Has an employer ever handled your application so badly you decided not to work for them?

I attended an interview for an admin role years ago. It felt a bit strange when I was given a tour of the office and no one looked up and the room was silent. Very odd atmosphere. The interviewer then asked me if I was ok with the manager shouting at me regularly.

I was asked to a second interview. I declined.

You are describing every registered charity I have ever worked with.

Yes. I applied for a job with a firm of City solicitors (I am not qualified) and passed the first interview with the guy I would be taking over from.

Then had a second interview with a partner and discovered that what he thought the job entailed (even down to the job title) was not what I had been led to believe.

Got a letter a few days later offering me the position. I declined it.

Not so much the application but the whole thing felt off. International school not in UK.
Applied to cover a teacher who’d “gone off sick” ( so I was told, truth was she’d walked out)
Interviewed and asked to start the next day. 7.15 next morning handed a contract to sign , given that children came in at 7.30 I said I’d take it home to read. Head not happy.
Classroom looked like there’d been an explosion in a junk shop. It was filthy, curtains hanging off the rails, books piled everywhere. In that I couldn’t even write my name on the board there were so many piles of books in front of it.
Breaktime I was taken outside to supervise with another teacher and was shocked not just at the state of it, who knew playgrounds could have potholes , but 5 and 6 year olds were running around where 15 and 16 year olds were playing football. Accidents just waiting to happen.
The next day I was told I was running an after school club that day in a physical activity I have no experience of or training in, could have resulted in injury risk to the kids. I refused to do it.
I said I’d work to the end of the week so as not to leave them teacher-less but I wouldn’t be back.
Only good thing to come out of it was the classroom got cleaned. Took a team of three cleaners about 6 hours so you can imagine how grim it was.
And parents were paying thousands a term for this shithole.

I had an interview for a short term assignment where the partner in the consultancy was 45 min late (despite reception calling to say I had arrived.) I made my excuses and left the interview 15 min in. TBF I ended up working for them for over 6 years. Despite being woefully disorganised they were fun to work with and very knowledgable.

I was supposed to be interviewed for a senior level position whilst on maternity leave in a company merger. The MD arrived late, admitted she hadn't even looked at my CV and we should just have a chat. She then told me that she had already given the job to a man from the other side. Her incompetence cost them well over six figures.

Yes, one company offered me an interview date, then changed it. Then emailed to say I'd been selected for second interview and to reply with a chosen date/time, which I did. They never confirmed, despite me following it up twice. Then they came back again and said a specific date and time and who it would be with. I went and two of the Directors weren't there who they'd advised would be.

They said I'd hear back within a week. Eight weeks it took for them to get back to me and didn't reply to any follow up emails I sent. They offered the job and I replied two weeks later I had a new role. They then reached out to me a year later to advise the role was going to be advertised again and asked if I'd be interested. I didnt even reply. Not surprised the person left so soon who'd got the job going by how disorganised they appeared and their poor communication.

No wonder that some companies can't get or retain staff, is it?
There's so much insanity in workplaces!

I had an interview where they showed me around the office. They pointed out one desk and instead of saying something like 'this is our resident expert on XYZ' they said 'he does things you wouldn't be capable of'. Pissed me right off. It was a related subject which I have a decent amount of knowledge on and could easily learn more, but the capable bit annoyed me. They offered me the job but I declined.

I have a friend who worked in a place where the head office was just up an open flight of stairs from the shop floor. She ( and the customers) could regularly hear the manager bawling out the upstairs staff. He was rude, loud, and evidently didn't care who overheard him. She didn't last long there as it was so embarrassing.

I had a similar experience as @Pompeyssy, attended a second interview with the company director. While I was waiting in the reception area someone came round and absolutely bollocked the receptionist for no good reason that I could gather. Where I was sitting I couldn’t be seen from where he was standing and he really went for her.

5 minutes later I was taken into the interview room to find the bullying arsehole was the Director I’d be reporting to. I sat down, explained I wouldn’t be completing the interview because the ethos of the organisation clearly didn’t fit with my own values and then walked out. HR phoned me to ask why I didn’t stay for interview and weren’t particularly interested when I explained. I definitely dodged a bullet there.

It proves the point that we are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing us.
Ed to say yes, Ive been spoken to very rudely during an interview, and then offered the job. I turned it down.

Yes.

I applied for a job that you would really need a good and supportive manager for.

The manager who called me to arrange an interview was so downright rude and awkward that I said actually, thanks but no thanks.

I came to the conclusion that if she was that bloody awful when arranging an interview, she’d be equally awful to work for.

Yes, for two different IT companies. With the first, the whole interview process was a shambles, with all the interviews running late. Mine was an hour late and the interviewers hadn't read my CV at all and basically asked me to explain what I'd done for the last 5 years in detail. But they weren't technical themselves so didn't understand what I did nor what the requirements for the job were. The second was better, but the job turned out to be 'in charge of the entire IT' for the company and they'd advertised for a software developer. They asked me to come back for a second interview and I declined.

