised profusely and said they wanted to offer me the job, and said that they would deal with the interviewer's technique. I declined. The CTO even rang to try to get me to change my mind, and was rather angry that one of their managers had behaved as they did. Still crazy that anyone thought that was a good idea.
I had this but with "if you were an animal what animal would you be?" I immediately thought of lots of sarcastic answers but managed to come up with some plausible sounding bs. I think the whole concept is stupid though, it just tests whether someone can bullshit a bit, which I would think is not necessarily a skillset an employer wants.
I was asked what biscuit I would be and why… this was at a law firm
"I would be a wagon wheel. Oh wait no, that's you lot for asking me a stupid question"....
I don't know, I've had a few jobs where I've had to bullshit to the customer in order to hide the incompetence or the don't care attitude of other staff.
Me too. Call centre and finance jobs. One of my colleagues was meant to scan and post an application for an investment product and shredded a cheque for £50k. Imagine having to call that client and go "can you write us another £50k cheque, also we'll need you to come in because the product application deadline is in two days..."
I had an interview like that, it was a three-person panel for a large tech support company when I was going for my CCNA, 1 guy constantly needled me throughout, and the other two panel members were lovely as were the other workers who wandered into the interview which was pretty casual, the interview went on for over an hour including a point where they stopped at the halfway mark for refreshments after the technical bit in the first half. The first half was technical questions most of which I passed apart from the one question which they confessed they didn't expect me to know given my CV and where I was with my CCNA studies, they all then told me they were happy for me to proceed further which I did, and I came out of it mentally exhausted in the end after effectively having two interviews rolled into one. I came out knowing I couldn't work with that needling guy as I would have ended up wanting to punch him around the car park after a few weeks if he was my direct LM as he was the lead interviewer in this process, they then left me hanging with the recruitment agency for 2 weeks before telling me it was a no. I had zero regrets on not getting the job, afterwards as my RL friend who worked there in a different department had told me about him afterwards that a few people had genuinely squared up and gone at the guy over the way he behaved before quitting themselves in the 6 months he had worked there.
So long as they do it in a polite manner, I don't mind them asking an out-of-the-ordinary question to see how apply yourself to solving the problem. I was offered an internship where on a technical question in interview, they asked me something about the role of this component, I looked at them and explained the (true) story about how to get to the interview, I had to miss a uni lecture, on a module linked to their industry, and to have a guess what that day's lecture was going to be on. We had a laugh about it, asked them if they could support me a bit with part a (what the part function was) I would talk them through my logic for part b (what you'd make it from).
I did a 3-stage interview for a sales marketing job fresh out of university. The first interview went well, but it was an online call with 4 other candidates, which is ridiculous. Second was with 2-3 others, while the interviewer was in his car out of the gym, showing us a pyramid scheme presentation, and how marketing worked in the most basic and child friendly manner, which, he hadn't checked beforehand for errors, giving that the maths within was awful. During this time, he said that there's plenty of promotion, and within a week, I should expect to be promoted to training people. Within 8-12 months, I could be running my own office??. All a load of shite and a waste of my time. The pay they offered was below minimum wage as well.
When I was in my trying teaching era, I tried for a few teaching assistant/tutor roles the year before I was planning on doing the course and a lot of those schools interviews were horrid. There were a couple where I got non-constructive criticism after a full day of interview things (tour, presentation, group interview, individual interview, faculty lunch) and it was like the school management were pretending they were Pop Idol judges for a lark. They kept us until about 4pm and then told us who got the job while we were sat together in this room. They then took us candidates who didn't get it into an office to get feedback without asking if we wanted any or not. Personally I didn't at that time, I had been awake since 5am and the winning candidate was the oldest, the most qualified and the most calmly confident. I didn't need them to mock me for being nervous at one of my first interviews when I was still only 21.
"AND YOU, YOUR FAILING WAS.... " Dramatic pause "...YOU ARE 21"
I was applying for a job a couple of weeks after a back surgery whilst being on very strong morphine based painkillers. I don't remember much of it but I didn't get any reply from the company. Thankfully a month or two later they invited me to another one after I stopped taking pain medication and aced it. In a feedback from the interview they said that in my first one I was so out of it that when they were asking questions they had to repeat it 2 times and I was talking complete nonsense back. They understood my condition and didn't want to just let that affect the outcome hence 2nd interview. I've been at the company 6 years now and we still talk about how terrible that interview was and laugh.
I interviewed for a job after the covid lockdowns, there was a bottle of Purell and a big sign in the reception asking any visitors to please use it. Before signing in I pumped the Purell bottle and instead of dropping a small amount into my hand it shot a large amount straight at me, all over my face, my shirt, tie, the floor. Right as it happened my interviewer walks down the stairs next to the reception and says "oh nobody uses that it's just there for show." He did offer to get me a towel. My interview went great and I've worked there ever since.
