To ask for your cringeworthy interview experiences where you were the interviewer?

[AlternativePerspective]

A friend was just telling me about the interviews they were holding recently. One candidate was apparently awful. Kept interrupting, threw a pile of certificates down on the desk when asked about his qualification, referred to people with disabilities (it was in a disability focussed organisation) as “mentals” and he wanted to help them because he was sure they aren’t stupid.

Then when he had the rejection he has sent numerous emails insisting he should have been employed.

The story is so horrifying that I wonder whether he was deliberately that objectionable. From their end I do know it really happened, but could it be he was being like that deliberately? Or …?

So, as an interviewer, have you ever conducted any awful, cringeworthy interviews?

Not me but my colleagues.

They were interviewing a guy. The guy went to pour himself a glass of water from a bottle in the middle of the table. He was shaking so badly and was not looking at what he was doing so he completely missed his glass. I am not talking about just a drop but about half a bottle worth. The table was absolutely full of water.

The odd thing is, despite everyone seeing what had happened no one acknowledged it. Everyone just acted like nothing had happened and continued with the interview, even though there was a huge puddle of water streaming off the side of the table. When they told me what happened I asked them why they didn’t say anything or get a towel to mop it up and said they were not sure themselves - it was just less awkward to do nothing than acknowledge it.

Some really odd group think going on there 🫤

DP interviewed a candidate on video call who had 10 minutes during the interview to look at some information and answer questions about it. Candidate never came back after the 10 minutes.

Sorry I have absolutely no idea how to tag someone on this new bloody site. @SleepSleepRaveAsleep ·
maybe that will work?

"any questions for the panel?"
"Yes, how do you get your jobs? I'm sure I could easily be a manager in a year or two based on you guys"
Didn't get the job.

Also had a man in who said he was a stand up, asked him for a joke, he didn't have any. Very awkward silence followed.

Interviewing for graduate position, so candidates all young (21ish). All day type thing with various different exercises.

At lunch time we shortlisted candidates who were asked to stay for the afternoon sessions, unsuccessful candidates told they could leave.

When I told one candidate he was unsuccessful he burst into tears and begged me to give him a job because he had just got married recently to a Vietnamese girl and if he didn't find a job soon she was going to be deported.....

I worked for an organisation with very strict recruitment procedures. All candidates were asked exactly the same questions.

One man was unpleasant from the beginning, but particularly towards me as the only woman panel member. I had to rephrase a fairly straightforward question three times, before eventually passing it over to one of the men, who asked the original question in exactly the same words I had used, and miraculously the candidate understood.

It was a woman-focused organisation. He didn't get the job.

🤣Now that’s the sort of no-nonsense approach we could all learn from!

Asked about her interests and she said zombie vampires. Now I could have maybe accepted this, she was dressed on the gothic side, but not inappropriately, but she went into an epilogue about them biting people and blood sucking.

I do improvised comedy and people sometimes say this to me. Plenty of stand ups don't do one off jokes, their sets don't work like that. I'd feel very on the spot and probably react similarly!

That said, my sense of humour usually comes across I'm told which has helped.

Not as funny as some but it was incredibly awkward. Interview instructions asked candidates to speak for ten minutes on a specific topic with no visual aids. Candidate had prepared a full PowerPoint presentation. Couldn't offer her a job after that if she couldn't even read the interview instructions properly.

Same candidate also just parroted our website back to us, but had looked at the wrong section of the website and was talking about the work of another team entirely. Job description was quite clear but she spoke about lots of unrelated projects. Think interview for menswear and she talked about children's toys.

Interviewed someone for an IT specialist position. I wasn't really interested in his pre-University education, but for some reason it came up. He claimed to have graduated from the same very small school where I went, and the same year. Which was super interesting, because I was certain I hadn't ever seen him before.

Oh god, several.

the one who cried. And cried. And cried. And flapped her hands like a Miss America winner. Then cried some more.

A zoom interview- The one who stood up to adjust the blind, and was only wearing a pair of pretty grimy Y-fronts.

Then there was the arrogant toss pot who started by telling us he only needed to work for a bit of fun because he was wealthy enough not to need to, he just fancied a bit of an interest.

And the ones who haven’t read the brief/job description.

finally, the worst…. The one who came prepared with the presentation for the title we had asked for. Except had clearly recycled the presentation from the last interview they had done, which was for our biggest competitor. The whole presentation slated our company and product, flattered the competitor outrageously, and the candidate didn’t even realise until slide 14 of 17!!!

Not me but my dad who is a design engineer. During the course of the interview he asked the candidate some fairly basic (to them anyway, I'd have been absolutely stumped) maths questions, using formulae that were pretty much used every day as part of being an engineer. Candidate was recently graduated so this should have been incredibly easy for them, no time to get lazy and rely on a certain programme etc.

