Lots of threads asking for advice on interviews, technique, clothes, etc.

There must be lots of funny stories about interviews that went horribly wrong? Completely overdressed/underdressed? Went to pieces when asked questions for which you had no answer?

Let’s have them then…from interviewers and interviewees. Mine isn’t really funny, just a bit more cringeworthy tbh:

It’s been a long time since I did an interview but I remember one that went particularly badly. I really took an almost instant dislike to the two guys interviewing me for a job covering Wales and the SW. My answers were getting a bit spikey. I’m not sure they were in love with me either. They then annoyed me more by asking where in Wales I’d move to if I was to get the job.

I can’t remember my exact words now but something to the effect of “Look, you don’t really like me and I certainly don’t like you, I have no intention of moving to Wales so let’s just end this now before we waste anymore of each other’s time”. I think they were as relieved as I was when I got up and left.

For a sales job, I once asked why the position was vacant and if I was replacing anyone or if they were expanding their sales force.

The Finance director said it was planed expansion and they wished to grow the business.

I asked how they planned this and the amount of finances in place to fund the planned expansion.

The finance director said they were just going to grow.

I asked, surely there is an amount of money budgeted for this expansion. The MD also asked the finance director the same question and then said “yeh Frank, where are we getting the money from?”

I didn’t get offered the job and if I had been offered, I would have declined.

Was onced asked, “Can you tell me ten things you’d do with a concrete hedgehog?”

I lost interest very rapidly at that point.

At a major job opportunity I wandered downstairs into the staff cafe where the other candidates were waiting after a particularly gruelling technical interview.

An employee of the company who looked vaguely familiar recognised me and came over, sticking out his hand and saying “Hello [my name], good to see you again!”

My response? “Uh, hi. Have we met before?” [Everyone else in the room cringes.]

He replied, “Yes, we met at [a big event]. I was the guest of honour, don’t you remember? We chatted for quite a while. I’m [his name], head of training and recruiting for [FTSE 100 company]”.

At this point I do have a vague recollection of meeting him part way through the night. I don’t have the foggiest idea what we talked about (free bar which I took much advantage of) but I’m hoping we met before someone spilled a pink cocktail down my shirt, not after…

Having said that, I did get the job so I must have said something right. 🙂

I’m either great/terrible at interviews.. Most of mine have been Ambulance service interviews:

One where I chatted with the manager about messy nights out at rock city in nottingham for an hour (he’d been to Nottingham uni, I’m from there originally)

One (for my current job) where I spent an hour slating the service that I work for, picking holes in the management, operations, planning, lack of development and financial “issues”. The guy interviewing me said it was the weirdest interview ever, and he felt like he was being told off, but I clearly knew what I was talking about!

I had one young-ish bloke turn up and screw up from start to finish.

Loads of stuff on his CV which he’d put on there to make himself sound more rounded including “Interested in classic cars” (turns out he cleans his dads jag), “cookery” (loves egg and chips, cooks it for himself every night) and “travel” (lads holiday to Spain just before the interview). Had no bearing on the job, he could have sat at home eating hobnobs all the time **** over classic car mags for all it mattered.

When he walked out he left his bag behind, when I called him back to collect it he said “That’s me all over mate, shit for brains me, forget my head if it wasn’t attached”

and the crowning glory..
When asked why he wanted to work at the company he said “I’d quite like to shag your receptionist”

I got an interview via a recruitment agency once for what I was told was a Technical Sales job (in organic chemistry).
Turned up at the interview and the guy started talking about marketing. I know bugger all about marketing. Turned out the scummy agency had just thrown anyone even vaguely related to “chemistry” at this position. Interview was a disaster from start to finish, we mutually decided that I wasn’t going to get the job.

Two days later the useless tossers at the recruitment agency phoned me and told me I hadn’t got the job. No shit.

None of my (thankfully fairly limited) experiences with recruitment agencies have been good, I’ll never use one again if I can help it.

