I don’t know if it was silly, but the most confusing interview I ever had was when one of my company’s competitors called me out of the blue and asked me to interview with him. I met him one evening right after I left work (his office was only a few minutes walk away), and within five minutes I realized I wasn’t the employee he wanted - he actually wanted a more senior supervisor withe a different skill set. I politely informed him he had the wrong guy and suggested he call the senior supervisor instead. From the time I walked out of my office to the time I got back to my car was only about 20 minutes.
I could write a book about strange job interviews. Here’s one of my more memorable experiences.
I interviewed for the position of Station Manager for a community college radio station. I drove over 100 miles in a virtual monsoon. I was ushered into a small room with three rather sullen, unfriendly people. I was told the interview would be recorded, and I was to sign a document giving my permission. If I did not sign, there would be no interview. I didn’t care, so I signed. I was told they would go round and round asking a series of pre-written questions. I was to answer all the questions; however, I was not permitted to ask any questions myself. “Not even for clarification?” I asked. “No,” was the reply. I gamely went ahead with this bizarre situation. After about 45 minutes, they ran out of questions, and I was told the interview was over and that I would be called if they wanted to interview me further. I said thank you and asked if I might see the radio station. To which they replied “No.”
At that point, I had already decided I had no interest in the job, and had nothing to lose, so I took the opportunity to be snarky. On my way out the door I turned and asked, “Since I’m not permitted to see the station, may I have your permission to listen to it on my car radio?”
The look on their faces was priceless.
I was president of my high school Key Club (junior Kiwanis) service organization, and got to know many of the Kiwanis members when I attended and spoke at their luncheons. One of them was the owner of the local hardware store, and since I had already worked for several years in another hardware store (starting before I was of legal age), I let him know I’d be interested in a job at his store (much more convenient for me). He could see I was a “go-getter” so he invited my to come by his office to discuss a position.
I assumed that he’d seen enough of me speaking at the luncheons to have a sense of who I was, and I was a long-time customer of his store and knew it like the back of my hand, so I figured the meeting was simply to agree on a wage and starting date. I was only about 17 years old and had never prepared a resume and certainly didn’t expect I’d need one for this situation, but when I went to his office above the store he was expecting to do a “real” interview, with a printed resume in hand.
I didn’t get the job. Instead, he gave me a brief but very pointed lecture about professionalism which served me well for the rest of my career.
Year ago, I applied for a graduate program in financial mathematics. There were three people on the interview committee. Two of them asked me general questions about my previous education and my interest in the program. The remaining guy asked me (with a twinkle in his eye) to fill in the next value in these two sequences:
- 3, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, ?
- O, T, T, F, F, S, S, ?
I told him that I had seen that puzzle in an old puzzle book and he seemed kind of disappointed, but I got into the program. Apparently knowledge of old puzzles is an essential skill in the world of financial mathematics.
Speaking of AI, our group at work was interviewing for a summer student (virtual interviews, not face-to-face). One of the students we interviewed was clearly using AI for his answers. We asked him a relatively simple question about financial math and he asked us to repeat it (I guess the ChatGPT voice-to-text interpreter didn’t hear it the first time). Then he proceeded to rattle off paragraph after paragraph of text without once pausing for breath.
He did the same for several other questions: rattling off text that he was clearly reading off a screen. Then I asked him “Out of your previous jobs, which one did you like the best?” His answer: “Uh…………….”
He didn’t get the job.
In one interview they flew me to Ohio to the HQ location. The job was in California and I’d passed the interview with my California boss, but HQ in Ohio wanted to interview me. There, I interviewed with 4-5 people, including a lunch with my boss’s grandfather* and that was awkward, I don’t like meal interviews. But in the office interview one guy asked me a weird question, and this was back in 1995 (if it matters) — he asked, If I were to ever bump into Bill Gates, would I (a) punch him in the mouth, or (b) shake his hand?
What an odd question. It had nothing at all to do with the job. I was wondering, What is he trying to get at?
I felt put-on-the-spot. I thought for a couple of seconds and then my answer was, Well, I certainly wouldn’t punch him in the mouth!
He said nobody had ever answered the question like that, and he liked my answer. I didn’t care what that line of reasoning or questioning was all about and we just moved on. I got the job and my California boss was great. I never had to deal with Ohio at all.
\* — not literally; it was my boss’s boss’s boss.
The one I regret the most was for a part time sales job while I was a student. It wound up being a recruitment for a multi level sales scam type of thing. To get people to come, they listed an hourly wage which was quite a bit above minimum wage.
About 15 of us were in a group and during the rah rah pitch, more and more people started leaving. The first guy to leave figured it out pretty quickly and just got up and walked out. Others followed.
I was young and dumb and believed them when they said that we could choose between a straight commission or an hourly wage. I chose the hourly wage and during the “interview” portion, the guy didn’t even pretend to be interested. They were only looking for suckers.
