Worst interview experiences

[Homer Thompson]

I went for an interview for a supervisors job with the ambulance service in the control room many years ago.

There were two posts but I had to prepare a presentation in advance, do a face to face and a written test. Turned up, took a seat in reception, a woman turned up, sat beside me then the guy appeared and took us through. Im thinking "two jobs, two applicants, just dont f**k it up!". The written test was first, he took us into a room and there were sat about 10 internal applicants  

The feedback I got was that I scored really high in the written test, came across really well in the interview and my presentation was really good but, guess what ... I didnt get the job. They went with people with more ambulance service experience! Turned out the other external applicant worked in an ambulance control room down south and was moving to the area cause her boyfriend had just started a new job ... as a paramedic  

I had an interview in the summer which was a bit odd. One of the questions was "if we phoned up your old boss and asked about you, what would they say?"

[Melanius Mullarkey]

3 hours ago, Flybhoy said:

Not a job interview but that time the police interviewed me for the Jill Dando murder wasn't my most enjoyable experience, thankfully they framed the local nutter for it and all was good.

Another one you got away with.

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

Another one you got away with.

The local nutter was Tony apparently, always wondered what happened to him after his trip to London.

[Marten]

The worst question I ever had in an interview was actually an exit interview. The question was: "What could we have done to make you stay?".

My answer: "Not making me redundant would have helped".

[Flybhoy]

33 minutes ago, Mr X said:

 

 

I had an interview in the summer which was a bit odd. One of the questions was "if we phoned up your old boss and asked about you, what would they say?"

The answer to retort with here should have been..

"Not very much, he's dead...!"

 

Kill that line of the conversation stone dead and top bantz at the same time. 

[sjc]

Anyone that had interviews for construction industry jobs from 2008-2011 is bound to have had some form of bad interview experience.

Around 2010 I had a couple of interviews set up by a recruitment agency. One was in London for a job building airport runways in the Caribbean and Central America. I had managed to get freelance work in Cumbria at the time but took the day off and travelled down to London at considerable expense (circa £400 in lost wages and travel costs). The interview went well (I thought), the guy was impressed by my experience and we'd actually worked with mutual colleagues, some of whom were references. Never heard from them again!

Second interview was a couple of month later up in Edinburgh. I was still working in Cumbria so I also had to incur a days lost wage and travel costs to attend. The two guys just took it in turns belittling everything on my CV. Even denigrating me for being out of work for 4 months at the start of the economic crash......."there was no reason for anyone to be out of work. It was an opportunity".......my reply of " if nobody is spending any money, who am I supposed to design and/or build things for?" was ignored. It was just one big power trip for those two utter c***s.

[tamthebam]

3 hours ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

Travelled to Tow Law (it's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there). Was down to the final two. I was asked to complete a psychometric test as a formality prior to interview. About 10 minutes later a man in a white coat came and told me I wouldn't be seen, as I didn't fit the "profile". I was then escorted from the premises.

I complained to their local office, but was told there was nothing they could do. Apparently the other guy failed as well.

It was for Banks Mining, convincing locals it was a good idea to have an open cast mine in their village, in return for a swing park 10 years later.

^^^ 

failed the Voight-Kampff test...

[GordonD]

14 hours ago, Stellaboz said:

I mind one time I went for an admin gig in Pitrevie business park with some small firm and clearly the guy had a casting couch in his office, and a shop floor full of tarts.

But did you get the job or not?

[Newbornbairn]

Went for a job as stage manager at the Hackney Empire in London without knowing anything about the politics of the place. When I got there I was given a tour and I discovered I knew and was friendly with their sound engineer and a couple of the stage crew. The one thing I did notice was every single member of staff was black. Got taken into a rehearsal room for an interview and was quite surprised to see 8 or 9 people sitting behind a row of desks at the far end of the tennis-court sized room with one single chair in the middle of the room. To be heard you had to really raise your voice and it meant the panel could talk quietly to each other without me being able to hear them. Did I mention they were all black too? Anyway, the interview started and I thought it was going well. Not only did I have the experience and skillset, I knew other people there and also some of the touring companies that were coming in - I really did feel this was going to be a good fit. Then the questions started to get strange. What political activism projects had I been involved in? How diverse were the companies I'd worked with and so on and so on. The clincher was when one quite aggressive woman said "Do you know what racial discrimination is and can you give us examples when you yourself have discriminated racially?"

