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?

I was pregnant. The interviewee came in and I stood up and extended my hand to shake theirs. Rather than take my hand they reached out and rubbed my belly!

Two stand out

The first which was a graduate interview but still.. when asked 'what attracted you to this role?' answered that she didn't know what the role was, and had just applied for "anything and everything." To give her more than a fair chance I briefly described the role then started to ask her what she thought might be the best or most challenging parts of the role. "I don't know. I've never done that job before".
"Does it sound like something you might like to do?"
"Maybe, but I am not sure".
"Shall we end the interview here then?"

Next one was a good interview but when asked about a large gap on CV, the candidate he'd been in prison for manslaughter. He'd turned his life around and I really liked him and wanted to give him a shot but he just wasn't the best candidate and I had to stick within a scoring system. Shame. I often hope he did ok.

Re that though, why don't you have their details before they come? Surely they have already filled in an application form or you have a CV? That would already annoy me as a candidate, to have to provide information I'd already provided.

O might out myself here but I was once interviewed for a job and was asked how I would cope with some other staff knowing more than I do. I thought it was a very odd question but I answered it by saying ‘well they won’t know everything. I’m bound to know stuff they don’t. For example I know all the names of The Wombles’

I got the job :)

Interviews for senior medical role in a hospital. We asked about challenges facing the specialty she had apparently working in for over ten years, expecting something about ageing population, increasing demand, changes to NHS funding, or even covid.

What we got was a ten minute monologue about her ambition to travel the world saving lives and doing charitable works, taking in orphans and distributing alms. It had nothing to do with medicine. We asked again wondering if she’d misheard the question, and she told us she thought she was an exceptional person. Okay

I said “love you, bye” when my future employer walked me out of the building. The shame. I got the job, the other candidates must have been dire!

Another role, straight from uni, I turned up for an interview and was handed a lot of paperwork so came to the conclusion it was a trial or something, so I just got on with it. The lady interviewing me kept saying “you’ll absolutely love Simon when he’s back”. Simon my was the boss of the company.

So I just got on. Zero training on the system so had to sort of learn as I went, and gradually throughout the day, people came in and introduced themselves to me and offer me any assistance etc. Such lovely people.

The lady interviewing me asked me if I’d prefer lunch at 12 or 1. I opened my mouth to ask why I’d be having lunch at an interview but 12 came out instead. Came back from lunch where I was shown a few things and I asked a few questions, I assumed the morning was to see what the job entailed and the afternoon was like a mutual interview.

At the end of the day, she just said “can you get in for 9 tomorrow? Oh and you’ll just love Simon”….

I stayed 8 years and never had my interview. Yes, Simon was lovely by the way.

It was just bazaar, the interviewing process was usually very long winded. I was too nervous to speak up so just went with the flow. At the first Christmas party, I told everyone I hadn’t even had an interview yet and apparently I was a communication blip and an oversight! Simon was on holiday and the lady interviewing me assumed I’d already been hired. Simon assumed she’d hired me.

I wasn't the interviewer or interviewee. I was due to be interviewed after her.

The lady sat in the holding area under a 'no food or drink to be consumed here' sign... Took an apple out of her purse and started chomping away. When asked to stop and shown the sign she said 'well I've started now, I'll be done in a minute'. She was escorted out without interview.

I was asked to assist with a colleague from another team, who was doing paralegal interviews.
He interviewed a recent LPC graduate and asked a (fairly basic) scenario based question that we come across time and again. She didn't have a clue, and it was quite clear she didn't. Rather than move on, he kept pushing and pushing this one point ("yes but what would you do"). She was absolutely mortified and had no idea what to say or where to put herself because he kept pushing for an answer.

I had one who laid his head and hands on the table. Sighed alot. Kept on about previous jobs. Didnt know what we did. I really didnt want him but my boss made me. He did very poor work for 3 weeks, went off sick for 7 months and wished me dead.

I used to sit on a desk near the interview room my old company used so could hear them all taking place. There are two that stick with me:
Interview for a senior engineer, older gent comes in and declares he has a powerpoint, interviews are a bit but let him present, it was just 20 slides of him throughout the years on holiday with his wife and he went into full detail about each holiday. Interview was over 2 hours long in the end; never knew why anyone didn't make him stop.
Another one, mid level technician, guy about 30 comes in declares he's still on bail for ABH against his last manager but if the interviewers can look past that he'll be a great employee. Didn't get the job

I work in the civil service. Candidates are asked to give examples of when they have demonstrated a particular skill at work like making a difficult decision. One candidate from another government dept started talking about choosing a paint colour for her living room. It was excruciating.

I was once on the panel conducting an interview for a new nursery teacher. We had a candidate who spent pretty much the whole interview going on about her broken washing machine.

I also once interviewed a chap who when asked if he was comfortable and ready to begin, explained he had a bowel problem and this sometimes caused flatulence and a need to rush urgently to the loo. He then went on to tell us about his recent colonoscopy and how he'd had several large polyps removed. Literally no one knew what to say after that.