The weirdest interview that I was on the hiring side was when a previous company was looking for a bilingual admin and a young Japanese woman come in. I have no idea what she was expecting, but her makeup and dress were much more appropriate for applying for an opening in a bordello than a professional office.
The HR manager and I glanced at each other and nodded agreement that we would ask the bare minimum number of questions before ushering her out.
To think of a truly “silly” interview I’d have to go back to when I was a recent college graduate in the mid 1990s. This was pre Monster.com and all that so I’m not even sure how I found some of these companies.
Anyhow, this was some sort of door to door multi-tier marketing sales job out of some shitty strip mall office in Milford, CT. Think something like the crappy brokerage Jordon Belford got stuck working at in Wolf of Wall Street.
Anyhow, I have no idea what this job is but I end up having to spend half the day tagging along with this sales guy and another candidate as he takes us up and down the Post Road peddling his wares (mostly junk out of a briefcase) to local garages and other businesses while talking our ear off about how much money he makes doing it.
The other candidate seemed very jazzed up by all this and even got to help make a sale and ring the stupid bell in the office.
I may have mentioned this in one of the other threads, but I’m not inclined to wade thru them.
This was after I retired the first time - the position was a 6-month temp gig helping to clear up a backlog. The pay was decent and since I was planning a cruise with my mom, the cash was my main motivation.
And for this 6-month temp gig, the main interviewer (I think there were 4 of them?) asked “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” It took all that I had not to laugh at him and I choked out something about hoping to be truly retired by then. I did get the job because it was at a fairly remote location and required a specific skill set that I happened to have.
After I started, I commented to my boss (who was one of the 4 interviewers) about the 5-years question and he just laughed. Apparently the main guy was HR and not well thought of. And as it happened, I was still working 5 years later for a different company in a similar job which paid more and wasn’t nearly as remote. My second (and final) retirement was 8 years after the first one.
May I take a slight diversion and talk about an interview (actually, two interviews) for college acceptance?
In 1970, a fellow classmate of mine in HS and I applied for admission to an Ivy League school. (Think THE Ivy League school.) We were both doing well academically, but I was a bit more active in HS, including playing varsity football for three years. His grades and class rank were higher than mine. Also, he had an actual plan for his academics while I was just sort of a “get along” guy.
Anyway, we both got invited to interview with school alumni. It was apparently totally random assignment. He went to his interview and discovered the guy was an older retired State judge. The judge was a big school athletics booster and he did NOT want to talk about all the academic offerings or the new modern language labs at the college. All he saw was a pasty-faced egghead who would (apparently) NOT be a good fit for the school.
OTOH, I got an interview with a recent graduate who was now teaching political science at a local college. He was dressed like a beach bum and wanted to watch a football game while we talked in his living room. He gave me a beer (I was 17 YO) and probably would have lit a joint if I had suggested it. It certainly smelled like it would be the norm there. We talked about football, how things were at my HS, beer, the state of the world, my current GF, and everything except my college and career plans.
Guess who got the acceptance letter and who got the rejection letter a month later.
During a job seach many moons ago I got an interview at a place for a position that sounded interesting, not exactly what I had been doing previously but certainly in the ballpark. It would require learning some new skills but I could apply a lot of my past experience and grow in the role.
When I got there the first person I spoke to was the HR rep, and she said some confusing things about the position. But I figured she might not know the technical details so I’d get it all figured out when I spoke to the hiring manager, who was next. As it turns out, the position had absolutely no relation to the job advertised. I never did find out if that was a bait and switch or a communications error. I noped out of there before I spoke to the next person, the only time I’ve left in the middle of an interview.
I had a similar experience after being laid off. I should have seen the writing on the wall when during the phone screening they seemed to have zero interest in my past experience but kept saying I was just the kind of person they were looking for.
After the in-person group rah rah sales pitch about how much money we were going to make and how we were all going to be running our own branch offices they then said how we all needed to pony up several hundred dollars immediately for training materials.
I was shocked that while I was headed for the exit door at that point the majority of the candidates were opening their checkbooks.
I once interviewed with a very nice older lady for a job that I was expertly qualified for. Unfortunately, the hours were beyond ridiculous. Something like 1pm-7pm Monday, 8am-230pm Tuesday, off Wednesday, etc. I told the interviewer that I would have to turn down the job because of the hours - and she started crying!!! She told me that they had been trying to fill that position for months, and they were so impressed with my background and experience, yada yada yada. It was a long walk back to the front door for her to let me out of the building.
In my mid 20s I interviewed for a mega corporation. This was hopefully to be my ‘big break’ career job. The interview process involved multiple callbacks over 4 months. They gave me actual job tasks to see if I was capable; they gave me an IQ test; they put me through all sorts of paces.