Went for a senior instructor position at Outward Bound Ullswater. I got a call Friday last thing – please come and see us Wednesday for an interview.
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Cue a cut short family holiday and travelling half the length of Britain.
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Turned up and was promptly told, as I walked in the office for the interview, that they had filled the post with an internal candidate the week before, and would I be interested in a more junior post in Wales instead?
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😈 😈 😈

I once asked a girl who was after a job how she would handle a response from a user for something that wasn’t technically possible. I was expecting a response around talking with the user to fully understand the request and work out what we could / couldn’t do, suggest other solutions etc. She didn’t say any of that. Instead, she sat here thinking for a bt and then all she said was “I’d lie to them”. She couldn’t understand why she didn’t get the job!

A friend of mine told me, “In an interview, the interviewer said, we’ve not gone for any internal candidates for this job and we’ve not advertised externally either, how much would you like to take the role then bearing in mind its easier to get a pay rise now more than ever.

Since you put it like that….I added a very cheeky and somewhat risky £9k to the salary I had in mind for the role!

“That fits the budget” came the reply….All I wanted to do then was pull my shirt over my head and run around the office before falling to my knees in a skid.”

lucky him eh!

A mate of mine ‘jokingly’ applied for a job in the Subway sandwich chain..
I say jokingly as he usually works operating heavy plant..but he was between contracts and had the hots for one of the female staff in our local Subway outlet..

Arriving at the interview straight from a 24 hour scrumpy session.. reeking of booze and helped along by some psychedelic substances amongst other things.. he introduced himself to the manager looking scruffy.. tired and sweaty and more than a little wild eyed..
His suit had been hurriedly unpacked from a bin bag on top of his wardrobe with no time for a clean or a press and it was a bit err.. grubby.. he looked and smelled and carried himself like a genuine tramp

He used his natural charm to the best of his abilities and felt that he had the interveiwer onside.. until he felt a couple of beads of sweat breaking free on his neck and forehead..

As he tried to subtly remove the sweat from his brow.. a bee flew out of his dirty tangled mop of unkempt hair.. causing him to yelp and swipe at the sweat on his neck.. which dislodged the spiders nest that was secreted within the large web on his collar.. discharging unknown amounts of baby spiders cascading over his face and neck and across his shirt..

The lady interviewing him lost her cool a little bit at this point.. which caused my chum to release all the pent up tension he was harbouring in an hysterical and uncontrollable fit of snot-bubble inducing giggles..

He couldn’t carry on so picking his false teeth up from the carpet in front of him he made a lame excuse and scarpered.. which was lucky.. otherwise the freshly discharged urine would have soaked into the seat that he had been sat on..

I was sent by a recruitment agency to an interview for a job working on the atmospheric control systems for the international space station.

Arrived, signed the Official Secrets Act forms in reception, was ecsorted into interview that went something like this:

Them: Tell us everything you know about nerve gas.
Me: I don’t know anything about nerve gas. I thought this job was about maintaining the atmosphere on the space station.
Them: No, it’s nerve gas. You’ll be working with nerve gas.
Me: No, I won’t.

Got a temp job driving a van for the NHS, a part time post came up on job share , so i had to be interviewed for the same job i was already doing, i got asked, if you died tonight, what do you think your workmates would say tommorow when they found out, youre dead.

Thankfuly i didnt die and got the job.

Oh another job, in the NHS, when asked how i was going to get to work, i said cycle, (i was already cycling 16 miles each way in the previous job), the new job was 10 miles away from home.

The lady interviewing said arent you a bit old to cyle now, i was 32 at the time, and didnt get the job.

At prison services interview was asked why the re-offending rate was high.
Me: A lack of resources and funding for rehabilitation.
WRONG
Should have said because they are BAD.

Having been interviewed by a number of drones up to this point for a job in a small bio-tech firm, the MD decided to conduct the final interview herself. I’d performed well in the previous rounds, and it came down to me and this spotty oik who had much less experience.

It was pretty much in the bag, she was impressed, I was happy. I stood up, shook her hand, as I walked out the door thanking her for the time, promptly fell over the knee high filing cabinate and landed in an ungainly heap on the carpet.

I didn’t get the job.

