To ask for your interview fuck ups

My worst one was as an interviewer. It was a firm I'd never worked for before and knew nothing about. They were advertising for a position, so I called them up (back when jobs were advertised more in the paper), said I wasn't interested in the job long term, but could provide temporary support until it was filled. I basically just wanted a more interesting temping role to fund some travels. They said they were looking for someone permanent quite quickly, but their HR department needed a bit of support for a couple of days. I assumed office admin. We agreed a rate.

When I got there, there were only about 20 employees in total. I was told that they were interviewing that day for another role and given my degree, could I join them. I said yes, expected to just take notes and maybe be given some info. I was just shown where toilets and coffee were and then called into a meeting room. There were back to back interviews all day and I was part of the panel. I felt such a fraud. It reminded me of primary school when you hadn't been paying attention and teacher calls your name and asks a question. To this day, I don't know what they were thinking.

😂😂😂
You've made my day..

When my brother was younger, he overheard and family member talking about being 'well endowed'. He asked them what it meant and they brushed it off as 'taking care of their appearance'.
Cue a few years ago, he had an interview for a Saturday job at m&s. When asked about his strengths he spoke about how he takes real pride in being well endowed. I chuckle every time I think about it.

I was asked how the interviewer knows I'm not a paedophile. I said I'm not- she said but how do I know that.. I said I promise I'm not.
She was looking for a DBS check.

She was also batshit crazy

Many, many years ago I had an interview for an English Literature degree and somehow managed to say I didn't like poetry. Was rejected, not surprisingly.
Got into the same uni the following year though, after taking the interview process a bit more seriously.

I had an interview after many years of being out of work due to staying at home with my kids

I was rather nervous. Went in, exchanged pleasantries and they asked how I was, I said I was really nervous. They were so lovely and said not to be, but I found my nervousness really ramped up to the point where I answered every question with "um, I'm really nervous" and then would stumble out some sort of answer.

At the end I got up to leave, told them I was sorry for being so nervous....

They phoned the next day to say I'd been unsuccessful and I forced myself to ask for feedback. They were so sweet and said "you seemed very nervous, but best of luck"

Note to self and interview panel: do not schedule an interview for 10.45am. On the 11th of November. When the employing organisation does not just observe the two minute silence but precedes it with a lengthy tannoy announcement.

My education in a Quaker school came in extremely handy!

I had a boyfriend who told the interviewer Fxxx Oxx.

A bit niche, but I told a soils testing laboratory that I saw my future in rock mechanics.

The interviewer was sat with her back to a huge picture window overlooking the high street, and there was so much going on.

My gaze kept drifting from her to the scenes outside, I had to keep snapping back to attention!

I got the job...

I had massively 'bigged up' my previous role in the industry. The previous role had been at the company my mum owned and I'd done casual filing etc for her.
Unfortunately for me, the interviewer was my mum's old secretary who knew I'd just swanned about.
It was a very uncomfortable situation and I didn't get the job!

Had a presentation. Ushered into the room which was already packed so they got to watch me faff about with the equipment. CEO of this multi national then asked me a question that I completely mangled. It gets worse but I'm cringing just thinking about it 🤭.

I nervously bit the skin around my thumb when I was waiting to be called in to the interview; when I came out and got in the car, I looked in the mirror to see my face was smeared in blood from my thumb.

I didn't get the job 😆

I tipped a full glass of water all over the desk!

I got out of that one by quipping “it’s not the mistakes you make, it’s the way you deal with them” and promptly pulled a large hanky out of my bag and mopped it all up.
I got the job!

NB: take a hanky to your interview. 🤧

I had an interview and while it wasn't 'disastrous', it was obvious it wasn't a good fit. They weren't keen on me and I wasn't keen on them. Sent to interview via agency and part of it was a short presentation.
3 months later I'm sent on another interview and didn't realise until I got to the building that it was the same place. Thought fuck it, let's just go through the motions. I had prepared basically the same presentation, met the same people, and had the same outcome. Uncomfortable for all involved but funny now.

I was sick in an interview once.
I'm not sure if I wasn't well or just very nervous but I had to keep excising myself to go to the toilet to be sick.
I got offered the job but was too mortified to accept!

(Disclaimer, it was the 00s). I am quite ghost coloured and the weather had just turned a lot hotter. I fake tanned the night before but with a new tanner. I woke up with literal orange stripes all over - I looked like a tiger - and sat there very obviously boiling hot and sweating in a jumper.

Many, many years ago, dh was laid off from his job as a bricklayer. He made his way to the job centre, where he said he would take any job. The job coach said that there was a vacancy in a bakery, how did dh feel about it.

Dh said great, so the coach called to arrange an interview. The employer offered an interview in 10 mins, and when dh said he wasn't dressed for an interview, they said no problem, come anyway. When dh arrived, they were really busy, and the first question they asked him was "Do you know how to make baguettes?".
Dh response was "what are baguettes?"

He didn't get the job surprisingly.

Good luck, I'm mid job interviews right now!

Nothing really funny in my case but I did once go to an internal role and it quickly became obvious during the interview that I has totally misunderstood the nature of it. I thought of it as kind of similar to the role I was in but it turned out to be quite different and involve parts of the business I was barely aware of and I knew the lead interviewer and bless him, he was trying to gently prod me towards something like the right direction but I was clueless. So that was awkward!

TBH, it's as well I didn't get it - the manager for that role (not the lead interviewer) was a weird and not very pleasant person and the person who got the role lasted less than 6 months, so it's probably as well I stayed where I was.

Good luck💐

Dh had to turn up in trainers in an interview cos he had stepped on a plug which was impaled on his foot

they did ask him how he had hurt himself 😀

As a newly qualified teacher and my first interview…

I was asked ‘do you know Rosenshein?’ - my answer ‘no, I don't think I've met them’ - Rosenshein being a key educational researcher, with much publicised key education principles, not an employee in the school/LA, friend of the headteacher or whatever I thought!

Amazingly….I was offered the job.

The headteacher called me into her room and asked if I accepted the role -

I said ‘mmm, I don't know really’….

her response, rather shocked - and said ‘in all of my my headship years I've never had that response to offering someone a job’.

In my defence, I had no idea that with teaching posts, at the time, schools often made the decision there and then, offering the post immediately. I'm not sure I'd considered actually being appointed.

I was asked about a goal i had achieved

i started well with the story of how my husband and i went traveling for 6 months

and then i kept talking 😳

i said that i had started the ‘trial’ part of a degree about child rearing ….but then i stopped cos i realised i don’t like children 🥺

When I was interviewing for my first role in my current place, it was all going pretty well until they asked a question about my (fairly recent) PhD. My mind went completely blank. You know in films or TV if a character goes to some other dimension and they're shown standing in a white featureless void? That was the inside of my head. I stuttered through a half arsed answer and cried about it afterwards. Got the job though!

You'll be fine! Remember you can ask them to repeat a question and you get to have thinking time - the silence doesn't feel very long for them even if it feels like an eternity to you. Most interviewers aren't trying to trip you up. They just want to see the best of you so they can make the right decision for the job.

Good luck!

I had an interview where I was loosing my voice and could only whisper, could hardly be heard by any of them, had to keep repeating myself and pausing for breath and at one point had to write things down because they couldn't understand me.

Still got the job. I think they felt sorry for me 😄