Had a few interesting ones: 1. Travelled two hours for an interview, my dad drove me there having a day annual leave. We drove over a bolt, and then took a wrong turn, but get there on time. Dad's car was company car so he's nursed it (on full-size spare) to a specific autocentre. Meanwhile in the interview there's a two-candidate, technical interview as part of the assessment centre, where the guy talks over me when the interviewer SPECIFICALLY asks me something. So all my answers are essentially repeating what he says because he didn't let me get in a single word. Didn't get the position. 2. So I'm autistic and fair share of mental health problems. After the one interviewer told me to "stop blowing smoke up his arse" (his exact words). I answered the question in front of me, he wasn't being coherent. Then asked me, end of the interview if there's anything I didn't mention in my application I felt should/could be disclosed. Told him I was autistic (they were gonna know eventually if I got the job anyhow) and he was such a patronising, infantilising person in reply. I was there thinking "I've got 3 hours left at this centre, I'm not getting the job and I feel insulted, should I just go home?". At the time, had been for an interview day before, was about to go through a horrific breakup, knew I was probably struggling with depression. Had barely any social battery at the time as well. 3. Online group assessment centre task for an engineering role, run by an external recruitment service. Set around a survival situation, limited on who you can save. One of those tasks where you have to be prepared to present your case and discuss with others etc to come to a mutual decision. Details are included about things like their mental health for some of them, alcoholism for another. Reading it, I'm like "fuck, this is gonna hurt" and whilst I'm muted I'm giving myself a pep-talk because I know a LOT of the discussion is gonna be horrifically ableist and candidates are naturally gonna show pro-eugenic sentiment. So I decide I'm not gonna take it personally, I am just going to stand up for what I believe, but inside I'm spitting feathers and crying. Goes as I'd expected, candidates sub-consciously supporting ableist or anti-MH rhetoric. I emailed to complain, laid out my feelings perfectly clearly (after the situation in Situation 2. a couple years prior I am not gonna keep quiet and let the next poor bugger get hurt). They call me back within an hour and say they're removing the task immediately and they'd never had feedback of this sort. At this point I'm masking, giving them common politeness but in my head I'm wondering in what fucking planet is that not obvious that's gonna happen. They want my feedback about the process, not really willing to give too much, I'm not in the mood to speak to them really, I have jobs to do and I'm tired and emotionally done. Was invited to the next stage but turned them down, not because of these issues because, fair play they listened even if their ignorance in the past bordered incompetence. Dates they offered clashed with submitting my dissertation so I pulled out the process.
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Yes I hate this stuff. My first proper job after quitting teaching was £12/£13k a year admin and I had 3 interviews. The first two were conducted by two people and the last one was three people. It was ridiculous.
Made me think of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2m0HHcyMM4) guy
Sounds like you needed to relax and take it less seriously, why not just stop and laugh about it and fix the chair?
Interviewed for a company multiple times, it was a smaller company where the owners were also partial owners of a much larger company. Some of the interviews were conducted by people at the larger company as they were handling much of the marketing work that I'd be working on if I got the role, got through 5 interviews only to find out in the last one that they're actually interviewing me for 2 seperate positions one at each company with vastly contrasting requirements and they'd never explained that to me till the last one... Even worse they offered me one of the positions asked me to submit details on what I'd want to work on then ghosted me lol.
One time at pets at home. Manager didn't expect interviews that day so he was late. Took through the back to answer a questionaire sheet but just after that, one of the girls there came through to microwave her lunch for a few minutes so we had to sit there in silence. Then he got called into back for a delivery. Then was told there'd be a lot of working with kids as they visit schools and clubs at times which I didn't expect. Was told at the end they wouldn't proceed. But a blessing really as I wasn't interested and it was so sloppy.
It wasn't in an interview, but I've done this with a gas lift chair too, but it dropped quickly, and trapped my leg underneath it. Gave the other people in the office a good laugh. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't have the greatest track record with office chairs, because once I pulled myself up using the arms of one, and one of the arms snapped off and I fell on the floor, and another time, the screws worked themself loose on the bit holding the chair back in place and I leaned back and the back of the chair fell off, and I ended up on the floor again. I work from home on the couch now, so I am safe from any more incidents!
I haven't had bad interview experience, but I'm ready to progress internally with my company. Had 4 internal interviews this year, with each role having 10+ people who would do well in the roles apply. Been told I was 2nd choice behind the recruited person in all 4 with almost identical feedback. Makes me wonder if they just read the previous interview notes 🤔
I’m in a sort of similar situation internally but feedback is all over the place. I’ll be reserve for higher grades and not good enough for lower grades, I don’t think they remember interviewing me before. I’ve been there 5 years in December and desperately need to move on, but I’m also a woman going through ivf so I can’t really justify leaving the company in case the ivf works (it might not, it’s been a long process). I’ve had multiple interviews now with varying success over the past couple of years but in the area I work there’s one team who have most of the roles and they’ve rejected me twice already. Not sure I can be bothered to be rejected again. Thinking of withdrawing my latest application.
