Current Events > worst job interviews you've ever had?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Had an interview for an AT&T store rep position. interview went well until she asked me a loaded question. "...but you have over 3 years of experience, how did you not know about x?" I didn't know what to say, and I knew the interview was over

When I was interviewed for a technical support position at frontier, although it went well, there was a Marine that had more experience (not to mention military experience). They invited me to a second interview, but when I told them my availability, I received no response from recruiting. Then a few days later I received an automated rejected letter.

I was looking for a summer job when I graduated from HS. Applied at a thrift store, and was interviewed immediately when I handed in the application. I was thinking with my penis and not my brain, because the interviewer was hot and I asked for her number at the end of the interview. Fail.
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For me, it was some interview for a forensics science job where I stumbled my words through the interview.
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PikachuMaxwell posted...

For me, it was some interview for a forensics science job where I stumbled my words through the interview.

were you just nervous, or did they ask you tough questions?
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I've never not gotten a job after an interview, so idk.
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pojr posted...

PikachuMaxwell posted...

For me, it was some interview for a forensics science job where I stumbled my words through the interview.

were you just nervous, or did they ask you tough questions?

I was nervous and unprepared. Big mistake on my part, though, I admit it.
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I got turned down by a Blockbuster for saying "shit" during the interview. Other than that, I've gotten every job I've ever interviewed for.
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I drove an hour for an interview only to find out it was a group presentation for life insurance sales. They did offer me the job afterwards, but there was no way in hell I was taking it.

Balrog0 posted...

I've never not gotten a job after an interview, so idk.

So you run your own business then?

Vertania posted...

I drove an hour for an interview only to find out it was a group presentation for life insurance sales. They did offer me the job afterwards, but there was no way in hell I was taking it.

Why didn't you?
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i had a bunch of coffee and talked super fast, pretty sure they thought i was on cocaine or something. add to that i was nervous so it just made the entire interview go really poorly for me.
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Probably when I applied to a microbrewery. My buddy told me about it when I was chling at his place smoking a doob. I had resumes on me due to actively looking for a job at the time.

I said fuck it, walked down to the brewery right away to drop it off and had an interview with the boss right then and there.

I was so stoned that I was mumbling shit and tripping over my words. I ended up getting a practical interview (working for a day to see if I'd work out) and scored the job due to my work ethic.

Best summer job ever for a 22 year old.
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donkeyjack posted...

So you run your own business then?

no, I am just really good at interviews I guess
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Well I just bombed an interview last night. It was a digital interview where they record a video of you answering preset questions and you only get one try per question.

In the first question of "Why do you want to work here?" I rambled the first minute, got super nervous, than exited out the window.
When I tried to go back to redo the question, they had already saved that video.

donkeyjack posted...

Why didn't you?

For one, it was a straight-up pyramid scheme. The guy told us that you only get paid comission and that he (the supervisor) gets paid more for employees selling more. Hell, they had to be intentionally vague and dishonest about the "interview" just to get people to show up there.

Second, it was literally door-to-door life insurance sales. Like, how do you even handle that with any amount of tact? *old lady answers door* "Hi ma'am, you look like you're going to die soon; please give us your money."

I was really bad at interviews for years after high school. I could list them but some were random af. But after a terrible phone interview a few years ago right out of college I had some sort of epiphany and now Ive aced a few interviews in a row. What continually used to trip me up was looking at the short picture and just saying too much. I did a lot of textbook wrong things. And honestly I didnt really study up a lot on how to get better, I just became a lot more naturally confident with time plus, for better or worse, I can have the sense of mind to simply sell myself without going overboard.
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p
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I interviewed for a cafeteria food prep job. Drove over, they made me take some bs personality test, which I "failed" because it indicated that I was too independent and ambitious to work in a kitchen.

Why the fuck didn't they just let me take it online at home? Waste of gas money.

Also I did an interview where there was some misleading info on my resume. It was nothing nefarious, I wasn't trying to lie or anything, but it was embarrassing that I had to point it out >_>
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I've never really messed up an interview, but there was one interview I had where I was seriously misled by the interviewers
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I got there early. The receptionist handed me another copy of an application. You know, this was after submitting my resume then filling an online one out with the same info? I filled that paper one out and 50-60 minutes after the initial start time of my interview, the lady and some other applicant walked out and were laughing and she said to expect a call in a few days about the job. Who knows, it may have been an employee trying to get a different position. Well then she took 15 minutes to get a coffee and look over some papers, and finally she was ready to start.

