Worst interview experiences

[coprolite]

22 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Had similar as a student. 

Selling gas and electric on a commission only basis - and they got away with it by classing you as self-employed.

 

Fucking soul-destroying is an understatement.

 

The whole set-up was a recruitment pyramid - the only way you could make any real money was to recruit other people to be part of your team.

 

What's sad is they advertised the positions as a trainee management position. Utter bunch of fraudsters preying on desperate people.

 

Shadowed one of their big sellers - after the first person let us in I could see this wasn't for me - some of the most underhand lying sales techniques I ever seen. He wasn't happy when I stopped him in mid tracks finalising the sale - told him I was going as I did not want to work for a bunch of chancers. If looks could kill!!

 

Could have be worse though - could have been working for Penicuik Windows!!

 

 

 

 

“Trainee marketing manager role” and “definitely not a pyramid scheme” were what they said at mine. I was in the same group as a boy that worked at a baker in Kirkcaldy who turned up in jeans and a guns n roses t shirt. If you were that boy I want you to know you dodged a bullet there.

[Torpar]

1 hour ago, Barry Ferguson's Hat said:

 

The first part started with a group interview and after that we were then taken, one at a time, for a one-on-one interview.

 

Aye that's usually how they work. 

[Shotgun]

13 hours ago, GiGi said:

Is the 1 pager an American thing? Ive been playing about with my CV recently and changed the format to get all the relevant stuff for my area on 1 page rather than the original 2. 

I haven't applied for anything with it yet but I do worry that 1 page might just be binned for looking too short before someone even reads it. It does look a wee bit more professional now. 

The goal for a resume is to fit everything onto 2 pages max, which can take quite a bit of creativity, particularly for people who've had a long career. There's very little extraneous information. 

Name, address, contact info.

Intro paragraph about why they should hire you, and your relevant skills.

Work History:
Company, job title, time period.
What were your responsibilities and what were your achievements, in terms of how this experience would benefit the employer in the role for which you're applying.

Previous job

Job before that. etc.

Professional qualifications / education.

...and that's it. No hobbies, personal details, ambitions or anything.

You might have a different one for internal job postings, jobs within your industry and jobs in an entirely different field, all worded based upon what's important for the application.

In practical terms, recruiters use them to weed out people who 'won't' fit the bill. Often on fairly arbitrary terms. Typos, fancy fonts, photos, whimsical email addresses...straight in the bin. But, given that they often receive dozens if not hundreds of applications for each position, you can't blame them for being ruthless.

From what I remember of CVs though, they have a very different purpose. Unless you're just starting out in life, I would think 1 page would be too short.

[Priti priti priti Patel]

I had an interview today at  a major US professional services firm, and the attractive Caribbean woman interviewing called me "cute" during it.  Definitely not my worst interview experience tbqhwy.

[Shotgun]

12 minutes ago, Margaret Thatcher said:

I had an interview today at  a major US professional services firm, and the attractive Caribbean woman interviewing called me "cute" during it.  Definitely not my worst interview experience tbqhwy.

Speaking of a time when I was the interviewer, rather than the interviewee a rather...buxom lady sat down in the chair, squirmed a little and said "Mmm hmmm...I'd like to be working under you!"

[beefybake]

12 minutes ago, Shotgun said:

Speaking of a time when I was the interviewer, rather than the interviewee a rather...buxom lady sat down in the chair, squirmed a little and said "Mmm hmmm...I'd like to be working under you!"

And... ?

[Shotgun]

2 minutes ago, beefybake said:

And... ?

A widnae so I didnae.

[Busta Nut]

I on't have any real funny stories. I did once apply for an apprenticeship at a lift and escalator firm, last minute thing and they asked me in for an interview the next day, I was about 17 and just twagged in in jeans and a shirt. they were chatting away fine for ages and I thought I had aced the b*****d thing then they said "let's get started then".

 

It went down hill fast from there, I mind talking about how "fun" lifts and escalators were at one question cos I was completely unprepaired for any of the real questions they asked. Completely fucked it.

 

Nearly getting a riddy thinking about it.

[Newbornbairn]

Have you ever gone for an interview and realised you're out of your depth?

 

The wife (who was working for Edrington at the time) got me an interview with Diageo at their HQ in London - which is an amazing place btw. Escape pods, private library, chutes between floors, gym, massage rooms etc etc. Anyway I gets down there and I'm sitting with the group and my heart starts sinking. The lassie I'm sitting beside was perfection. Stunning, blonde, smart and just graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris doing International Business Law or something. The guy at the other side has been managing the family distillery in Ireland for the last few years. Another gorgeous lassie was there because daddy plays golf with the MD of Diageo. We're all chatting away and doing the "so how did you get here today" and one stayed at daddy's club nearby, another had parked their Porsche right outside and thought it was amusing when it got ticketed as we watched but the best was the guy who flew - in his own helicopter!

I went down on the sleeper from Edinburgh, couldn't afford a cabin so I slept sprawled out on a seat. 

 

Didn't get the job so I asked for feedback. Apparently they couldn't understand my accent (which can be a bit Methil right enough)

[Tulloch Gorum]

5 hours ago, mathematics said:

In my current job, One of the five interviewers told me (upon commenting on my suit) that I didn’t have to get dressed up for them!

on the oxford comment, PhD students have to (or at least had to) wear a penguin suit for their PhD viva.