Psychometric testing with what was British Steel:
Her “Can you count off 30 seconds accurately, I’ll time it with my stop watch”
Me ” Ok 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand 3 one thousand etc “
Her ” you know that was miles out you sped up and slowed down terribly, what is your reaction to that?”
Me “Oh OK I’ve always used that method and did test it once, I thought it was pretty good, how far out was it”
Her ” Umm oh ummm err umm oh 10 SECONDS”
Me “Wow, really are you sure? I didnt think I could have been that bad, I mean thats 30% out”
Her “Ummm actually you were very accurate but the point of this test is to see how you react to critisicm and you have failed”
Me “Why?”
Her “Well your first reaction was to question me and a good candidate would accept the criticism and ask how they would improve”
Me “So you want yes people who will just take any old crap on the chin even when they know they are right? I mean you just admitted I was accurate and I was fairly sure I was accurate, surely that makes me a good candidate, for standing up for what I believe to be right”
Her ” Look I’m not even supposed to tell you how the test works so just shut up and count yourself lucky”

Me “………..”

I didn’t get the job.

I was asked something in my last job interview that went straight over my head, some old crap with lots of management speak, so I said “I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question”. They rephrased and (allegedly) simplified it, but still no joy. All I could say was “I’m sorry, I just can’t answer the question because I have no idea what you’re asking me”.

The interviewers looked very unimpressed, but the grizzly old DCI sitting in the corner just nodded at me and winked as if to say good for you son. Got the job.

I went to apply as a Communication Systems Analyst with the RAF. I was 19 at the time and thought the interview would be a breeze as I’d easily completed the aptitude tests and the health assessment. So the interviewer chap seemed very personable and made me feel a little more relaxed by his friendly demeanour, he told me to relax and be honest with my answers. I got asked the usual questions which you’d normally associate with joining the forces including what I thought of gay people etc and also whether I’d ever taken any drugs. Well I felt pretty relaxed and it seemed to be a rather informal interview so I said, “well, where shall I start…urmmm I’ve smoked some skunk, oil and had some wicked Red Seal recently, tried some ‘shrooms last October but not sure I’ll be doing those again…I love E’s they’re probably my favourite drugs to be honest…dance all night on those things and they make me feel properly loved up….don’t like Speed too much as it gives me a massive downer…Tabs I’m not too keen on…tried one but it made me feel a bit sketchy….urmmm that’s probably about it.” There were a couple of other questions after that which I can’t remember. Needless to say I didn’t get in.

once had an interview following a carpet bombing approach to interviews. i quickly went back online to download job spec and prepare some ideas. went along and the interview was only half has exciting as the advertised post. So, towards the end, i declared myself out and proceeded to tell them that they had misrepresented and wasted their time and my time, so thanks for the opportunity but no thank you very much and goodbye. Only halfway home on a 500mile round trip did it dawn on me that i had read the wrong job description.

“Have you any experience designing X mechanisms”?
“No, but I’ve designed Y and X is similar, I’m confident I could do it. X was not mentioned in the description?”
“So you’ve not?”
“No”
“Well we’re really looking for someone who has, I think we might as well stop now”
“Thanks, I’ll collect my stuff and travel the 250 miles home now you’ve wasted my time”.

I’ll collect my stuff and travel the 250 miles home now you’ve wasted my time

did you drive or go by train..?

I drove, it was cheaper than train by a long way 🙂

Diversity bollocks question when joining the police (staff).
Them:tell us about a situation where you have whitnessed someone saying something racist or homophobic and you were offended….tell us how you dealt with it.
Me: sorry I can’t
Them:why?
Me: because I don’t have a valid experience I can use, I know what you want to answer and I could make something up to suit the question but it would be a lie and I don’t want to do that.
them: errrrr okay

Figured it went down hill from there but they gave me the job!
I leave tomorrow after nearly 3 years, the public sector is shite, ran by responsibility shy fleckless slime bags.