It would have been pretty standard except for the times she really, really went out of her way to patronize me about not having worked in that field before (basic floor associate at Macy's, meaning mostly I'd be pointing people to where they're looking for something, as well as putting stuff back on display).

Pretty sure I got blacklisted afterwards but I didn't get the job and honestly, with an HR like her, I wouldn't have wanted it.
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Probably the job at a wine store when i was 21 where I talked about all the different wines I drank with my parents as a kid.
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I drove over an hour for the interview. It was an outside sales engineer job that would have required a lot of driving. I got asked pretty much every illegal question by the man interviewing me.

Are you married?

Does your husband approve of you getting this kind of job?

Why would you want this kind of job? You would need to drive all day, it is dangerous for a woman and I would be concerned for you

What kind of car do you drive? Is it safe?

Do you have children? Are you planning to have any?

After all that shit, they actually did end up making me an offer. Only it was for less than what was posted and they wanted me to spend 6 months in the office to train before allowing me to do outside sales. I of course turned it down.

When I was bout 3.5 years into doing ISP tech support, I thought I was ready to move into the networking world. I interviewed with a managed services company. When the interview began, he asked me two basic networking questions.

1) Have you ever heard of the OSI model?
- My answer: No
2) How many usable IP addresses do you get with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.252?
- My answer: 1
== The way I "learned" it at my ISP tech support job that only 1 of the 2 IP addresses is usable because the ISP takes one and the customer uses the other one. Wrong.

At that point the interview was pretty much over and I knew it. The interviewer still asked me some other questions about my responsibilities at my job, but I knew I had bombed.

After the interview was over, I sat in my car for about an hour outside the building because I was so angry at myself. I felt like I had been wasting my life away by staying at that job for so long. The realization that I didn't know jack shit about networking was soul crushing.
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I was once interviewed for a tech job by a lady with big ol' knockers and she loved showing them off. Somewhere in the middle of it my eyes wondered and I know she caught me, probably more than once. I was not selected.
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I had an interview to be a salesman. Which is a ridiculous concept--me being a salesman.

But the address they gave me had to be wrong--or else mapquest just sucked, which I guess it did--because the directions I printed out took me into a subdivision. Fortunately, I left myself so extra time just in case I got lost, but even so I was a few minutes late when I finally found the place. So I walk in, it's a fairly large office building--the kind where each office is for a different company--and I find the suite number. Heavy wooden doors. Remembering my manners and not knowing what is immediately on the other side of the door, I knock. I wait. Nothing. I knock again. Wait. Nothing.

This other dude in a suit comes down the hall, I kid you not, literally walks in front of me, opens said door and walks in without a word. And here I am, evidently completely invisible, standing there with my suit and Fischer-Price briefcase like the beta-est beta who ever beta'd. So I'm like... was that guy another applicant, or was that actually the business owner? If I knock now, will that be seen as a smartass move? If that was the guy who's supposed to interview me, is he gonna be like "who need a beta salesman?"

So I leave. I got an email later that day asking me to reschedule... but I mean I didn't want to be a salesman anyway, and you really can't make much worse of a first impression than that so.
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Or maybe the time I literally went to a job interview for an engineering position at a company that develops radomes without any shoes on. I brought clothes to change into when I arrived, and totally forgot to bring any shoes. I decided if I wear my tennis shoes (with a suit), they'll notice immediately but maaaaaybe my black socks could go unnoticed.

They asked me if I had any questions and I asked "so uh... what IS a radome?" Immediately knew it was a bad move but frankly I always thought radomes were fictitious sci-fi tech that Kojima made up.
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I applied for a maintenance position at an apartment complex once. The listing said "no experience required" so I figured there would be on the job training

When I get there, I have to take a fuckin' test on a bunch of shit like electrical, plumbing, etc. Which makes sense, but not exactly something you'd pass without experience

Needless to say, about halfway through grading my test, he tells me I already failed and then we were done
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I interviewed for a supervisor position that was open at a job I was at for a long time. My boss decided to ask me and others through a group chat in facebook (which I had deactivated at the time) about it. I didn't know about it until a week later after the interviews were over when she sent me an email asking me if I still wanted to interview. I went ahead and did it, got an irritated response from her about not being on facebook, and did the interview. At the end, she told me that she already made her choice a few days ago, but wanted to interview me anyways so that it could be done.

She ended up being a real c*** anyways.
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Vertania posted...

donkeyjack posted...

Why didn't you?

For one, it was a straight-up pyramid scheme. The guy told us that you only get paid comission and that he (the supervisor) gets paid more for employees selling more. Hell, they had to be intentionally vague and dishonest about the "interview" just to get people to show up there.

