I’ve just had one of the more bizarre interviewing experiences of my career. I’ve been trying for the last few weeks to fill two actuarial roles. Having exhausted all of the candidates who applied to us directly, I’m now up to the stage of interviewing candidates from recruitment agencies.
So this morning at 9.30am we were due to interview candidate X. She’s late, but only by a couple of minutes, so no big problem. We go through the normal three minute introductory “calm them down” chat and then the HR rep asks the first, standard question:
We asked a few more questions, but got nowhere. After about five more minutes we simply ended the interview.
As I left the interview room the HR rep was on her way to give the recruiter a serving.
(boggle) WHY would someone go to the time and hassle of interviewing if they’re not interested in the job? Total waste of the time of everyone involved (and that person probably also caused an actual interested candidate to not get an interview).
Wow, I have had employees come work for my husband’s building who wanted a job, but then didn’t actually want to work, but I never heard of someone interviewing who didnt want the job.
In a related story, last week we got the standard email circulated to everyone in the building " Please welcome Sally Walker our new social worker. She is coming from our sister facility, has experience in this and that." Pretty standard email.
Yesterday one went around “It is with regret we announce that Sally Walker has decided to return to Sister Facility”, this must have been a difficult decision let us thank her for the time she had with us." They actually added this to the original distribution email. Welcome and goodbye tacked on to each other. She started Thursday and quit Monday. WTF?
Maybe this was the only way she could get the recruiter to stop calling her? Or she wants a new job, but not with your company? Crappy recruiters often won’t tell whowho you are interviewing with (although the address and google should fix that problem).
Eh. I’ve interviewed for jobs I didn’t want. It’s good practice for when a job comes along that you really do want. If you’re unemployed it can be an ego boost to turn down jobs instead of just sitting at home not getting called back.
Saying you don’t really want the job during the interview is kind of dumb. Although I guess I said that at my current job; I arrogantly told the interviewer I was going to get my foot in the door and be promoted inside of 30 days. I was.
The bizarre things people are appropriate to do or say in interviews! My favorite was the person who told me, “What I really want is to be promoted. How soon can I have your job?” And the one who enthusiastically told us what insane lengths she went to to prove a suprevisor wrong on some minor point. Also memorable was the guy who broke into song. And the guy who showed up in a shirt and tie and zip-up hoodie sweatshirt…and left the sweatshirt on the whole interview. Sometimes its hard to know if they are truly pathological or just incredibly self-centered with no social skills.
Crossing posts. Glad that worked for you, but I don’t want to hire someone who clearly doesn’t intend to stay in the job I’m trying to fill. Why do I want to train someone just to have them leave at the first opportunity? Even if that’s your goal, parading it is not usually the best move if you really want to get that foot in the door.
I actually just did this recently. We were in a weird point where we thought we were going to essentially need more money RIGHT NOW so I applied for several part time jobs, got a call back, and set an interview for the next week. During that time our situation changed again and we didn’t need the extra money after all but I wanted to go see what the job was about and if it was something I was interested in anyway. I got to the interview and waited 45 minutes before anyone was able to see me and I knew at that moment that I probably wasn’t going to take the job but I finished the interview because I figured it would be good practice. They offered me the job and I turned it down but I sort of knew going into it that I wasn’t going to end up working there.
My opinion is based on 16 years of Public Sector employment. While government employment has a well deserved reputation, I’ve tried hard to keep up with technology, I’ve been Cisco Certified, I’m in a C-level postion where what I say sets policy for the whole department.
Job hunting is the weirdest thing I’ve ever encountered. I’ve had three phone interviews, two with second in-person interviews, a job I really REALLY wanted, but I think they’re too busy to actually do the work to interview me, and 4 or 5 contacts that I didn’t opt to take past the initial phone contact as they were head hunters that, god love 'em, I couldn’t understand through their thick indian accents.
In the mean time, the aspects of my current job that were making me batty have kinda-sorta worked themselves out, and my research of Private Sector Jobs is showing that some of the intangibles in my current job really do count for something.
In IT, it’s usually the braggarts that are the most ignorant…you spend a LOT of time using self-deprecating humor. Then you need to go looking for a job and…well, what do you do? Arrogance and Braggadocio?
Then you demonstrate you can do and have picked up LOTS of tech over the years, but since you haven’t troubleshot 3 routing problems in three different protocols this week…well, you’re out of the running.
Finally, There’s a job at Dish Network. You google ‘working at Dish networks sucks’ and get a TON of hits. To you pass…then you get a contact for another tech firm only to find that they really AREN’T a tech firm…they’re a talent agency hiring contractors for Dish Network.
I applied to a company that was looking for middle management full-time. I did a very similar job before I went into teaching and since at the time I was still out of a job I decided to go for it. I get a call to interview down in Denver (they were hiring for a few sites). It was a total bait-and-switch and they start interviewing me for a minimum wage lowest-end position in the company since they were opening new customer service kiosks in a new chain store. There was no way I was going to accept the job so I practiced interviewing techniques since I have been out of the private sector for 15 years. I was offered the job but I turned it down since driving to Denver 5 days a week to work 4 hours per day was going to end up costing me money.
Somewhere between agreeing to the interview and the interview the person found out something (pay rate?) that made them not want the job. Maybe they hoped there would be another job after they got there for this interview. Or are really polite and can’t cancel things.
I had an interview last week and in the middle of it knew I did not want to work for that company. I finished the interview but withdrew my application the next day.
I’ve sat through countless interviews in which the interviewers knew damn well who they were going to hire already and just interviewed me so they could say they interviewed X number of candidates for the job.
The lady’s behavior was strange, no doubt; I would have used it as an opportunity to practice my interviewing skills. It doesn’t sound like too much of the OP’s time was wasted, though. Coulda been worse.
Yes, we did ask that question, at the end. She just said “the recruiter suggested I come along”. That’s why our HR person was hot footing it to the phone to see what on earth the recruiter was doing.
I love stuff like this. For some reason I am endlessly fascinated by the no-social-skills folks. Those threads/stories draw me in the way the TMI threads draw others in. I always want to know what is going on in their minds.
Do you remember what song the guy started singing?
I had a similar situation many years ago. The interviewee admitted that he was perfectly happy with his current job, but the recruiter, who had placed him in that job, called him and told him he could find him a new job that made a lot more money. Coincidentally, this was about 1 month after the guarantee period on his current job (the time during which if the employee leaves, the recruiter has to refund part/all of their fee) expired. Not wanting to be the NEXT employer in this 13 month merry-go-round to fill the recruiter’s pockets, we dumped the recruiter.
When I told a recruiter that I was obviously not qualified for a job he sent me, he said not to worry and gave me pointers on how to lie my way through the interview. Damn.