My favourite was back in the bank… I applied for a job in payment processing, got an interview. Sat down and the very first thing that the interviewer said was
“Of course, you’ve got no relevant experience with payment processing systems so that goes against you”
So I told her “Yes I do, I work with them every day”.
“No you don’t”, she said, “not like ours”.
“Er, I’m a user and trainer for your system, in fact we’ve spoken on the phone several times”
“No, you haven’t”
So I described their system, and how we used it and what it’s for. She said “You could have just read that off the website!” So I described some of the regular issues they had with it at the time, and reeled off the names of half her team, and gave her an example of one of the recent jobs we’d done with them. Finally she sat up and said “Oh! It sounds like you do have some experience! I didn’t realise!”

At the end of the interview I said “How long til I’ll hear a decision” and she said “Well, to be honest you’re not going to be a prime candidate since you have no relevant experience”. Couldn’t think of anything witty to say so I just laughed at her and walked out.

interviewed a female candidate for a cracking sales job.. loads of money up front and brilliant bonus, she arrived wearing white transparent blouse ( not see through,, transparent like a window) no bra, short black skirt and proceeded to ‘sharon stone’ me throughout the interview

didnt give her the job.. i wanted an honest job doing by someone i could trust.. it was a pleasant 40 minutes though.

my grant ran out but a new team was starting up in the lab next door
my boss gave me good reds and the team leader was keen to have someone familiarcwith the institute
so he arranged the interview in the local pub, he basically got wankered started bragging about his publications and showed me filthy pictures on his phone of a lady he was seeing
I remember walking home realising Je hadn’t asked me one question about work and no idea if is got the job or if I wanted to work for him
anyway I did get the job and he turned out to be a total star right up to the point where he got fired for fabricating data

Applied and was offered a job a few years back, but decided it wasn’t right for me at the time.
Roll forward a bit and i’m out of work see a job advertised via an agency, went to the agency to be told I wasn’t going to be right for the job, so I explained that I knew the company that were hiring and they either put me forward for an interview or I could call the company directly and they would lose there fee.
Turn up at the interview and it’s the same interviewing team as before, so they ask why I didn’t accept the job last time around, so I was 100% honest and said the money was rubbish, there response was this post is £5k less
I know I replied but this job is for fixed shifts and days only, and for the out of hours work I’d want 50% more than you were offering and during the day it’s an easy job so the money is about bearable.
I started 2 weeks later and am still there 2 years on.

I’m terrible at interviews, I get flustered and panic then say something bad… in my first “proper” interview I was asked what I thought of the company image, branding etc. I ended up basically telling them I thought their website was awful and needed a complete redesign, updated show reel etc as their image was very 90s.

I also may have embarrased/annoyed them a bit as they were talking about a problem with a recent project, something to do with not being able to import an image sequence into avid, I can’t remember the specifics but they said it caused them no end of trouble. So I asked why they didn’t just put it in after effects and export to a video file with an avid editing codec. “oh yeah we didn’t think of that!”

Didn’t get the job (but wouldn’t have taken it anyway going by the aforementioned fail) and they’ve recently overhauled their website and show reels.

went for a uni interview – notoriously pompous department (on arrial we were all told that we were special just to have been invited there for interview) and “hard” academic interviews.

5 member panel. Icebreaker was “have you been to any other departments yet?” (Bath). “What did you make of it?”

Told them I was unimpressed, and why – they kept going on this tack. Took me a while to notice that they were all quietly laughing their arses off. One of the 5 was from the Bath dept as an external observer (TBF he found it funniest of the lot).

I think they ran out of time, asked me no hard questions and then offered me a place 8)

As interviewer…

Telephone screening graduates for a marketing role. Worked for a third party outsource/admin company (i.e., phone based, great IT, office environment, etc).

First question after introducing ourselves was “What’s your understanding about what [we] do?”

“Do you make pies?”

As interviewee…

Not telling – some absolute howlers in there!

For my first ever job, at the end of the interview the guy asked me ‘What are you worth?’. I’d barely even thought about salaries so said ‘Chemically I think it’s about £4.50’ Got the job!

Got invited to IPC magazines for “a chat with some people about a magazine”
Got rung up four days later to say I’d “passed the interview” and “offered a job as editor on salary of £loads.”

Didn’t even know I’d been to an interview.

Bit thick, me.

