… to ask for your most cringeworthy moment in an interview yet you still got the job?

[tympanic]

I’m plagued by the missteps I made at an interview last month. Plagued. The process has been put on hold for various reasons so I’m still waiting to hear if I’ve progressed to the next stage. Really, really want the job.

As time drags on I’m growing increasingly embarrassed by the dumb things I said in the interview. If anyone has any stories with a happy in spite of feeling they made a total fool of themselves I’d be very happy to hear them!

I went for a job when my DS was three months old. DH and DS came with me as I was breastfeeding and the interview was the longest time we had been apart. 5 minutes before I had to give a stand-up panel presentation DS did a poonami all over me. It went absolutely everywhere. I just wiped myself the best I could and pretended it hadn’t happened as I didn’t have time to do anything else. After almost crying for the rest of the day because it was the first time I had tried to be professional since his birth, I got the call to say I had the job 😁

New to London, I underestimated how long the tube would take, so I was twenty minutes late. I was mortified as I’m such a stickler for time.

I arrived soaking wet thanks to a surprise downpour and tried to arrange my very curly frizzy hair using the little reflective panel in the door.
The door suddenly swung open, causing me to shriek and start my interview with, ‘Oh god, my hair. And I’m so late.’

Afterwards, they rang to offer me the job before I’d even got down the road. Turned out I was a good fit for their office. One of the best jobs I ever had.

I have complex PTSD and cant cope with interviews even though I am very good at my job and never go off sick. I declare my MH problem on my application.
I went for my last NHS interview for clinical specialist and really lost it, laughing inappropriately, sweating and when one interviewer asked me a question I couldn't answer I just said no.
I cringe thinking about it. I still got the job.

I got my name wrong on the application form, long before online applications! We were overseas, looking to return, as I was filling in the form the phone rang or some other distraction, and when I got back to it I put my surname down again and as it was pretty close to the closing date I didn't read it through properly before I posted it. The first question in the interview was What's your first name?, that was when I discovered my error. I got the job though and stayed for almost 20 years.

As I left I realised that my trouser button, flies and belt were all undone. Belt was hanging down. I had been loo before the interview and hadn't remembered in the stress of the moment to put myself back together.

I was asked a question about the skills I had that I thought would be useful for the job. I responded “I think listening skills will be really important… errr… sorry could you repeat the question?”

Still got the job!

I went for an interview right after being discharged from hospital following emergency surgery for necrotising fasciitis. Looking back I really should have cancelled but I was newly qualified and really wanted to kick off my job search.

Halfway through I looked down and realised I still had my hospital band on. Because I was a bit off my tits on painkillers I felt the need to explain it and ended up telling the panel the whole sorry tale of nearly dying of a flesh eating bug a week prior. It involved my breast. It was very graphic. I almost died of shame when I realised what I'd done.

I didn't get the job (I didn't have the experience they wanted) but I did get a call from one of the senior managers to headhunt me for frontline child protection because "we really need resilience like yours"

I managed to insinuate that I was in a same sex couple with my sister in law 🤔 it was very awkward

Still got the job think they were desperate

I think listening skills will be really important… errr… sorry could you repeat the question?”

^

I referred to vacuum cleaners as hoovers repeatedly in an interview with Dyson

^^

Oh god

I forgot the question halfway through my answer being interviewed for my first management role. I was waffling on and on, and my mind went completely blank. I ground slowly to a halt and the interviewer had to say "That's very interesting. The question actually was..." I died quietly inside and it was awkward as all hell but by some miracle I still got the job.

@Jacaranda75

I’ve posted about it loads of times. I was interviewing for a local government administration job. One of the interviewing panel asked me some questions about me as a person, then another member of the panel asked me if there were any new skills I would like to acquire. Obviously in relation to the job. I was still in the ‘talking about me as a person’ mode and declared that I would like to learn to make balloon animals from balloons.

I will never forget the looks in their faces. And I didn’t get the job.

I can't stop laughing at this one

I went for an interview very heavily pregnant and got stuck in the sliding doors The door wouldn't open far enough and I tried to squeeze through and got stuck. They were glass doors too so all the other candidates in the waiting room could see my predicament.
It was a timed interview with lots of other candidates and I wasted half of it stuck in the doorway with the interviewer trying to free me. I was then too flustered to answer anything correctly but by some miracle I did still get offered the job
I think they must have been worried about discrimination because I definitely did not perform well after that.

Teacher… interview lesson (science subject). Accidentally referred to a “great organism” as a “great orgasm” in a complete speech error. Kids all absolutely lost it at that point but I laughed along, held it together and got the job!

I compared myself to both Mother Theresa and Gandhi in my last interview.