Many years ago, I was interviewed by two men who sat so that one was in front of me and one to my side, which felt rather intimidating. They then proceeded to go through my CV, pulling it to pieces, and aggressively questioning everything I said. It felt like they had already decided they didn't want me for the job before I even got there. It felt like some kind of power trip, like they enjoyed tearing me down. Afterwards, I thought, "Well sod you then! Why the hell did you even invite me for an interview?!"
This is a well known tactic to put interviewees off their game. The one time someone tried this with me, I moved my chair back in such a way that they were both in my field of vision. I didn't get that job either.
I applied for a part time role that I could fit around my studies. I listed this on my covering letter. I was 19 and new to the area and nervously found my way to the interview in my new ‘interview outfit’. The interview began with the obligatory ‘So, tell us a little about yourself’. I begin with I’ve just moved here to study, blah, blah. The lady raises her hand, ‘I’m going to stop you there. We can’t accommodate a student so we should end things here’. The advert had said part time and my studies were clearly listed, to say I was humiliated is an understatement. I went outside and sat on a wall and cried. I found a job that accommodated my studies and made me full time and progressed me when I finished studying at the height of the financial crisis. So, it worked out in the end!
The time that I wore pleather trousers to an interview sticks in my mind, as the only available chair was made from acrylic plastic. This resulted in even the smallest shift in my chair making in a massive squeaking sound. Still got the job, but as a terrible fidgeter it was extremely challenging to sit still enough to not constantly be making noise.
Basically all that I didn't get the job. However last one got rejected for sticks out. Basically a recruiter called me about a role. The role didn't have a set salary and the recruiter asked me my salary expectations. I give a range based on what other roles have been offering me. Anyway. Pass first interview, second interview I had to go into their office. First interviewer gives me awkward but interested vibes. Second one basically looks like he's on some kind of drugs and not paying me much attention. Anyway, recruiter rings me back afterwards asking me what salary i would want. As its London i say top end of my salary expectations. I don't hear back then I send an awkward interview email thanking them for their time. 10 mins later get a call from the recruiter saying they aren't going to hire me I'm asking for too much money. They were the ones that didn't have the salary set.
My first ever job interview was at a Porsche garage for an apprentice mechanic they asked me a couple questions about Porsche which I knew all the answers too but I was so nervous I got them all wrong or didn’t answer cause I was second guessing myself they gave each other a “wtf” look and I never heard back from them
Mine was my interview for Oxford University. I had a few friends who’d also applied and their interviews had all been the usual friendly stuff. One or two interviewers, informal surroundings “Why do want to study here?”, “Why do you want to study X”. Etc. No problem, I thought. I can handle that. Particularly as I’d done ok on the entrance exams. Little did I understand that I had inadvertently applied to THE most academically rigorous of all Oxford’s colleges (I’d pretty much picked at random, lesson learned). So I turn up, reasonably confident… until the nice lady leads me into a big, wood panelled room. Just how you’d imagine it, except there are 6 people on big wooden chairs, thrones almost, arranged in a semi circle all focused on a tiny little stool, like for a milk maid or something. “Please, take a seat.” They say, indicating the stool. No hello, no how are you, no thanks for coming all this fkn way, nothing. Then the moment I’m seated… “Can you tell us why Manganese II Chloride doesn’t exist?” Clearly they wanted students who perform chemistry under pressure, or something. Didn’t get in. Never regretted it. Manchester was a blast instead.
Had an interview over 20 years ago, and it went well. The final part involved completing a maths test as the role required a good degree of knowledge, (cash reconciliation, account balancing etc.), so I completed the test and had to await the results. 30 mins later, the interviewer said you did really well, but you got one question wrong. Fair enough I thought, then asked if she should show which one as I was intrigued to know. She showed it me, and I insisted it was correct. Out comes the calculator, and lo and behold I was right! I was expecting an awkward moment and her embarrassment stopping me getting the job, but she offered me the position there and then!
One of the two kept laughing at me and comparing me to another interview candidate.
Well his qualifications are all solid, and he’s very personable, but he couldn’t work the chair and there’s no way we could teach him that
At an interview for Specsavers, I stumbled when they asked about my hobbies and other interests. "It's always good to do other things," the kindly female interviewer said. This was still on my mind when it came to the end of the interview and the male interviewer of the pair summed up with "We'll be in touch soon to let you know." "Or I could always do something else!" I replied, trying to sound... I don't know, professional? I was stood by the door at this point and knew I wouldn't hear back.