Second, it was literally door-to-door life insurance sales. Like, how do you even handle that with any amount of tact? *old lady answers door* "Hi ma'am, you look like you're going to die soon; please give us your money."

I am kind of a life insurance agent but not in that way.
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I had a recent phone interview with Panera that I was incredibly disappointed with afterwards.

The recruiter informed me in advance that it would be behavioral based and to research the STAR method.

I did my due diligence and printed out a bunch of papers with sample questions that I filled in. I was prepared!

When the time came for those questions, I completely stumbled across my answers. I could hear myself rambling on but couldn't stop.

I was so disappointed because I was highly interested in the job and I rarely prepare like that. I felt like a fool.
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ShadowElite86 posted...

When the time came for those questions, I completely stumbled across my answers. I could hear myself rambling on but couldn't stop.

Oh man I hate that.
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Vertania posted...

donkeyjack posted...

Why didn't you?

For one, it was a straight-up pyramid scheme. The guy told us that you only get paid comission and that he (the supervisor) gets paid more for employees selling more. Hell, they had to be intentionally vague and dishonest about the "interview" just to get people to show up there.

Second, it was literally door-to-door life insurance sales. Like, how do you even handle that with any amount of tact? *old lady answers door* "Hi ma'am, you look like you're going to die soon; please give us your money."

Out of curiosity was this American Income? Because it sounds a lot like the interview I had with them. I made the mistake of taking that job and it not working out so now I'm struggling to get by back in the retail business again.
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Ages ago I applied at a university a couple towns over that I had been to once or twice, so thought I knew exactly how to get there. Left early for the interview and everything just in case, and... turns out I had no idea how to get there, lol. Well, I DID eventually figure it out but was like 15 or 20 minutes late. This was before smart phones and I didn't have a GPS or anything. Anyway, due to that I was just flustered and did a pretty bad job in the actual interview, so even if they would overlook me being late, I did a pretty poor job and stumbled around a lot.
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Applied for a grill cook position at Cracker Barrel a few years ago when I only had like 6 months prep cook experience. When I showed up for the interview the interviewing manager basically shit talked me the entire time, telling me how underqualified I was for the position I applied for and how much harder the job was than my previous experience. Basically he spent 30 minutes sucking his own dick while talking down to me. The whole time I just kinda sat there stunned, thinking "Why the fuck did you call me in then and waste like 2 hours of my life? You knew my qualifications before I ever got here, asshat". Needless to say I didn't get the job.

Joke's on him, I'm now overqualified for HIS job lol
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Tried out for a YMCA job. Two others were interviewed alongside me. One had bachelor's degree in sports medicine, the other volunteered for some local sports team. I had no experience whatsoever. I didn't get the job

Galcian posted...

Tried out for a YMCA job. Two others were interviewed alongside me. One had bachelor's degree in sports medicine, the other volunteered for some local sports team. I had no experience whatsoever. I didn't get the job

Oh I had one of those once for a warehouse job. It was me and another dude. The other dude was former military and once this fact was out in the open, the old man interviewing wouldn't even look at me let alone ask me anymore questions.
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Vertania posted...

For one, it was a straight-up pyramid scheme. The guy told us that you only get paid comission and that he (the supervisor) gets paid more for employees selling more.

I'm familiar with commission payment structures because I used to work for a company that developed software for that purpose.

This kind of commission structure is beyond common. In fact, it's standard--like, you pretty much can't do it any other way--for external (contracted) brokers in the medicare business.

It's not scammy at all in theory but yeah I could see how it would result in shady tsctics by the higher-ups. It's just a natural consequence of the whole idea of commissions and hierarchy. If the agents do better, they get more money, but the guy supervising them doesn't? Chances are that guy played no small role in their success. This is why he counts as a broker too.

We had five levels of hierarchy--agent, general agent, managing general agent, supervising general agent and field marketing organization.
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I'm punching him punching him punching him punching him and I say what do you mean I didn't give you the correct change.
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Interviewed for an assistant manager position at Arby's.

Went well at first, then out of nowhere the dude started insulting my appearance. This was before I had and body modifications as well. He just started insulting my hair and my outfit and kept talking about how important cleanliness is in a restaurant, obviously implying I was dirty. To this day I have no idea what his problem was, almost feel like it was just some puke stain who wanted to feel high and mighty for a day. He was in his 40's too which is even more embarrassing.

