56 Jaw-Dropping Job Interview Fails You Won’t Believe Actually Happened
I constantly wonder what the people who gave me my worst interview must have thought. I hadn’t slept the night before, I was stressed, I was tired, I wasn’t in a great mood but I got ready and went there early.
They’re happy I’ve arrived, they take me straight in, we’re all ahead of schedule. We talk and I’ve got reasonable answers for all their questions even though I genuinely have very little idea of what the job entails. It’s about 16 hours a week, 4 hours every morning from around 6 AM to 10.
We get to the “What’s your weakness?” question, and sweet jesus I blew it.
What did I answer?
“Early mornings. I hate early mornings. I don’t sleep well.”
I don’t know what to say, I was exhausted. It was clear to me afterwards that the whole tone of the interview had shifted, this guy had decided I wasn’t getting the job.
It’s true though. I hate early mornings.
I worked as a manager at an ice cream store in highschool, and staffed the store with other high schoolers. One day a middle aged man who was the empitome of a drifter (face tatoos, beat up leather clothes, and a big knife on his belt) came in and asked for a application. I obviously wasn’t going to say ‘no’, and handed him one. He proceded to fill it out in store, and turned it in. His previously losted work experience was from a liquor store he worked at for two weeks about 10 years ago. Reason for leaving? Got in a fight with my manager. Job before that? Liquor store 14 years ago and worked for a week. Reason for leaving? Differences with my manager. I told him that we weren’t hiring right now, which we weren’t, but that I would keep his application on file and would call him if something opened up. Sadly, I never got to hire him and learn his hobo secrets:(.
This was before I was a hiring manager but I remember working in fast food and this guy comes into an interview with my boss wearing flip flops, ripped jeans, and an old t-shirt. I thought my boss was gonna turn him away but it turns out he’s dating her step daughter and he got the job. Lost it less than a month later. After I became a manager the only interview that sticks out to me is this one girl who seemed odd (not just for the main reason I didn’t offer a job). She put her cell phone on the table and it was playing music quietly the entire time I was interviewing her.
I’ve done the hiring manager thing for years, but the event that sticks out for me was when I was frontline lab staff in a very small company. We were hiring and had advertised in the local paper. The lab phone number was published, as it was the only one that was always answered. I took about 50 calls a day for 2 days, wrote down the details of the caller and answered basic questions when the manager wasn’t around.
My favourites were all the guys who just wanted me to record their names as having called and not pursue the application. They were happy on the dole, didn’t want a job and just wanted me to report back to the unemployment office that they were rejected.
So Thomas, what do you do for fun??
Well I like to drink heavily sir…
My friend, now deceased, lived with a brain tumor for 11 years. Once he had a mild seizure in a group job interview. He said he thought he must have blacked out for a few seconds during one of the questions and regained consciousness a few seconds later. We used to make him tell the story all the time.
“I sat there trying to figure out where I was and what was going on. Everyone was wearing a tie including me. Eventually figured out I must be at a job interview.”
He said he asked something like, “Are you interviewing me for a job?”
Didn’t get the job.
I was hiring for a position in my office. It was a final-round interview, and if I liked the candidate, she’d get the job.
I meet her and, like most candidates for jobs, she brings in a copy of her resume. I sit her down and ask as an opening question, “So, what caused you to take interest in this position?”
The girl smiles and says, “Well, I have a lot of experience that I feel I could bring to the table, which is on my resume.”
She then looks down at her resume and proceeds to read it to me. Verbatim and in its entirety. For 15 minutes straight. No eye contact. She reads word-for-word every bullet point, every detail, every award and leadership position that she had in college, what she did at her last internship…most of which had absolutely nothing to do with the job.
After 15 minutes of her talking, I still did not know why she was interested in the job.
In fact, all I knew about her was the information on her resume, which I had received and read prior to the interview.
And she knew I’d previously seen it because I’d mentioned reading her resume before we sat down.
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