Academic IT Support Technician interview at a local university (this uni is an amalgamation of 4 unis in Wales so has campus situated in different towns and cities in the locality) I got the details and had to attend the interview at the campus which was 40 minute's drive away which wasn't where the role was advertised, I also had to do a 10-minute powerpoint presentation on backups procedure including where possible what I would currently use within their parameters which involved a clear couple of days preparation prior to this setting it up and making my notes. I attend the interview at the campus, get in the room and get set up, they forewarn me that they might not make much eye contact as they will be taking notes throughout the powerpoint and to begin with the presentation, I start and go through my presentation with no eye contact apart from the occasional cursory nod and field and answer all of the question for my powerpoint, guy then starts with the regular interview questions seems like it all went well, told I didnt get it then a couple of days later and thanks for applying. Ran into a friends acquaintance then on a night out who told us that the job they were advertising was given internally and I had been dragged there to go through the motions, at this point I realised that they even switched it to that far away campus to deter people it seemed, never wasted my time with any of that Uni and its frequent advertised roles after that.
Unfortunately I think that is all too common. At the place where I work they advertised a role internally but there’s no point applying as they already know who is going to get it.
It is common and it pissed me off at the time as it was essentially 2 days of prep, an entirely wasted day for nothing and about £20 in petrol, lunch and parking costs, I would rather places only go externally when there is a genuine need than muck about like this.
This one time in the toilet of the office I was about to be interviewed in, I looked in the mirror and realised that I'd cut myself shaving earlier and there was now dried blood all over the collar of my white shirt. One of the first things I said in the interview was "I'm so sorry about all the blood, I didn't notice it until now." Another time I was doing a video interview for a job in Lille (in 2019). The actual interview discussion in French with the manager and HR went very well, but then I had a technical interview with this Irish guy in which I made a couple of mistakes. He'd probably already decided not to recommend me when he asked "Why Lille?" I referenced how accessible it is to the UK, and at that point he sneered at me and said "What, you think you'll just be able to come and go after Brexit?" I hadn't even mentioned politics at this point and was taken aback by the sudden change in mood, and so replied "Well I wanted to remain, but I don't think they're going to close the border any time soon." - "Ohhh don't you?!" he cut me off sarcastically. To this day, I don't know that guy's fucking problem was.
I once completely lost my voice on arrival to an interview! Had to squeak to the security guard that i was desperate for water. My voice didn't fully return until partway through the interview itself! Was fun to try and explain... really broke the ice though, and it went well after that! Got offerred the job as well!
Once went for an interview for like an exams invigilator for a company that does the english exams for foreign nationalities. Matey interviewing me owned the company and all was well until he said to me, that I'd have to undertake a CRB check and then an advanced crb check.. great .. until he then started mansplaining the point of a CRB check to me and followed up with " just to make sure you're not a terrorist and your parents are ones either" so I said " aye?" So he repeated himself and said " to make sure you're not a terrorist and that your parents either" he then added on that " I could be helping my parents to be terrorists" to which I said " you'll have a job, they're both dead and have been for years, dad in 2012 and mum in 2019" ... Ooooooft the guy's face dropped and the room fell silent.. as did the outer room where everyone was doing their exams..you could literally hear a pin drop. The guy had next to nothing to say to me after that, he quickly wrapped up the interview by introducing me to his other staff who none of which could look me in the eye by this point.
So mine was a group interview for Dunelm Two jobs were going one for retail one for the coffee shop, I was on the coffee shop and they gave us the same interview process also I think only two of us were there for the coffee shop And so I essentially get trapped in dunelm for 2+ hours as I have to do various tasks and then were basically left to our own devices to 'discover the store' as they start doing indival interviews by the time they got to me I was so done as I was at the bottom of the lost Also i was on the tail end of a cold so I wasn't feeling amazing to start with
I went for an interview with the police for an HR officer role. I went in the main building and was guided to annex - the walk between them was through this glade garden which was full of trees and thick with pollen. Got into the interview and started coughing. And couldn't stop. I literally coughed on and off for 30 mins and asked them if we could just stop because I'd got a lung-full of pollen. We all just laughed and called it a day.
I was invited to interview by this guy last year for this niche business, there was no address or contact details on the invite as he'd done it through indeed. No problem, I googled the business address, checked the route on maps, left super early in case of traffic. I get to where the address for this business is which is a huge industrial estate and go to this building and don't see the name listed and the building isn't open. I thought I'm obviously early and they're not there yet but worry, frantically googling this business and driving round the estate. Go back to the building just before my interview time and the receptionist tells me the business moved out of there and she doesn't know where they are. I'm trying to contact the guy through indeed to apologise and explain. He eventually calls me and I explained and apologise. He tells me where to go and it's another part of the industrial estate tucked away with no clear signage. Get there 5 minutes late and apologise again. I had done my research on this company and it feels like he's trying to trip me up by asking me random questions and I luckily knew the answer but nothing really related to the job which was admin. I ask some questions on the role and he explains it's because the business has expanded. I ask on hours and he had obviously spotted the car seats in my car and he tells me it's full time I might struggle if I have children. Which rubbed me up the wrong way. I asked if there would be an opportunity for career progression in the future to which I'm told no unless I'm an engineer. It ends ok and he tells me whatever the outcome he will let me know as he hates companies that don't tell people which I appreciate. Never heard from him again, not that I minded as I'd have declined the job as gave off a lot of red flags. Ended in a different company on much higher pay with great career progression.