Another time had an interview for a job selling body jewelry. Had the experience so the girl interviewing was super excited to meet me. I'll admit I was a little jittery because she was an ULTRA HOT scene girl but things went sour super quickly. At first she just winged it and asked me made up questions. Asked what my hobbies were, I told her a few things, but when I mentioned video games she got really angry out of nowhere and switched to the company's interview questions which were hard as fuck for some reason. Didn't get the job obviously, but later had another interview with a different manager that went far better. When I told the new manager about the video games thing, she was baffled since she said the exact same thing in her interview.
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electricbugs2 posted...

Interviewed for an assistant manager position at Arby's.

Went well at first, then out of nowhere the dude started insulting my appearance. This was before I had and body modifications as well. He just started insulting my hair and my outfit and kept talking about how important cleanliness is in a restaurant, obviously implying I was dirty. To this day I have no idea what his problem was, almost feel like it was just some puke stain who wanted to feel high and mighty for a day. He was in his 40's too which is even more embarrassing.

Another time had an interview for a job selling body jewelry. Had the experience so the girl interviewing was super excited to meet me. I'll admit I was a little jittery because she was an ULTRA HOT scene girl but things went sour super quickly. At first she just winged it and asked me made up questions. Asked what my hobbies were, I told her a few things, but when I mentioned video games she got really angry out of nowhere and switched to the company's interview questions which were hard as fuck for some reason. Didn't get the job obviously, but later had another interview with a different manager that went far better. When I told the new manager about the video games thing, she was baffled since she said the exact same thing in her interview.

Damn, from interviewing at Arby's to rich, young and out of control. How did you do it Bugs?
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medzz posted...

I'm punching him punching him punching him punching him and I say what do you mean I didn't give you the correct change.

I google'd this expecting it to Death Grips lyrics.
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ProfDE posted...

Out of curiosity was this American Income? Because it sounds a lot like the interview I had with them. I made the mistake of taking that job and it not working out so now I'm struggling to get by back in the retail business again.

I actually can't even remember, but that name doesn't sound familiar. The interview was back in 2012 and the office was in Binghamton, NY.

Oh man I just had a really bad one.

@FLUFFYGERM posted...

FFFFFFF DevsBro what would your salary requirements be if you were to join a startup?

DevsBro posted...

Tell me about your pension plan first.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

No pension plan, but there are worthless stock options that might be worth something in the future! Moon shot of course.

lol I didn't even respond.
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How does $115,000 per year sound? Completely remote as well.
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I've had plenty of bad ones, but no big showstopper awful moments to easily pin one as the worst, so I don't know.

Worst I was treated by a company is probably when they canceled a phone interview with me and said they had already filled the position. Like it's one thing to decide not to interview somebody, but how fucking disorganized are you that you set somebody up for an interview while there is an offer out?

Worst experience overall was when the reception/security guy was confused I was asking for somebody for an interview and said "You look like you're twelve." Like even if you think that, you don't say something like that out loud. It's bad enough I can tell when people are thinking it, but nobody else ever says that. But it wasn't technically a part of the interview and I'm not even sure if he was employed by that company or just some third-party security. The actual interview was bad though, I remember them being very patronizing with "You haven't even done this stuff, why are you interviewing with us?" type questions. Well I don't know, why did you select me for an interview?

Worst actual interview, on their part, was when I drove 45 minutes and I only spent 10-15 actually interviewing. I could tell something was up and they had already made a decision, and later I found out they got an internal candidate. Fine, but just cancel my interview instead of making me drive and waste my time.

Worst interview on my part would I guess be when I was sweating so much and I'm sure they could smell me. First of all it was really cold that day, so I made the mistake of wearing a long sleeve undershirt. And then the whole process lasted like 8 hours (we went to dinner at the end), so it was just building up and stewing all day with no chance for relief.

Oh, another bad one was where I interviewed with a few rounds and one of the rounds was two guys who seemed totally disengaged. They said it was just because they just got back from a big lunch and felt all tired or whatever, but it made it hard for me to stand out and be engaging as well. You tend to play off and reflect the other person's energy, so it was no help.

I never had a job interview lol
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Scotty_Rogers posted...

I never had a job interview lol

what
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A group interview for Kohls. One of the questions was "describe a situation at your job where you went above and beyond the call of duty." One guy said he was a lifeguard at a community pool, and he saved a 7 year old from drowning. Everyone broke out in applause.

It's your job to save lives, asshole. That's not going above and beyond.

I had an interview with Centene a few years ago and it was fairly awkward. Two employees that didn't even work in the area I was interviewing came down to the lobby to get me and they stood behind me the entire way up. I had no idea where I'm suppose to go so it was really bugging me that they were making me lead the way. Why not have one walk in front of me and the other in back at the very least?
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