The silly part was after answering a series of written essay-style questions like “describe how you negotiated between different departments that disagreed with each other in the past”. After being left in a cubicle with nothing to do but stare at the walls for over an hour, my future manager and an HR person called me into an office and questioned my answers to the essay questions. My future manager would sympathetically say stuff like “I agree. I get where you’re coming from”. But the HR person was openly hostile and aggressively questioned every answer I gave. I quickly realized “they’re doing a ‘good cop / bad cop’ routine!” and almost had to stop myself from laughing, it was so obvious. The only thing missing was a bright light in my face. I later found out that the person who was supposed to be the ‘bad cop’ was the department head, who was a much more intimidating person, but she was out of town. I lucked out getting the HR person, who was a bad actor and not intimidating to me at all.
When they gave me the job they said “we know the interview process was arduous, but we view a hiring like a marriage, and want to make sure it’s a good fit. We want you to retire from this company”. Then they went public, their stock started tanking after the IPO, and they laid off half of my department, including me, the new guy, 6 months after I started 
I’ve gotten those questions in maybe 80-90% of job interviews I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a lot). American companies must generally be much more stupid than German companies 
A.k.a. “Mitchell and Webb tactics”:
That’s hilarious. My personal “extreme negative feedback” interview incident actually went pretty much the same way (except I didn’t get a typewriter to the face, fortunately).
Unfortunately, ‘The Mitchell and Webb Look’ series does not seem to be available on any of my current streaming channels.
When I was switching careers, the temp company I signed up with sent me for an interviewed with a company specializing in office furniture and accoutrements. The two ladies who interviewed me were nice enough, but it was obvious neither one of them were experienced with interviewing others. The questions were disjointed, seemingly random, as if they had no idea what they were looking for. Which made sense given that when I asked about the position the answers were equally disjointed, random, and they had no idea what role the position would have in their orgnization.
I didn’t get the position. When I spoke with the agency’s recruiter, I was candid about how bad the interview was and asked if they gave a reason why they passed me over. His impression was these “Arkansas country gals” found me a bit intimidating.
When Bass Pro was opening in Little Rock I went ahead and interviewed hoping for a part-time position. I wore a suit as is my custom when interviewing and I think it was part of the reason I didn’t get the job. I was the only person in sight wearing a suit and interviewing me repeated multiple times, “We don’t have any management positions open.” Obviously I wasn’t a good cultural fit.
The worst interview I went on was at a funeral home in Dallas. It’s been roughly 30 years, so I don’t remember the details, other than it being a bait and switch. It wasn’t advertised as a sales position, but that’s what it was. Nor was it an interview. What they did was gather a bunch of candidates together and explain to us all at once that it was sales position where we’d cold call people to sell pre-paid funerals to them. When we learned what the position was, about half the “candidates” left, but I stuck around becaues I went through all the trouble of driving there. It’s the only bait & switch I ever experienced from an “interview.”
If I may add another story, this reminds me of another disheartening job interview. I replied to an ad for a position (Community Relations Director) at a non-profit organization whose mission I firmly believed in. They wanted someone with about a dozen qualifications, including public speaking, newsletter writing/editing/production and the like, which I easily met. The Executive Director called and we had a pleasant conversation, then set an appointment for an interview with her and a board member. It soon became apparent that the position was nowhere near what was advertised nor what we had discussed on the phone. It was fundraising, which I did not want to do, having done fundraising for several years and emerging completely burned-out on it. After about five minutes I asked her point-blank if this was a fundraising job, and she said yes. I replied that we may as well end this interview now, because I was not interested in a fundraising job, and had the ad or our phone discussion specified that, I would have said turned down the interview. I stood up, wished them well in finding the right person, and walked out the door. I could have gone through with the interview anyway, but I just didn’t have the patience to play nice with people who had blatantly lied to me and wasted my time.
The HR woman qasked me “If you were an animal, what kind would you be?”
I pointed out to her that I was here for a job interview, not to play games.
She said it was part of the interview.
I refused to answer, and asked to be interviewed by a more serious person.
She became huffy.
I told her I was a serious person, and wanted to work with serious people.
And then I left.
Back in the late 1980s I was interviewed at a company and the interviewers were dressed in various costumes. I will preface this that this was the first time I had an interview with scenario type questions (apparently no wrong answers), instead of factual questions about my background, skills, etc…
So “Santa Claus” asks me if I was and elf what job would I be most likely doing in his workshop? Would I be okay if I was assigned the job of cleaning up reindeer pop?
Then a guy dresses in shorts, T-top shirt, sunglasses, beach towel, and a wading pool full of sand in his office with beach toys in it. His question was about whether I would build a sand castle or dig a hole if I was on a beach. Would I rather look at the people on the beach or the clouds in the sky?
I am sure the was some physiological reasoning for the questions and my answers, but for a basic entry level manufacturing job? I ended up getting the job and stayed for several years until the rotating shifts got to be too much. All other aspects of management were “normal”.
A Homo Sapiens. Next question?
I believe at the North Pole they call it "reindeer soda’ 