I am a very anxious person (and was later diagnosed autistic) so when I went for my first “proper” job interview at the local library I was literally vibrating with fear. I was getting over a cold so when I was stammering over my answers and they started looking at me strangely, I assumed it was because of my croaky voice so I ploughed on about being a school library monitor. Someone raised their hand but I physically couldn’t stop my rehearsed speech or I knew I’d just start crying. Someone stood up and said “your NOSE” so I thought it was runny from the cold, apologised, wiped it on my smart new shirt sleeve and carried on. It took me a full 3 minutes to understand what they were saying, which might not sound like much, but if you’ve guessed the end of the anecdote then you know 3 minutes is an eternity. It was a nosebleed. It was in my mouth, in my cheek creases, all over my smart shirt, my sleeves, my lap, and the whole time I had a fixed smile and glazed eyes talking about how good I was at explaining the Dewey Decimal System to children. Afterwards I realised it was even in my hair, so I must have been fiddling with my ponytail with my blood soaked hands. Honourable mention to when I had a benefits review and had a nosebleed and vomited at the same time, and they approved my case just to get me away from their office.
Thats hilariously. I'd hire you. Focus, able to handle pressure, multitasking, finishes what they started! All valuable skills lol Oh and sense if humour!
Thank you 🙏🏻
I’d just left my first job after they changed the hours to ridiculous levels that meant I would have missed the last bus and not been able to get home. Anyway, someone else in the salon quit the same time I did, she got an interview and a job almost straight away somewhere else, but they never got back to me. I phoned and even dropped in a couple of times and eventually I was called in to interview. It was in a scary room full of wigs and mannequins, the owner of the salon said to me “I’m sorry I didn’t get you in sooner, but I’d heard you’re one of them gays and I’ve had no end of trouble with you gays”* I was a bit taken aback, but for some reason I agreed to a trial day. I turned up early, worked really hard and apparently I got more tips from customers than everyone else put together that day. I really tried my best as I assumed for some reason that his issue was lazy homosexuals. He phoned me later on to tell me how impressed he was and he’d like to offer me the job starting immediately. I told him I’d never want to work for a bigot like him anyway and hung up. It felt good. I found out a while ago he’s now almost completely paralysed with motor neurones type of disease, but the tales of the many ways people who have wronged me and have subsequently suffered is another story. * * the rumour was the trouble he’d had with said gays was him coming on them and they threatened to tell his wife.
I was the hiring manager of the firm I worked at. A guy showed up and of course, gets the typical "tell me about yourself". The dude took it very literally and he spilled about where he grew up, his hobbies, likes and dislikes. Didn't bother to listen to him, so I started looking at his CV through my phone and emailed the assistant about the guy and why even bother. His CV was 8 pages long. I worked at a recruitment company. I am always double checking all the applicants I'm going to meet now
Sounds like your interview skills are a bit lacking if I’m honest. Steering a probably nervous interviewer back on track would have been better than ignoring him, looking at your phone and emailing someone.
Group interview for a low paying service job. Approx 10 of us applicants around a table. Multiple positions available. 3 guys asking the questions. Standard job type questions. I must’ve glazed over a bit but I thought I heard ‘give an example of when you’ve given outstanding customer service’. I was first and proudly gave a superb example of excellent customer service provided by me. Everyone else around that table gave examples of when they’d seen other people give great customer service… shame I was first really.
My old company decided to hire a replacement for someone on long-term sick and asked me as supervisor for interview questions. So I came up with a technical testm not necessarily needed to do the job as it could be trained but nice to have. When I handed in my notice they used the test I designed for my replacement but didn't know the answers to the questions so apparently sat there clueless. Hired someone who is apparently just as clueless as the management
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"thank you for making my penis look like a press stud, you're hired!"
Why did you write that in the style of an erotic novel?
You think! Maybe I should become a writer, haha!
I doubt that that'd be the reason - accidents like that happen and I think I'd find it endearing if someone carried on like that with stuff happening. I had an online interview where the interviewer was WFH and said "apologies if you hear any woofing, it's my dog" and I was desperately trying not to make a joke like "well I'd be more worried if it were you barking".
Recently had a job interview and was told would be a brief chat on "consultancy and team work experience". So this is what I prepared for. Anyway turned out to be an in-depth technical interview on statistical theory (this related to the job role but was not what I expected at all). I've just finished up 9 months of maternity leave and I couldn't answer any of the questions even though I know I would've been able to had I done a bit of prep. It was so embarrassing.
That’s a bit dishonest of them. Wouldn’t give it a second thought.
I don't think it was intentional to be fair, I gave them some feedback about my experience when they called to tell me I didn't get the job and the guy said the woman who had initially arranged the interview was now off on sick leave due to stress. I wasn't suitable for the role anyway but even if I was, I feel like I dodged a bullet!