 

Needless to say, I didn't get the job but I did learn what racial discrimination was. 

[Newbornbairn]

Another one was Arnold Clark Renault in Stirling. Pushy young sales manager interviewed me and by about half way through, both of us knew I wasn't going to be working there. I asked how the vacancy had come about and he said there was no current vacancy but if he reckoned I was better than the guy currently bottom of the sales table, he or she would be fired and I'd be hired. "Keeps everyone on their toes". Then came salary - which was shit. £16k for the first 12 weeks then dropping to £8k but if I hit target I'd be making £30k with commission. Then it was explained there was more money in selling high interest finance deals than the cars themselves. By the end of the interview we were pretty openly insulting each other. 

[ICTChris]

I went for a job interview doe what I thought was a data analyst job but the second question was “what experience do you have configuring telephony systems and networks?”. I had zero experience of configuring telephony systems or networks. I paused for a second and considered lying and trying to wing it but erred on the side of truth and admitted I had none but that I was a fast learner and could demonstrate this and so on. Didn’t get the job and they were very sound but I’d clearly been sent to a job I had no chance of getting.

[Raidernation]

I once had to interview the probationer teacher at my school for a permanent job. The fact I had to write and then send myself her reference was a bit weird

[charon]

44 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

I went for a job interview doe what I thought was a data analyst job but the second question was “what experience do you have configuring telephony systems and networks?”. I had zero experience of configuring telephony systems or networks. I paused for a second and considered lying and trying to wing it but erred on the side of truth and admitted I had none but that I was a fast learner and could demonstrate this and so on. Didn’t get the job and they were very sound but I’d clearly been sent to a job I had no chance of getting.
 

 

 

No wonder ...

 

 

[throbber]

I had a hellish time with agencies for a couple of months after graduating. One job interview I went to which went quite well, the agency phoned me up to say I got the job and I told everyone I had got it then they phoned back a couple hours later saying they had made a mistake and it was some one else they wanted.

A few weeks later another agency got in touch saying there was a job that sounded perfect, the company were based in England but had an office in central Scotland and all the work in central Scotland so they wanted someone who lived in Edinburgh so I was the perfect candidate. Got myself to the office for the interview and the first thing the guy said to me was “So you’re happy to work in South Wales then?” I thought the guy was joking and explained the man from the agency had told me the work was in central Scotland to which the man replied “Yes but he’s a stupid c**t!” The interview never got much better than that and I never even heard from the agency again. Was pretty soul destroying at a fairly fragile time in my life.

[Thistle_do_nicely]

I mind when I was about 18 or 19 going for an interview with some marketing company I'd never heard of, which was with a shifty guy in a cheap suit. I was shite in the interview and the whole atmosphere going into the office where it was held was soulless. 

Realised on the train on the way back from the interview that they'd literally told me nothing about what the job involved or any of the terms and conditions, and when I went onto the company website to check them out (hadn't even bothered my arse to do any sort of research because it was a "No Experience Required!" advert and figured I could wing my way through it) it kind of looked... off. Like, it had all these hyperlinks which were to all these different countries across the world, but when you clicked on any of them it just took you back to the home page. Pretty much a facade to try to make anyone visiting it go "oh wow it's a big multinational corporation" when in all likelihood it was some borderline scam run by poundland Wolf of Wall Street types.

Got a phone call later on the same day saying they were willing to take me on, I asked her immediately if it was commission only, the woman on the other line said yep and I just went yeah, nah, that won't work for me, sorry.

Load of shite. I think it was jupe/Day of the Lords on here that posted about going for an interview for some company that tried to con old people into spending £800 for a vacuum cleaner, it would have been something along those lines or the "the first thing to tell you is it's not pyramid selling" bit from Peep Show.

Edited January 12, 2020 by Thistle_do_nicely

[LondonHMFC]

15 hours ago, Marten said:

The worst question I ever had in an interview was actually an exit interview. The question was: "What could we have done to make you stay?".