They've to be "sub fusc" - for men that's a white shirt, white bow-tie, black jacket, black breeks, black socks, black shoes, the robe of your current academic status and carrying (but not wearing) your academic hat.  Women can wear the same, or if they choose they can have a black skirt and a black ribbon in place of the bow-tie.  Ordained clergy can wear clerical robes and members of the armed forces can wear their dress uniforms.  This is for matriculation, examination (including viva) and graduation, and in some of the colleges for ceremonial dinners and the like.  It's for all levels, not just doctoral students.  It is a load of utter nonsense, and part of the glowing aura of bullshit these places build their brand on. 

Edited January 15, 2020 by Tulloch Gorum

[Barry Ferguson's Hat]

51 minutes ago, Torpar said:

Aye that's usually how they work. 

Not if there's more than one person doing the interviewing ya gimp. 

[Poet of the Macabre]

The Monopoly chat a few pages back made me want to claw my eyes out ngl

[parsforlife]

On 15/01/2020 at 01:28, welshbairn said:

Talking of discrimination, I was recently advised not to put my date of birth down on application forms, as I'm getting on a bit.  There's talk about banning selfies on CVs but what do you do if your first name's Ahmed?

 

I’ve always been told not to put d.o.b on my CV and even hearing about it makes me cringe. Why the f**k would you go chucking that random bit of info around? It just seems a relic from a bygone era where you considered yourself an enlightened company if you’d hire women(not married ones tho). sending a picture of yourself is OFTW behaviour. If your putting these bits of info down it suggests you want to be hired based on your looks/age and therefore shouldn’t be hired.

On the being discriminated based on your name I have heard a few things anecdotally and I’m sure I even saw a study at some point where they’d tracked the positive response rate of the same C.Vs being sent out with different names on them and it showed very badly for employers. Having a classic white British name was a huge advantage.

I think the general career advice given out by schools etc is based on idealism on how to apply for jobs with companies with good recruitment process and not how to actually get a job in an environment where a large amount of the time things are done less than professionally.
 

 

Edited January 16, 2020 by parsforlife

[coprolite]

6 hours ago, parsforlife said:

 

I’ve always been told not to put d.o.b on my CV and even hearing about it makes me cringe. Why the f**k would you go chucking that random bit of info around? It just seems a relic from a bygone era where you considered yourself an enlightened company if you’d hire women(not married ones tho). sending a picture of yourself is OFTW behaviour. If your putting these bits of info down it suggests you want to be hired based on your looks/age and therefore shouldn’t be hired.

On the being discriminated based on your name I have heard a few things anecdotally and I’m sure I even saw a study at some point where they’d tracked the positive response rate of the same C.Vs being sent out with different names on them and the showed very badly for employers. Having a classic white British name was a huge advantage.

I think the general career advice given out by schools etc is based on idealism on how to apply for jobs with companies with good recruitment process and not how to actually get a job in an environment where a large amount of the time things are done less than professionally.
 

 

The experiment with the names has been done a few times. First as an academic study then replicated, I think for the BBC. The results were pretty shocking tbh. 

I have sat with an employer who was going through cvs for bar work and he discarded everything with a Torry or Tillydrone postcode without looking at anything else. 

Edited January 16, 2020 by coprolite

[Arabdownunder]

I was interviewing folk for a position and asked one woman the "Tell me about a team when you had to deal with a stressful situation in the workplace" question. She recounted the time she had to run out of the room because she suddenly had her period. 

[Stellaboz]

Strange how countries differ. In Germany if you don't put a picture of yourself, they think you're hiding something and OFTW.

[Guest JTS98]

7 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

Strange how countries differ. In Germany if you don't put a picture of yourself, they think you're hiding something and OFTW.

Aye, Koreans all fire a picture onto job applications/cvs too. It's the norm there.

Mind you, Koreans are the most image-obsessed and shallow human beings in the world, so I'd expect it of them.

It's quite obviously a ropey idea.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

On 12/01/2020 at 14:22, Thistle_do_nicely said:

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.

Aye that was me. Totally dodgy company. They used to advertise in the Courier looking for "10-12 new staff required for busy sales team in city centre". The first time i went they were called Kirby Hoovers, which was a truly surreal experience. There was no interview as such, we just had to endure 2 days induction. Day two was the real weird one. An induction video starring a clearly desperate William Shatner was bad enough, but then they gave us the "script" which basically showed us how to con old folk into buying these fucking things. It ended with some ned in a suit, looking like he'd spent far too long in the Elizabeth Duke jewellery section in Argos appearing, claiming to be be the lead salesman, making £3,000 in the last month. The script was mental though, basically aimed at convincing folk their houses were full of deadly dust mites that only these hoovers could deal with, and the Sales Manager telling us not to leave until we had a signed agreement. Absolute wankers. 

[Jacksgranda]

10 hours ago, Tulloch Gorum said:

They've to be "sub fusc" - for men that's a white shirt, white bow-tie, black jacket, black breeks, black socks, black shoes, the robe of your current academic status and carrying (but not wearing) your academic hat.  Women can wear the same, or if they choose they can have a black skirt and a black ribbon in place of the bow-tie.  Ordained clergy can wear clerical robes and members of the armed forces can wear their dress uniforms.  This is for matriculation, examination (including viva) and graduation, and in some of the colleges for ceremonial dinners and the like.  It's for all levels, not just doctoral students.  It is a load of utter nonsense, and part of the glowing aura of bullshit these places build their brand on. 

Crazy

[Northboy]

13 hours ago, Sir Kevin Of Kilsyth said:

Got rejected cos I've got a breach of the peace on my criminal record and the guy was a bit of a knob so I pished all over the lift on the way out.

And you think the interviewer was a bit of a knob ...