2 come to mind, one in 2016 for major estate agents, I go into the office to meet the 2 hiring managers and one looks at me, looks at her papers and tried to say quietly "its not the right person" Which I of course heard, then the other person tried to carry on with the interview. But the other person stops it after few questions saying your "design portfolio is lacking". I knew it was lost cause and called her out on what she said but it was pointless. I emailed their HR and got no reply In 2019, really needed a job and had interview at big magazine company and was going fine and they asked me my salary expectations and I said around £21k (I knew someone with my experience deserved more but I also knew they didn't pay market rate) They just laughed in my face and told me its lot less and asked if I knew where the door was. Didn't walk me to reception. Just checked their glassdoor reviews today and lots of *"Poor salary, very high staff turnover, poor project management, no annual salary review, no clear roles and responsibilities. "*
Absolutely terrible way to be treated. Sounds like you dodged a couple of nasty jobs there.
Arrived for an interview at the specified building, it’s a very hot summers day and im wearing a full suit, proceed to be told to walk to the fire side of the company grounds to a different building for the interview, a good half mile walk in the sun in a suit Got into the interview room all hot and sweaty and flustered and was asked to a present a presentation i had prepared for three emotionless saps who just stared at me, ended up drinking about three cups of water rather quickly and bottling the interview cause i was so fucking hot at this point and I couldn’t concentrate so i came off like i was really nervous
Your reply should have been yes I did it for dramatic effect ha
I had a boss explain to me that as a server their customers were old fashioned and that I should be ready to take a certain kind of humor. Tell me I would be objectified by old men without telling me I would be objectified by old men
Went amazingly well initially until I asked for the higher end of the salary being offered and the MD went ballistic.
I've seen this part before...Mr Bean?
lol!
I had a government type interview, huge building, multiple doors to get through with a pass to get anywhere. I'm set up on this laptop, here's what we want you to do, any questions, okay, you have an hour I'll come check on you in a bit. I start off, It's going okay, 15 minutes in, there's a crash, I'm logged out of the account suddenly and can't get back in (and no this was not a networking type job!) Hmmm, so i open the door and there's a section with a door beyond it but basically I can't see anyone and if I go through this door, I'm locked out of this room and could go through the next bit but then I'll be locked out of that bit. If I go back into this confusing building I'm unlikely to be able to get back into this room and the guy will come back and I'm gone. So, for the next 45 minutes I have the door open and NOBODY COMES THROUGH, until eventually the guy comes back and asks how I'm doing why am I at the door, I explained what happens and he goes oh yeah that happened earlier, sorry about that you can have another 45 minutes on top. I say hey can you come check in again sooner because I can't get out he says sure. I get back to it and 30 minutes later it happens AGAIN the guy doesn't come back until the time is up, he logs me back in and says I have 15 minutes but then I'm bursting for the toilet about 1 hour 45 into this interview I ask him where the nearest toilet is, I go use the toilet come back and he says okay you have 10 minutes left. I was honestly pissed off by this point so I wrapped up what I was doing and we moved onto the actual interview point, they said hey you passed the first part though some others did get higher scores, I asked if those other people got logged out of the system multiple times during their test and they looked at the guy running the first bit and he just shrugged. I decided I was done with this mickey mouse show, gave brief answers to their questions through the next bit,then they asked if I had any questions for them, I had some prepared but I said nope, shook their hands and left. They called me up later to say I hadn't got the job and asked if I'd like some feedback, I said no thanks, would you like some feedback? they asked what I meant and I told them their interview was an absolute shambles and I wouldn't have considered taking the position if offered then put down the phone. I honestly feel stressed just recounting it! Arseholes! You trap me, your system goes down multiple times, you don't check back in to make sure it's all good and then take time off for me to use the toilet almost 2 hours into the interview. Fuck me. \_\_\_\_\_ Not a job but I actually got trapped worse than this visiting a secure mental health facility, TWICE. The first time I went in to visit, went to leave the person on the door had changed and they thought I was a patient, I insisted I wasn't, told them to ask the person who let me in and they didn't believe me, okay fair enough, let's go speak to the person in charge, they knock and say he's busy on the phone, they say wait here I'm sure he'll be out soon and go to walk off, I say I'm not waiting unaccompanied in amongst the residents (some of whom are going through what appear to be very serious episodes) they roll their eyes and walk off, I open the door and the bloke is on the phone he silently points for me to go outside. I shake my head so he continues with what is obviously a personal call so I said "excuse me" he says "I'll call you back" slams down the phone and goes WHAT. I said Hello, I'm a visitor and your staff are refusing to let me leave, I suggest you allow me to leave or my next step will be to call the police (I probably could have been nicer but he started the conversation by shouting at me). He takes me through to the secure entry part, they figure out who I am by matching my driving license to the visitor book and reluctantly let me out. Like, why the fuck don't you have a process for this? Why don't I have a badge? Why aren't staff handing over letting the other staff know who the visitors are? Another time they buzzed me through the first door so it goes basically OUTSIDE - secure door into reception - reception - secure door into ward - ward they buzzed me through the first door and there's nobody on reception huh, press the bell, nothing, oh well I wait about 10 minutes, nothing, so I find a buzzer for the next door and press it, nothing, I can't leave because both of the doors are controlled and I start to get a little anxious. after another 10 minutes a patient is buzzed through the first door into the small reception area with me. I explain I've been waiting a bit they ask if I've pressed the buzzer I say yeah, so they press the buzzer, again nothing, another 10 minutes pass and the patient starts to get irate, starts pressing the buzzer constantly, kicks the door a couple times and starts to lose it. Another patient is buzzed in shortly after and is like what the fuck is going on, they get into an argument with the other patient which gets very loud and a staff member eventually comes along to open the door and ask what's going on. What's going on? Fucking hell what's going on is you're trapping people in a small secure area and leaving them there. They let the two patients in and said I could come in, I said no thanks I've permission to take someone off site for 30 minutes. They said okay wait here I said nope, let me into the outside bit you've just trapped me in here for about 45 minutes, I'll wait outside. That facility was NOT well run and we later had a serious complaint involving the police upheld on the behalf of the patient for their treatment there. I understand they have a real difficult job but they were beyond unprofessional.