My answer: "Not making me redundant would have helped".

That is madness. 

One either side of the table for me, went for an IT job right beside Biggin Hill airport, my previous partner took me in her knackered old Ford Fiesta, as we pulled up, every car was either a Bentley / Ferrari / Porsche etc etc, so felt a tad out of place. The guy doing the interview was a bit odd, and would stop the interview every five minutes or so to watch a plane or helicopter set off. Towards the end he asked me how I got to the interview and I said that my partner took me. He then asked how she had time off in the week, I told him she was a teacher to which he responded "Never do any work do they", which utterly fucked me off. He asked if I wanted a tour around the airport at the end, which I declined. 

Onto giving an interview, we had a guy come in and after a few minutes farted. It was very audible and I was fighting back laughter. He just looked at us and said "now that's out in the open, let's crack on". He actually got a role as well, was very good. 

So don't worry about holding a fart back. 

[Shotgun]

@Thistle_do_nicely's post has reminded me of another.

I was doing penance for sins committed in a former life by working in a Call Center. Saw an ad for similar work but for higher pay and much closer to home. "Incoming calls, no Sales." That'll do nicely, thinks I.

My shift finished at 4:30, so if I hit the door running and drove like a bat out of heck, I could make it to the other company's office before 5 when the admin staff clocked off. Except they wanted me to fill out the application form in their office and there wasn't enough time to do that before they closed. So, I had to fake a Dr's appointment in order to leave at 4 (losing 1/2 an hour's pay) and get there on time. Except there was a bad car crash which brought the traffic to a standstill. Arrived at 2 minutes to 5 and was turned away again.

A "follow up" Dr's appointment a few days later and off I went. Third time's a charm and I was able to fill out the application. Got called for an interview, which required me to take a whole afternoon off so I could get home, have a shower, dress up in my fancy duds and here we go. This is my time to shine.

It was cold call telemarketing. Commission only.

"What about the 'Incoming calls, no Sales' in your ad?" I bleated.
"Oh that was for a different position. We aren't hiring for that any more."

As and when I get elected doG, there will be punishments.

[Futureboy]

Not so much the worst, but definitely the strangest I have experienced happened late last year.

Turned up for the interview. The panel consisted of the person I would replace and a Director. The person I was to replace basically stated that I was much more qualified and experienced than they were, so wouldn't ask me anything technical. The Director asked a few generic interview questions, then took me on a two hour tour of the facility. This included introducing me to numerous members as the new man in post. HR came to see me as I left to say they would email me the paperwork and get my reference details and work out a start date.

I never heard from them again. A chaser email I sent was just ignored. 

Bizarre.

 

 

[psv_killie]

10 minutes ago, Futureboy said:

Not so much the worst, but definitely the strangest I have experienced happened late last year.

Turned up for the interview. The panel consisted of the person I would replace and a Director. The person I was to replace basically stated that I was much more qualified and experienced than they were, so wouldn't ask me anything technical. The Director asked a few generic interview questions, then took me on a two hour tour of the facility. This included introducing me to numerous members as the new man in post. HR came to see me as I left to say they would email me the paperwork and get my reference details and work out a start date.

I never heard from them again. A chaser email I sent was just ignored. 

Bizarre.

 

 

Was that the Hearts job you had applied for?

[Hillonearth]

In our place a few years back the high heid yins decided that every single staff move would henceforth go through a full interview process, regardless of whether it was a completely new job to them or they were just moving sideways into essentially the same job they were currently doing. Previously, if you felt like a change of scenery you could just lodge your name with HR and they'd inform you of jobs coming up...if there was something you fancied you could go along, have an informal chat and if it suited both parties that was all that was required.  I was never sure of the rationale behind the change...I suspect it was more to develop the skills of some otherwise underemployed middle management who were doing the interviews rather than delivering any tangible benefit to the organisation.

The net result? Virtually nobody bothered their arse moving for as long as the policy was in place, which pleasingly infuriated the aforementioned high heid yins enormously. I'd predicted it would happen; people are willing to put themselves through that level of stress for either an entirely new job or for a promotion, but not for a level transfer where the only real difference would be them sitting at a new desk.