I had one candidate, interviewing for a senior environmental role, tell me that all this environmental stuff is a bit of a waste of time, no-one actually believes the advice and if he wants to get on multiple planes a year increasing his carbon footprint, what of it?

Had another one i invited in for a 2nd and final interview with my boss as he'd been brilliant in his first interview. He was embarrassingly bad in his 2nd - couldn't remember who we were (think he'd been interviewing with other companies and literally couldn't remember who we were or details from 1st interview) kept on talking up aspects of his experience that we'd explained in 1st interview weren't relevant for our company (think international legislation when we only work nationally) and when asked about specific environmental legislation (very relevant for role) responded 'oh that sustainability stuff is vague waffle waffle' 😮

A friend was interviewing for candidates to study to become radiologists-Question "Why to you want to be a radiologist?"
" I like working in the dark & I'm not great dealing with people"

Not a real interview fortunately….but…
our company used competency (Star) based interview techniques. Interviewers were given training which included role play. For many years they used to contact the local job centre to offer “interview practice” with us for that role play- generally it worked really well, the job centre folks got 5-6 mock interviews and feedback and Trainee interviewers got lots of practice on “real” people
however, when I was trained my second “practice” was with clearly quite elderly guy (this was also about 30 years ago). I asked one of our standard question “ can you tell me about a time you had to complete a task working with difficult people “ and he proceeded to tell me about his experience in a concentration camp as a young boy during the war. I was in my early 20s, I didn’t know what to say. He was literally talking about dealing with concentration camp SS guards and how he would get beaten and see people being shot if they didn’t do work fast enough. I don’t even remember what I said as I was so shocked. I remember asking the next question which I got something more work related from him, and thought phew ok, but next question was back to concentration camp …I really could not deal with what his saying and make sense of it. It was surreal in that he was talking quite calmly as if this was a perfectly normal example of STAR, but explain ly the most horrific situations.
Luckily the observer who was in the room, who was obviously feeling the same shock and horror, intervened after about 10 minutes and put a stop to it. I can’t remember how she did but it couldn’t have been easy for her either. None of the others interviewed him so I assume he was gently asked to leave or they called the job centre in desperation. It was a horrible experience - but it always stayed with me that this guys whole life had been dictated by his experiences nearly 50 years earlier as a young boy, and that even in his 60s he was struggling to come to terms with it and had effectively “normalised” it all .
The only positive was that I was never taken by surprise by anything anyone said at an interview.

Some parents behave anti socially in their neighbourhood and are aggressive to teachers. I wouldn't them as next door neighbours

I interviewed a guy who had his phone alarm go off ten minutes into the interview . He turned it off and told me that it was his reminder for the interview 🤔 😆

Personally I wouldn’t have set an alarm for ten minutes into an interview 😂 but he didn’t come across as the brightest anyway !

£100k salary & this is the calibre of candidates that apply?!! No wonder the world's going belly up!

🤔wrong post?

My DH went to an interview with a pain in his side which was getting worse and worse. He took cocodamol and ibuprofen and was pretty out of it but did the best he could. He couldn't drive to the interview because he was in so much pain. When I picked him up from the interview he passed out from pain on the way to the car and I had to drive him to A&E because he was bright yellow with jaundice. He had an emergency procedure and was in for 3 weeks.

He doesn't have a clue what he said in the interview but he got the job.

I don't get what's so bad about this..

No

The 2 that have stuck in my mind are a man interviewing for learning disability support worker post having spent the morning shadowing other support workers. When feeding back on his experiences of the morning he replied 'it's like the lights are on, but there's nobody home'. He didn't get the job.
Another one was for a position that basically involved covering a large geographical area, going to peoples houses, often with large pieces of equipment. It turned out at interview that he didn't drive. When asked if he felt this may be a problem, the reply was that he was good at problem solving.

I was on an interviewing panel. An older lady was asked a question relating to diversity and inclusion and she provided a very competent example of a talk she'd given at the local Chinese Centre where there'd been a bit of a language barrier. She finished her example and we were about to move on when for reasons I'll never understand she decided to add, 'Oh and they were all so lovely. They just sat there clapping and smiling when I'd finished'. She then decided to demonstrate this by pulling the sides of eyes to mimic an oriental eye shape; pulling an exaggerated smile; shaking her head from side to side then clapping like a seal. We were all in complete shock and no one knew what to say at first and just moved on but she did get very detailed feedback!

Not an interview but also bizarre situation. Paper sifting application forms which asked for examples of specific experience. One lady was clearly a mature student who had just got a degree later in life and was very proud of the fact (and rightly so). The job didn't really need a degree just relevant experience but I think she was so pleased with herself at getting a degree that we'd also be so impressed and give her the job out of hand. In each of the boxes where she was asked to provide an example she would write something like, ' Covered in module 3 of degree year two. Speak to Prof Smith for details'. it was the same for every question. I couldn't believe that she really thought that would provide evidence (we really needed practical knowledge) and that I would be ringing up her college to speak to various tutors about her course content.