I was getting ready to graduate from college with a degree in chemical engineering and was interviewing with a well known oil company. my schedule was jam packed and, the day before, I had just travelled back from another interview. When I got there, I found out that we would be having ten interviews, nine with behavioral based questions and one technical. As luck would have it, my technical interview was the last one of the day. After spending an entire day selling myself to people, I was spent. The first question of my technical interview was pretty easy but the next one threw me. He asked me was vapor pressure is. And I just could not muster an answer. It was like I was a toddler trying to give you all the colored blocks in hopes I would eventually give you the green one you asked for. As if that wasn’t enough, the next question he asked me was how refrigerators work.
I’d been out of work for a couple years, and was really desperate for a job. I’m on the way to an interview, about fifteen minutes away from the place, and feeling pretty pleased that I was going to be there a solid thirty minutes early, when my cell phone rings. It’s my interviewer, and she wants to know why I’m forty-five minutes late for my interview. I stammer out an apology, tell her that I’m almost there, and start freaking out. I’d checked the email with the appointment over and over, all morning. It said three! It’s only 2:30 now! How could I be late?!
Anyway, I get there, and pull up the email again while I’m waiting. There it is, right in the headline: “Interview scheduled at three.” WTF? That’s when it happens. That’s when I realize that I’m an idiot.
Before I got an in-person interview, I had a phone interview. The first email I got from them in response to my resume was setting up that phone interview. At three. Every subsequent email exchange I had with them was in the same email chain, so they all had the same title: “Re: Interview scheduled at three.” Including the one that said, “We’ve schedule your in-person interview for 1:30.”
:smack::smack::smack:
It gets better, though - apparently, I really killed it in the interview, because despite being so late, they offered me the job! The Sunday before I’m supposed to start, though, I get calamitously ill. Like, “Spend the night in the ER because no human should be vomiting this much.” I called them Monday morning - from the ER - explaining (to voice mail) why I wouldn’t be there, and offering to bring a doctor’s note proving that I was hospitalized on my first day of work.
I have really, really big curly hair. At the time it was very long, and I wore it loose.
I had an interview on a sprawling campus and when I got to the building, the front lot and front door were closed due to construction. However, there wasn’t any other obvious way in, just a plain piece of paper with an arrow pointing right. So I went right, but there wasn’t a sidewalk and I was trampling through the landscape around this bizarrely shaped building. Eventually there was a filthy side door basically hidden by an overgrown bush that I had to brush past to get in. I find the office, everything is fine.
Almost immediately when I sit down with the interviewer, things start falling out of my hair. A tiny worm like insect just kind of plops onto the table. I swipe it away thinking it’s a one time thing, but for the entire interview, little insects keep falling out of my hair onto the desk. I guess I swiped a nest or something when I had to get past the bush. I was mortified and also trying to repress the urge to run around screaming GET THEM OUT GET THEM OUT UGH, but the interviewer pretended like he didn’t notice, and I ended up getting offered the job (but turned it down for other reasons). I can’t imagine what he must of thought of me.
Was interviewing for a communications position at a Jewish community center. I referred to myself as “something of a grammar Nazi” during the interview.
I had an interview for a college scholarship where I almost literally tore my finger off entering the building because my brand new high school class ring caught on the door handle.
OK, I’ve always had a lot of nervousness and paranoia about interviews, imagining the worst that could happen (farting, nosebleed, etc.) and so far it hasn’t – but now I know some of them could actually happen! :eek:
Mine have been more subtle – falling into the interviewer’s traps. For instance, I was a young recent college grad interviewing at The Urban Institute. Hard to believe I even got an interview, but then she says “what if I gave you a project to analyze such-and-such, what would you do?” Of course my first thought is a literature review and then go from there, but in the meantime she says “If you don’t know anything about such-and-such, you can say so” and I fell into the trap and said so. I had little chance to begin with and none after that.
Another one was an interviewer who was super friendly and someone you felt comfortable with right away – so I fell into the trap of letting my guard down and saying too much about my current employer/job situation. It sucks when you know it’s wrong even as you do it.
At that same place, the application had a typical question like “have you ever been convicted of a felony” or something along those lines, and I had a brain fart and checked whichever was the one you didn’t want to check. Crossing that out and checking the other probably did not look so good!
I had the same thing happen once- the assumption they were picking up a tab when they weren’t and the having to borrow the money from the department head because I didn’t have any cash and the place didn’t take debit cards. She was very gracious, though.
I had a job interview at a major research university that I won’t identify, but I will say it’s an Auburn university in Auburn, Alabama and I stayed at the Auburn University Hotel while interviewing for this Auburn university. The single unfriendliest interview I’ve ever been on, barring none.
For starters, the interview was scheduled for the Monday after Thanksgiving, which that year happened also to be my birthday. I did not schedule it for then- I in fact tried to schedule it for the week after or the week before because of consideration for holiday schedules, but, no, this was the day they wanted to do it. The crosseyed old fart who picked me up to go to dinner on Sunday night referred to himself as the least social person on the committee “So I don’t know why they made me do this” and the only other person was she who would be my direct supervisor, who reminded me repeatedly she had a house full of company I was keeping her from (she wasn’t quite that accusatory, but about that blunt). I tried to subtly interject that my family also celebrated this Thanksgiving thing and this was one reason I’d suggested another date, but, dafukkever.
