I don’t have an interview moment but I do have a question…

What’s with the unholy amount of unrelated tags?

watch this.

I was interviewing to be a receptionist at a law firm, it was when I moved
To SoCal, and I’m a jersey girl. The women interviewing me asked me if I have an accent with some words, which I do, and I said them. They thought it was awesome. And I was just sitting back thinking…WTF

@elchoopanebre I wanted to get a good sample of the planet

My first interview with a “good” company, Carbide. This was about 30 years ago. They put me in a room to take a typing test, and there is a mirror in there and I notice my slip hanging. For who knows what stupid reason, I reached down the top of my dress and pulled my half slip up from the top. When I left, I went by that “mirror” on the way out and found that it was a two way mirror. The clerical pool was sitting in the other room and able to watch me. No, they did not hire me.

worst interview…

circuit city about 5 years ago. I got directions to get there, and I was to travel north on a highway that goes in a circle around columbus, 270, it’s the loop. I was instructed to travel north and take the west broad exit. However, traveling north from where I was on 270 was going East and I failed to realize that until I saw the regular exit for just Broad st (not west broad). So needless to say I was pretty late for the interview because I just cutt across the entire city from the east side to the west side catching nearly every light on my way.

I get into the interview about 20–30 minutes late, and I feel as if I’m in some sort of funk, and all these questions are rather bizarre to me at this moment. Keep in mind, it’s the middle of summer and my car at the time didn’t have AC, so I was pretty sweaty too. I remember at some point that I knew I wasn’t going to get the job….it was when he asked me the question “Do you consider yourself to be a guy who likes to party?”...

I was thrown back a bit from the question…and I do like to party, but I don’t like to party on nights that I have to work the next day..so I was on and off the question, and after he got his question answered, it probably seemed like I was some crazed teenage kid who parties non stop.

I however did end up getting a job at another circuit city some time later, but not at that particular location…go figure. But I went on to be really good at selling, and I was consistently the best guy each month for our district, and I did end up meeting the guy who interviewed me for some sort of conference. He didn’t remember me though, but he at that point realized he should have hired me after I refreshed his memory =)

I went on a really awful interview for a job I wasn’t terribly interested in. Because I’d applied generally, they had me interview with a bunch of people in the firm. But the bad part was, the reason I’d gotten the interview apparently was that I knew someone who know someone who knew the boss of the place, so at the end I had to go and actually meet him. At which point it became very clear that was the only reason I had the interview, and the entire thing became incredibly awkward for me. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I knew him, but it was the my dad’s friend’s friend issue that made it weird.

Because really, at that point you’re pretty much a total stranger. Nepotism or whatever should NOT reach that far.

On the day I was to interview for a position change with my current employer, my sister called me up in a panic needing a babysitter. She swore that she would make it back in plenty of time for me to get to my interview. Well, she didn’t and I ended up taking her kids (twin 3 year old girls, and a 6 month old baby) with me. I had called her and she was going to meet me at the building that I would be interviewing at. Of course she didn’t show up on time and I was forced to take 3 kids into an interview. Half way through the interview one of my twin nieces climbed up onto my lap, and sat there quietly. She was shy so I didn’t think too much of it until I realized that she was peeing on my leg. I just sat there and tried my best to pretend like nothing was wrong. I walked out of the interview with totally drenched pants and three kids in tow. I am sure I left a lasting impression, just not the right one because I didn’t get the job. –shocking, I know— It’s a good thing I love my sister and her kids so much because that was probably the most humiliating moment of my entire life.

—-> not a sewer, keep that in mind.

One of my first “real” job interviews and I was nervous as hell. After ironing my blouse, putting it on, a button came off – right across the chest. Blah! I had to sew it on, really quickly.

I arrived for the interview, a man came out, called me back and seemed to spend more time looking at my chest than at me…it was only towards the end that I realized the button had come back off. He offered the job, but I did not take it – I got a better offer and was too skeeved out by the fact the man stared at my chest.

@cak, oh! I re-read your answer, and now I understand what you mean at the top by “not a sewer.” You meant “not a sew-er.” I thought it was something about “get your head out of the gutter,” which turned out to be appropriate.

lol….@TL…it’s late and I probably shouldn’t be typing!! :) Yep, not a sew-er :)

THIS is the worst interview in history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIMGPlH4XPo

That’s hilarious. And horrible.