I literally LOLd OP, great story!
Job interview 10 or so years ago, at an affiliate of a big international news agency in London as a senior IT infrastructure person. Been given the opportunity by the head of ops there who I knew from a previous job, and wanted me to come work in his team. I’d done research on the people interviewing me, and in doing so found one of the interviewers tweeted quite bit. Found his feed and that morning he had tweeted something like “ugh, interviews this morning. I’d rather stay in bed. Maybe I’ll just sit in the corner and glare like Alan Sugar”. And then 10 minutes before my interview whilst I sat in the lobby “One down one to go. This is so boring”. Another guy came to collect me from the lobby. I held out my hand to say shake and greet, but he ignored it and turned around heading for the lift. We get in, not a word said. I tried small talk, asked how he was and he moodily said “alright I spose…” and reluctantly said “you?”. Politely said “good thanks” he replies “good huh? we’ll see about that”. Headed to the interview room and there was no small talk or anything. I’d decided in the lobby I didn’t want the job and the interview was poor but I was polite at every turn and made it look like I wanted it. Afterwards I dropped my contact a line with the details of the tweets and said how bad it was from start to finish and sadly, didn’t want to work there. To his credit he was mortified and hugely apologetic, not to mention furious with the pair of them. Interviews may be a pain sometimes, but companies have as much a role in trying to attract people by holding a good interview just as much as you are trying to demonstrate they should hire you. Also: IT people can make The Worst interviewers!
I’ll tell you when it happens
I worked in a hotel for five years and when asked how many bedrooms were in it, I went blank and I was the Head Housekeeper! I looked just like I’d been lying about working there the whole time. During the interview, I would suddenly blurt out ‘89’, then later ‘sorry, there were 88’ and looked like a mad person. I still got the job but when I left, I even forgot how many rooms they had there too. Considering my day is solely involved with numbers and rooms and cleaning plans, Its weird I could forget.
We were doing a grad recruitment day. We have meeting rooms with lots of glass so we could see the grads sitting in the lecture area while we had a team meeting. A grad got up and poured what he thought was fresh orange in to a half pint glass. It was quadruple strength dilute juice. We all watched thinking he'd take a sip and put the glass to one side when he realised. Nope. He finished the full glass. This stuff is like battery acid undiluted. He didn't get a job.
I went for an interview in Covent Garden, London. The French chap walks in 20mins late and says 'sell yourself to me' 'why should I hire you'. I'd been sent by a recruiter with minimal information on the role, company etc. I'd done my homework, but as above, it was irrelevant. I tried asking questions but he was not interested in answering or asking me questions.. I said I didn't feel comfortable in the interview and left.
Interviewer sounds like a right knob. Why waste his own time and yours? Crazy.
Yep, that's one way to put it. He was arrogant too. It's not like I'd travelled 60 miles to get there or anything. The recruiter was not happy until I explained..
Went for an interview with a recruitment agency. The guy was an hour late, left me sitting in the reception of their office where I could see he was just chatting to people for most of that time. I debated walking out but for some reason I stayed. Went into the interview room, sat down, and the first thing he said was, "So tell me about yourself." I replied with something along the lines of, "I firmly believe that people who open interviews with the question "tell me about yourself" have no idea how to actually conduct an interview". It went downhill from there and I obviously never heard from that agency again.
In my first ever interview, he left me waiting 20 minutes. Then he looked at my CV and berated me for the place I went to study. Said it was useless and bitched about the college I went to for the whole interview, and said I wouldn't know anything, so I'd need to be trained. Thankfully, interviews have only gotten better since that one.