The next day the supervisor was explaining to me what the position I was applying for entailed. She told me that Hugh [not his real name] had been filling in for this position since it had been vacant but he hadn’t done a very good job with it and she didn’t think it fit him at all. Hugh was sitting right there.
I threw Hugh a lifeline and I thought her as well, saying “Is he doing it instead of his other duties or in addition to his regular duties” and he answered “In addition to, and thanks for grasping that, not everybody does.” She said even so he could have done more.
At that moment I knew “I can’t work for this person” and my only inner debate was whether I should complete the interview and withdraw later or go ahead and take my leave. I did the former and withdrew my candidacy by email the next day.
Senior year, on-campus interview. My first real job interview. While we talk I casually cross one leg over the other. I’m nervous as hell and tensing up a bit, and when we were starting to wrap up I realized my leg was asleep. No feeling at all. He finishes up and I start to panic. I’m going to look like a dope when I stand up, so I stall. He hands me his card. I make a big production of looking it over, all the while trying to get some feeling back in my leg. He stands up and walks to the door. I stay where I am. I take an inordinately long time to gather my things. I am out of time. I stand up, gingerly. He is a few feet away at the door, hand extended. I put out my hand and take a step… my leg goes out from under me and I basically lunge at him like an attacker. Somehow I managed not to collapse to the floor, or bang into him. I just muttered a thank you and proceeded to limp like hell out of there. Did not get the job.
For one interview, I talked with 5 or so different people. The first guy I talked to looked exactly like my friend Tom, except for the hair. I was almost convinced it was Tom playing a trick on me. I kept looking for signs that this guy was actually Tom so I could stand up and say “Gotcha Tom!”
While talking with the next person, the building alarms went off. Everybody had to evacuate. I stood outside with the interviewer while it was raining. We both felt so awkward, there was no small talk.
Years later, I actually consented to an interview to be a temporary replacement until a handicap-employing company could find a blind person using Photoshop to make stamps. Yes, I was that desperate. After the first interview, I realized I didn’t want this dead end position, and when they called me back later for a followup, they asked me if I would consent to a drug test. I said sure. They tossed the piss kit in my lap. I looked down at it, looked back up, and said “I’m gonna fail. I had a doob last night.”
Looking back on it, I think I did it on purpose so I could have a sitcom moment, like something George Costanza would do on Seinfeld.
I have nothing that can compare for interviews. I blanked out once for an embarrassingly long time (just a side effect of meds at the time)… got the job.
In terms of dumb application flubs, I received a response e-mail from the Executive Director of a nonprofit after submitting a resume for their Development Coordinator position, informing me the cover letter was addressed to the wrong organization and asking for the correct one.
50 applicants and I submitted the wrong damned cover letter. I still got the job. (That’s also the job interview during which I talked about existentialism and Viktor Frankl… I love the nonprofit world.)
In this case I was one of the interviewers, not the interviewee. We had five candidates coming in to interview on the same day (we were hiring for several positions in a new office) and all the candidates would speak with all the managers in a round-robin format. Each of the managers would would take a candidate to lunch.
I took my assigned candidate to lunch at a very nice restaurant. The took our coats at the door. At the end of the meal, they returned the coats and just as she put hers on, she shrieked like a banshee. She had put her hands in her coat pocket and found a large mouse or small rat in there. She was shaking like a leaf for several minutes.
She didn’t get the job. Nothing to do with the rodent.
In my school days, I interviewed for a summer job at a manufacturing plant that had a lot of heavy machinery on the floor. The interviewer asked if I had experience running any machines. I said, “just bubblegum machines.” He wasn’t amused. I didn’t want that job anyway.
I don’t know if it was embarrassing, but I once was asked a question and the very nature of the question indicated, quite strongly, that the position wasn’t for me.
It was an HR question for a government position. The question was along the lines of:
“You have two employees. One is a pain in the ass to work with. How do you handle this?”
The way the question was asked (the above is heavily paraphrased) I was to give an answer that respected the rights of both employees to work there while still making sure the work got done and all grievances were heard.
He asked the question, I looked at him and chuckled. Stood up, thanked him for his time, and said that the answer he was looking for was not at all the answer I would give, thereby pretty much rendering me unfit for the position.
He was quite surprised and asked what about the question made me feel this way?
“My background is in small businesses. I would fire the PITA right away and, if it weren’t politically possible to do that immediately, would build a file against the PITA and then fire her in a week or two. This is work, I don’t have time for drama.”
He agreed that my taking this position (if it were offered) would probably be a mistake for all involved.
She’d had dental surgery a couple of days before and was still on painkillers (reduced, but still enough to count) and she had job interview nerves. Really long academic interview. She found out that she and a member of the committee had gone to the same prep school back in Michigan and while reminiscing she suddenly realized she was singing the school’s fight song to some :eek: expressions from the committee.
She got the job. (She’s a psychology professor, incidentally.)