You didn't miss out. Worst, most unfriendly, backstabbing, all round crappy place I've ever worked - wish I'd realised at interview rather than wasting three months there!

Back in the early 2000's I had a telephone interview and was asked for a group induction for an admin roll, got there to be met with a bait n switch, no admin job, was infact being employed to sell credit cards in shopping centres, they wanted to take 4 of us out to see how we would get on, I declined and walked away.

Yes , I printed out a slip at the job Center many years ago for what looked like a perfect job, and even better it was two streets from my house.

applied and heard nothing, so assumed that I wasn’t successful. Five months later I had a phone call inviting me in to their offices in the city for interview.

pleasantly surprised off I went to the interview, and during it I had mentioned how handy it was so close to home . The interviewers looked at each other and said no it’s for a job in the city .

we carried on the interview but I was a bit confused as I knew that it was at the bottom of my street, I would never have applied for something so far away.

at the end I had a good old route in my bag and found the ticket from the job centre with the details on. Proudly held it up and went aha ! I knew I was right !

I realised at that moment I hadn’t got the job , but at least I wasn’t the people that invited me in to interview for the wrong post 🤣

I followed through with a chaotic hiring process and found the organisation I had been hired by so bad my stint in the role was over within six weeks. I resigned technically during my probation but the writing was on the wall by the end of week five. The job mirrored my experience in the hiring process with a degree of precision and I was up for the challenge but the role turned out to be intractable.

I do not regret the journey as I learned a bunch but I would be wary of repeating the exercise.

I'm freelance so not a job application but a brief or tender process. And yes, some have been so awful I've pulled out because I could tell that I couldn't bear to work with them.

Truthfully, it was pre children, I had time on my hands😁, and Sarah reminded me of a Class A bitch I had worked with a couple of years earlier.

I took the opportunity to fxxk with her day.
I laid it on very thickly with HR that I had NEVER witnessed the like of it, in the long list of international companies I had worked with.

It's a most pleasant memory messing with her. I sincerely hope it got back to Catherine some way 😁

I don’t see the problem here?

they offered you an opportunity you had applied for previously.

HR won’t be researching your commute, know you’re getting public transport, and anyway, it’s not up to them to make the decision whether you’re interested, that’s up to you.

they offered, you said no, big deal. They were correct to contact anyone previously expressing an interest in the role.

think about it, if they hadn’t offered, and you found out you were excluded because HR assumed you wouldn’t want to do the commute, then that would be a problem.

@Pompeyssy 👏 👏

Love it.

Stomping on bullying.

I once interviewed for a Citizens Advice type organisation, for a part time role.

During the interview it became apparent that they hadn't decided on what days or hours the role needed to fulfill. I explained that I would need to know in case I needed to arrange wrap around care for my school aged child and they seemed to think that this question ruled me out of being flexible enough for them.

The role was to help their clients overcome barriers to work.

No, and it's taught me a lesson. The whole recruitment process was a prime example of the left and right hands losing connection with paperwork getting "lost" and emails written so badly that they needed phone calls to clarify.

The interview was weird and the walk around the offices should have made me run for the hills, but the job sounded amazing with a hefty pay increase so I ignored my instincts and accepted the role. I lasted 6 months, and looking at LinkedIn, my replacement didn't even make it that far.

Years ago I went for an interview for a good role in finance, a bit further than I wanted to travel though.
As I waited in reception to be called I listened to Sarah give Catherine an absolute bollixing.
She spoke to her like absolute dirt and I heard it all.
So unnecessarily belittling, and just awful to witness.
Catherine was ashen when Sarah left her.
It was some fxxk up about sandwich delivery, totally out of proportion and vicious.

I knew there and then that it was not somewhere that I would like.
I was interviewing several other jobs at the time.
Typically I aced the interview and they said they were very interested.

Two days later I got a nice offer but had another place I was more interested in, closer to where I was living.

I took the opportunity to reply that while I had initially been very interested in the position, having witnessed the vicious dressing down that Catherine received in public by Sarah and that this clearly was a indicitive of a toxic work environment, I would be declining their offer and would let the agency and others know of their culture.

Critically I cc the MD and the key directors, HR and Financial.

I was called by the HR director and given an apology, very nice HR director, who was also appalled by what I repeated, and told that they took my letter to them very seriously.

Apparently the MD was appalled by what I had written, and shocked that I had cc'd him, he told the HR director "to fix this", as was the Financial director who had been told I would have been a good fit.

I didn't want the job ultimately so was quite happy to mess with Sarah's day.

I contracted in Finance for a few years as I wanted my summers off and it was a very interesting way to see how organisations really are.
I found I was told stuff that I might not otherwise hear, about the culture as I was only there for a short time.
It made turning down long term contracts easy when places were not particularly happy environments for those working there.