When I was about 18 or 19 I had my first ‘big company’ interview. I was completely un-prepared when the high-powered woman interviewing me asked what I saw myself doing in 5 years. I mumbled some inane crap like ‘I’d like to be living on a farm, raising horses’. Mind you, I’m a city girl with no desire to do such a thing. I mean, shit. Why didn’t I just tell her I’d like to be chasing rainbows and unicorns? I left that interview quite humiliated, and of course, I didn’t get the job.

January 28, 1986 a few minutes after 9, I was pulling into a parking place on my way to a 2nd interview, The report of the Challenger explosion came on the radio. I talked to the interviewer for about 15 minutes and couldn’t focus on a thing he said. All I could think was, I want to get out of here. I closed the interview by thamking him for his time. As I opened the door it crossed my mind to explain why I was so distracted but then I thought if I talked about it I would probably cry. I wondered if he ever connected it when he heard about the disaster. Probably not.

I walked into an interview for Microsoft as the last candidate of the day and the first thing the interviewer said was “Ugh, I don’t want to be here. I just want to eat dinner and go home.”

So, I asked him what he wanted for dinner, then I gave him some recommendations and directions, then we brainstormed about projects for abount an hour and a half.

A shining achievement, and I got a great internship from it.

Here ya go! Things not to do during an interview, ha ha!

lol :)

good read
don’t have any of my own though
sorry

My worst interview moment was when I was actually conducting an interview. The guy was a little off, not really the type of person we hire. Then, the guy leaned over the desk and a big knife ala Crocodile Dundee fell out of his jacket onto the desk! I freaked out a bit and said, “OK – you got the job!” and we both sort of laughed and I tried to continue. I felt totally out of control and in retrospect should’ve escorted him out the door or something.

@baseballnut you have got to be kidding me!! hilarious. I think I would have asked him why he brought a knife to an interview. I’ve been the interviewer a couple times before…always interesting to see the other side of things.

I should have but I was so taken aback that I froze! I keep thinking that after 10 years in HR I need to write a book

My new “boss” (3rd person in that management position in the three years I’d been there, so in many ways I actually had the rank) always asked me to be in on the interview process when hiring. She had a list of 20 questions to ask, written on a sheet of paper. This one gal came in, and at question #3 she suddenly started sobbing hysterically, sobbing about the fact that her husband had divorced her (two years ago)....I mean, she just lost it! My boss gave her a few moments to compose herself, then started asking the rest of the questions. If it had been me, I would have asked,maybe, two more questions (so it wouldn’t be too obvious!) and then thanked her for her time. To my amazement my “boss” continued on down the line and asked ALL of the remaining 17 questions! I was floored! THEN my “boss” asked what I thought of the candidate! I said she was loony toons!......Loony toons got the job. I was speechless!

I figured out later that that current boss of mine liked to hire people that she could turn around and fire in a year (in this case though, she sent ME to fire loony toons! Who cried and begged and sobbed…..) .....power trip, I guess.

@Val123 Yikes – that’s a good way for a manager to lose respect… and then make you fire her! I’ve only had to fire one person, and at the time it was the most difficult thing I’d done in my life.

Related to firing; I was a team leader/coordinator for a graphic design department at a large corporation when they were conducting waves of layoffs back around 1997. The morale was terrible because everyone thought their neck was in the guillotine. One morning, I got a call from a Director who was two levels above me to let me know that the layoffs were complete, and our team was “safe”. (Some other teams across the country had been cut in half or altogether removed.) I sat on the news for a few hours just in case, and planned a celebratory pizza lunch for my team. Everyone was greatly relieved, and I was happy for everyone. Unfortunately, when we got back to our desks after lunch, one of the designers had a VM to call that Director… yep, she was being laid off. I lost a lot of credibility that day.

I had a two-part interview for Princeton in Asia, a fellowship program. I went to Indiana University, which became the focal point of my first interview. My interviewer’s first question was whether I had ever spent time in a CITY before. His second question: “I see you grew up in Indiana, your parents live in IN and you chose to go to school in IN. You do realize you’re competing with students from Harvard, Princeton and Yale?”

Needless to say, I was prepared for another litany of elitist questions for my second interview. But this interviewer asked me why I looked so serious and whether I always took myself so seriously. When I replied that I don’t, she asked, “What is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?” Luckily before I had a chance to answer that ridiculous question, her cell phone rang, and she took the call, leaving me there for 20 minutes before she came back and said the interview was over.

I wasn’t terribly disappointed when I got my rejection letter.

In fourth grade, when I was about nine years old, I had an interview for a grades 5–8 school. The interviewer asked me what I’d done for fun lately, and I told him about a website my friends and I had just discovered called Mr. Methane, which featured songs with strategically placed fart noises throughout.

Needless to say, I did not get into the school.