Nightmare Job Interviews
Is there anything worse than job hunting? Well, actually yes, there is: Heading into an interview, either as the applicant or the interviewer, and realizing it's a literal nightmare.
Whether the candidate is off their rocker or the company is full of unhinged bosses, here are job interview horror stories from both sides of the resume.
1. No Girls Allowed
My wife once interviewed a man who refused to speak to women due to religious reasons. This meant he would not speak to her during his interview.
She tried to stress to him that she was the manager for the position in question and would be the person conducting the interview. She asked him questions for 10 minutes, none of which he answered.
She said it was incredibly uncomfortable. That was strange enough, but then she realized the darker truth. He was not a new hire, and had like 12 years of experience at another company. I’m not sure how you can make it 12 years when refusing to work with or talk to women.
2. Steve No-Jobs
When we are on the fence about a resume, we will do the background calls first if the applicant is happy for us to do so. One of the times we did this for a candidate, we got two pieces of information: “
I bet he turns up to the interview in the following clothes…” and secondly, “He’s great at the job, but if you can, put him in a corner of the office away from others.”
Unsure what to do with this information, we decided to go ahead with the interview. He did indeed turn up in the exact clothes mentioned—it turned out he thought he was Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. The problem was, he doesn’t have multiple outfits that look the same...which led to the other red flag. He stank of sweat and pee. Needless to say, that was the end of the process for him with us.
3. All About Chickens
Many years ago when I was in first-year microbiology, I applied for a summer job tagging ducks in the wild. The interview consisted of three distinguished academics in a stuffy room showing me photos of ducks and asking me to identify the species.
I knew absolutely nothing about ducks and surely misidentified every single one.
Eventually, the three interviewers exclaimed, “Do you have any experience with birds at all?!” Realizing there was no chance of getting this job, I tried to make light of the situation and I gave a reply that I'm embarrassed about to this day: “Well, I help my uncle butcher chickens every year.” The three of them sat in stunned silence before finally ending the interview. I’m sure they still tell the story of the crazy bird murderer applying for a job at the waterfowl conservation group.
4. Getting To Know You
I interviewed for a job at a firm when I had just moved to a new country. During our conversation, they proceeded to bring up my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles on the computer screen in front of me. They started going through my accounts and commenting on things. They laughed at me over photos where I was wearing a dress at a Christmas party. That’s not even the worst part.
They also complained that I didn't have any endorsements on LinkedIn, which was really important to them for some reason. And I only had 20 Twitter followers, which they felt they needed to bring up.
And in case you’re wondering, this position had nothing whatsoever to do with social media. They just stalked my accounts for the fun of it, apparently.
I had all the required experience for the position, but they were just so ridiculously caught up in these stupid freaking social media profiles that they felt like they needed to belittle me from the get go.
They told me to send through some references, but I was so embarrassed and disheartened by the direction of the interview that it drained any interest I had in working for them at all.
To their surprise, I told them not to expect any references from me, and then I quietly walked away.