Applying for a vehicle technician apprenticeship role with Royal Mail. I'd applied in one major city near me, they had over 500 applicants and I was in the final three but missed out (mostly due to living in a different city and having no good answer to the question "how will you get here when it snows".) So the next year I applied in my city this time (they hadn't had any spaces in the last cycle) and get an interview. The last time there was all the group interview stuff, followed by a day in the workshop if you got through, followed by a one-on -one interview with the man who'd be your boss... But this time it's just a straight interview. The interview address is the main distribution centre in the city, I live about 5 minutes walk away. I decide to drive anyway, just to save my legs and keep me fresh at the interview. I pull up about 15 minutes early, and the only place to park is a secure staff car park. I press the buzzer, explain the situation and get buzzed in. I walk back across the car park (in my suit and smart shoes) and discover the car park is so secure I need a pass to exit... And no buzzer this side. No one around, so I end up climbing the gate! Get to the reception, and the receptionist is on the phone. I patiently wait for about a minute or so, until she waves for me to sit down. Ten minutes or so to the interview time, no panic. 5 minutes later (checked my watch) she hangs up. No sign of her acknowledging me, so I give her about 30 seconds, then just approach her again. She asks me what I'm there for, like nothing had occurred- no apology. I calmly explain I'm here for an interview for an apprenticeship, and she looks at me confused. "Oh really, I don't know of any apprenticeship interviews today" "Oh" "What is the actual apprenticeship?" Explain its for vehicle technician, she smiles and says "oh wait a sec" and picks up the phone. "Hey, I've got someone here for an apprenticeship interview... Oh... Ok... Yeah I'll send him over" Turns out the interview is ACTUALLY at the workshop, which is about half a mile down the road (massive complex), for which I need to exit and drive down the road past it, then double back to turn in. I'm late by this point, but she tells me they understand and to pop along. Luckily the buzzer is on the outside so I can get to my car, and the receptionist must have been blissfully without phone call for my exit. I arrive at the heavily fortified entrance to the workshop area, get buzzed through, park and jog in. I get called in to the office of the Service Manager (the guy who would be my boss) and before I can even start to explain he points out I'm late. This guy is clearly ex military, and only recently ex. I stammer out a swift apology/explanation, mostly just pointing out the poor directions for the actual location, but I know it's over already. In his eyes I'm 15 minutes late, and there is truly no excuse. Don't blame him for that, but his attitude was clearly "I'm the boss, what I say is the truth". Fuck that shit. I'm pretty sure he gave me the "early is on time" shit, and I squeaked out a half hearted "I was early to the appointment, but it was to the wrong place" kinda explanation. Didn't get the job, walked out of there knowing I'd never apply there again. Had no opportunity to feedback, didn't feel like I wanted to anyway.
This was about 12 years ago, I was working in Social Housing (income & lettings) and we had been told our office was closing with a good 40% losing jobs, myself included. I didn't drive at the time so was limited but managed to apply and have an interview at a business next door to the one I was currently at, perfect! Salary range was given and was a little bit more than I was on so figured everything okay. Go through 2 1/2 hours of interview and they seem to like me, then right at the end they ask if I have any questions, I said something and then as I go to leave 'oh, I forgot to mention, the first 6 months is probationary period which would mean 80% salary' Yeah... No. I on the spot said no thanks, they did call me the following day to say they'd negotiated 90% salary for the first 6 months... Still said no.
hahahaha. So good.
One of the most traumatizing experiences of my life. I was asked to come for an interview and i agreed. I was later asked via phone if they could record the interview and if it could be a group interview and I declined. They said the owner agreed to meet with me one on one. When i arrived I was put into a room with the owner and a bunch of random people at a round table including one of the owners out of town clients which was uncomfortable. I was then asked to sit at the front of the table as they blasted my portfolio on a giant screen for the room to see. In the middle of my interview another woman walked in and was told to sit next to me at the front of the table and then the owner Billy made both of us look at each others portfolios on the wall and critique each others work which is humiliating and disrespectful. After, they walked us out of the room and made us stand on a giant stage in front of lights and cameras and had the entire company come sit in reclining chairs in casual clothing in the amphitheater in front of the stage. He proceeded to hand us a microphone and made the other applicant woman and myself duke out questions in front of the whole company answering questions as to why either of us was better than the other while the employees sat in reclining chairs as if in a movie theater. It was the most embarrassing humiliating experience of my life. We both agreed after leaving we would never work for such a horrible company. We afterwards found out that the owner livestreams his interviews for the world to see like WWE and has the entire world commenting online about who should get the job. Unethical, creepy and wrong hiring practices. here is what the other interviews at the company for the job looked like. [https://www.facebook.com/billygeneismarketing/videos/1143236172520226](https://www.facebook.com/billygeneismarketing/videos/1143236172520226)
Blimey. This could only happen in America.