My friend had recently been successful in an interview for a similar position with another organisation. They had asked her to complete an online personality test and be prepared to discuss. My interviewers had not
I got flustered mid interview and rather than chat about how my personality type (Advocat) would benefit the post and organisation, I talked about how I was similar to Mother Theresa and Gandhi.
Thankfully I knew one of my interviewers who saved me from waffling myself into oblivion. I was miraculously successful.

This is the personality test www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test do not complete before interview if of a nervous disposition

I accidentally picked up the interviewers glass of water and drank hers instead of the one she'd left out for me

I once went to an a half day interview with several other candidates, we did all meet a group tour and breaks but mostly off doing single interviews/tests with various managers.

The morning finished with a bit of lunch with all candidates and the whole staff team from the department.
When we all started leaving I shook hands with the first manager and then HUGGED one of the other candidates. In a panic I thought fuck I can’t let this woman think I’ve singled her out as my only hug buddy, so my logical solution was to do some weird hug/handshake alternation between hugging all the other interviewees and handshaking all the staff there. I even hugged the final candidate as we were leaving in the carpark in case anyone was still watching me.
They still offered me the job but I declined (not just because of the hug thing though…)

I went for a teaching job abroad 20 years ago with my best friend (male). For some reason, we were interviewed together. We must have applied together. Anyway, it was being held in a hotel. They were interviewing a lot of people for different schools across Europe and they were running REALLY late. The two of us got put in a little seating area in a corridor. We waited for ages and ages and were getting more and more nervous. We were only just out of university. We didn't really know what we were doing. Anyway, it was an old hotel and had whips and riding crops hung up on the wall as décor. For some reason, my friend got one of these whips off its hook and started to pretend to whack my thighs (and his own arse) as he said "Oooh! The things we could do if we were staying here tonight!" (in a really broad Northern accent). Just as he was doing this, the HR woman came out of a door and said she was ready for us. It was awful. He had to put the whip back on the hook before we went in.

I was a gibbering wreck by this point.

We knew that at some point in the interview we'd have to teach a grammar point or do a mini-lesson plan or something. She left the room briefly, and Whip Boy started flipping through the paper chart to see what previous candidates had been asked. I was shaking so badly at this point that I spilled water all down my top. We got the grammar point all wrong. It was a fuck-up from start to finish.

We got the job. In a really prestigious school in Paris. It was ridiculous. We got better at teaching, but the other candidates must have been real numpties.

My interview was with Mike King and for some reason I asked for Mike Hunt. I just pretended I hadn't said it. Presumably they were expecting me so didn't ask me to clarify. I got the job, but was always too embarrassed to mention it to the receptionist.

I once answered ‘I don’t know’ to not one but TWO questions and then still got the job!

Rocked up super early at a client premises ready for an interview for them to extend our contract - had all our glossy brochures prepared, did a couple of run throughs of our presentation in the cafe and got it spot on, and it was all going to plan until I thought I'd be sensible and go to the ladies before we went in. In my slightly distracted state I forgot that the very slinky leather pencil skirt I was wearing was one that needed to be unzipped and pulled down for a wee, so I bunched it up around my waist like any old skirt, only for it to get stuck. Immediately panicked and got into a right old sweaty mess trying to free myself, and just had to wait until my team (all male) sent a random woman in to rescue me as I'd left my phone with them.

Not in an interview but on an application form in the good old days of having to hand write them.

I wrote the word assistant as assisstant the entire way through, so clearly my brain thought this was how it was spelt.

That doesn't sound too bad......, until I tell you that the title of the role I was applying for was "X Assistant".

I still got the job

Oh god some of these are making me cry with laughter. Although also making me think that I must have done some terrible interviews without realising as I often don’t get the job 😂
I’ve got an interview next week- hoping for zero mishaps.

@Yebbie your Home Bargains interview could be turned into a sitcom. A cross between Are You Being Served? and The Young Ones (showing my age).

In days of old prior to mobiles and other such wizardry being invented, I had an interview in a town that I wasn't too familiar with, so I had a small local A-Z map.
I was so intent on looking at the map that I walked straight into a signpost with such force that it knocked me off my feet.
I managed to stagger into the building, guided by a helpful stranger with blood gushing from my nose and split lip, eye starting to swell, the originally small slit in the back of my skirt had ripped upto my bum and my tights were laddered.
The man interviewing me thought I'd been beaten up. Halfway through the interview, my nose started gushing again.
Not only did he offer me the post, but he also took me to hospital to check that my nose wasn't broken.
He did say later that when he first saw me, he felt like saying that I was in the wrong place for the Thriller auditions 😂

Wrapping up a rather serious interview I was asked what my favourite film is, I deadpan said "Chicken Run, I genuinely believe it's a cinematic masterpiece" still got offered the job