Candidate was totally stumped, couldn't do any of it and actually, despite what I earlier said, even I could do one of them (area of a circle, thank you very much gcse maths!) What made it worse was my dad had a coffee mug with all the formulae on it along with pictures of drawing tools and a big 'design engineer essentials' slogan, which he subtly and then not so subtly kept turning around the face the candidate, tapping with his pen, knocking on the table etc but the guy had no clue.

My dad reported in his usual dry tones that he could understand freezing with nerves but he did try and help him out until it all just became a bit farcical really and as attention to detail was quite a key part of the job it was pretty clear this wasn't going to be a good fit

I interviewed online for a while and had a young uni graduate (with incredible experience and grades) add her mum to the call. I thought it was a mistake at first and declined before her mum connected and the candidate said "Could you let my mum in? I told her she could join us." I said no and she actually pouted.

Another candidate had a problem with their camera and so had to leave it off. Only at the end of the call they clicked on the wrong button and turned the camera on rather than ending the call- showing them sat in their dressing gown still in bed. They wasted about 20 minutes pretending to attempt to fix the problem

Both were candidates for a role with a potential salary of £100k+. Neither got the job.

Interviewing for an IT management role
Interviewee came in and missed the chair, started laughing hysterically and started walking about the room, gesticulating madly
Got him to sit down, and it appeared he was glassy eyed - couldn't answer a single question
My colleague and I looked at each other quizzically and then the smell of booze hit us!!
Immediately he left, his agency rang us for feedback saying he thought he had the job - had to pop his bubble pretty quickly as he hadn't answered any questions st all, just talked randomly!
Never had a pissed one before - took us a while to compose ourselves after he left!

My boss interviewed someone who burst into song during the interview. This was for an admin job in the Council btw, nothing theatrical or dramatic about it but she enjoyed singing as a hobby and she wanted everyone to hear.

We interviewed someone for a facilitator position. Asked him for second interview to present on something small for 10 minutes only so we could see his style. He embarked on a deck with 90 slides.

To be fair on the candidate, that is a really useless and hacky interview question. I'd take that as a red flag about the employer's poor hiring practices if I was asked that.

Oh that reminds me of a woman I interviewed a few years ago. Public sector role, fairly standard set of competency-based questions, but she somehow got to talking, in detail, about her fascination with serial killers and how they murdered their victims. “I’m just… you know… really into death.” 😬

Children's charity - whatever questions we asked, candidate just kept waffling about how much he liked children, to the point that after the interview my colleague and I both thought he must be a paedophile.

My line manager had a killer question about deferred income - amazing how many candidates it floored, but a good test of their technical knowledge and ability to explain a concept.
We always had a non accountant join the panel - after the interview, non-accountant enthused about how clearly she'd explained it. We fell about laughing, she'd explained a totally differnt thing.

Just into the start of an interview - maybe two questions of eight, candidate starts laughing loudly, then banging her hands on the table and shouting "no, no, no.... no more questions, enough of the questions" and laughing hysterically.

Love this 😂

Maybe it was your boss who spoke shit Mandarin?

I looked blankly at someone who asked me something in Spanish in an interview once. It came out of nowhere, I wasn't expecting it and their accent was so bad that I didn't even realise it was Spanish they were attempting to speak. I thought I'd just misheard. I wondered afterwards whether they told their colleagues they'd caught me out. I couldn't think of a way of saying I hadn't understood without insulting them.

A colleague and I were interviewing candidates and one kept giving one word answers or very short answers. The only thing wax her voice would have been her job - it was a call centre role.

I have been interviewing today , 1st person comes in and plonks himself down at the desk that was set up for me to sit at , lap top, note book , files etc so I asked him to move to one of the other 5 tables that were set up to face me he said he just needed to use my laptop for a minute to check his emails !

Next two people attending said they did not want to fill in our info pack ( names , address, reference info, last two places worked etc ) as it was a breach of data protection.
And one that said he couldn't fill in the info pack because he would only write in blue ink . (We don't mind what colour they use but I happened to only have black pens with me. ) so he just walked out .

I have a load more to do tomorrow 😕

I was on the panel interviewing for a new depute head in our primary school. The candidates were high quality until a young man came in. He was unkempt, ill mannered, and mumbled his replies to us. He did manage to make clear to us that he was male and knew that primary schools were in need of male role models. He started fidgeting in his chair and then swung one leg over the arm rest and sort of arranged himself in a foetal position along the chair back and closed his eyes.
He was asked what role he thought parents should have in helping the school run and he drawled that they could make the teas at sporting events. Silence. Then he uncurled himself, stood up. and without a word quietly left the room. We waited till we heard the swing doors shut and howled with laughter. How did he get on the interview list?