While managing and outdoors store We constantly had trouble getting locals to work, always found the travellers and tourists stuck around longer.
Anyway one day a hot little blonde girl walks in wearing the tightest jeans I’d ever seen. She opens with “are you guys looking for Staff right now?”
i replied that we were, just then Metallica came up on the IPod over the speakers in the store. Blondie proceeds to say “Ahhh **** yeah I love this band” and throws me some Metallist Goat horns. Me and the assistant manger exchange puzzled glances, within seconds of me attempting to ask if she had any outdoorsy or sales experience her phone rings ans she gestures for me to shut up, breaks into fluent russian and walks out the store never to be seen again.
Great arse though.

In my final year at uni and I went to a careers event for a big investment bank. During the course of the evening I talked to various employees including a woman who I discovered went to a college that was a rival of my college (I was at Queen’s she went to Teddy Hall). So I said “Oh, bad luck!” which went down like a lead balloon.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she was one of the people who interviewed me for the first round of interviews. She destroyed me and needless to say I didn’t get invited back to the next round.

They don’t let me interview here, at least not after I told my last boss that if you want to hire specialists, you need people with better skills than the interviewee to ask them so that you can spot the BS, not just someone reading questions and noting answers.

As for sitting interviews, the best one was a job back home once. I’d done one interview (two hours) and got offered the job at 40k (back in 2001 that was damn good money), but turned it down because I could not do the tax calculations properly and came up with a low post-tax salary. 12 months later, I go for another job there and the interview consisted of saying hello to the director of test, him asking me if I wanted the job and me saying yes. Saved on the phone bill I guess.

applied for a job as a clerks of works and got invited to an interview, first question i was asked was…”why did you not apply for the civil engineers post?” I didnt know there was one, guy then explains its too late as the application period is now closed

interview goes not too bad but got a call to say no thank but we would like you to come in as a civil engineer on loads more money!! I replied “i thought it was closed” reply came “ah its ok we can sort that”

so went for job a on X money and ended up getting job b with even more money…..good week that was

For an interview for a 6-month contract with an IT company, who claimed to specialise in IT security…

As a practical demonstration of my skills, I compromised their website….while I was sat in the carpark with a laptop.

First thing I said was “Before we start this interview, I’d like you to know your website is not very secure – you have files marked confidential on the same server – and your database containing user information should probably be encrypted, or at least use a hash method to encrypt the individual user passwords. The CMS admin password is….”

Got offered the job right then 😀

xiphon – Member

For an interview for a 6-month contract with an IT company, who claimed to specialise in IT security…

As a practical demonstration of my skills, I compromised their website….while I was sat in the carpark with a laptop.

First thing I said was “Before we start this interview, I’d like you to know your website is not very secure – you have files marked confidential on the same server – and your database containing user information should probably be encrypted, or at least use a hash method to encrypt the individual user passwords. The CMS admin password is….”

Got offered the job right then

LOL, nice one…

Many years back,I new someone who worked as a night security officer for a well know insurance company, who at the time, wanted to get into IT, he basically did the same thing when a job came up for the same firm,in IT security

he was fired on the spot & escorted off the premises!

Me: We’d gone through all the job related stuff and then we got to the personal stuff. They asked how I saw myself when I was socialising so I said I figured I was a bit of a joker. “Tell us a joke then”. At which point my mind went blank. Then I remembered one and started telling it. About half way through I realised it was actually pretty offensive and desperately tried to change it. I was dripping sweat by the end and it just came out terrible and not funny in any way. I got the job.

As an interviewer: One woman came and we asked her what she thought her biggest fault was and how she attempts to negate it. She said “Oh, I haven’t got any faults.”…. Long silence as we glanced at each other. Then the other interviewer blurted out (before I could), “I didn’t realise we were interviewing my wife.”
She raised an official complaint about him. She didn’t get the job.

And last one as an interviewer. The guy clearly fancied himself as a comedian because his CV was hilarious. He’d been on our website and taken mission statements from it and tried to make out working for our company featured in his wildest dreams. We brought him in to see what he was like more than anything. He was the dullest, quietest, meekest person we’d seen and knew virtually nothing about the job he was being interviewed for. Didn’t get the job.