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?

Surprised by some of these answers. I've had multiple people cry on interviews (sometimes returning mums who lacked confidence). I still hired them if they suited the role and I thought I was the right manager for them.

One very bad interview stands out. Man in his 20s asked a standard set of competency based questions. We got to the second question and he objected and said he didn't want to be 'quizzed.' My co-panellist explained that we asked a standard set of questions to all candidates to gauge technical abilities. He said it was insulting, 'had never been treated this way,' and got up and walked.

I had one repeatedly address me as the wrong name (along the lines of Kirsten/Kristy). I corrected them three times and then gave up. It was a contributing factor to us not hiring them.

I agree @InPraiseOfBacchus - one person's interesting is another person's extremely boring, it's a daft, meaningless question.

Those were my feelings too. Being made redundant can be horrible and leave people panicked. If someone was otherwise what we needed but had a little cry when recounting their recent, unpleasant, work experience it wouldn't out me off.

Someone who burped continuously through the interview (without acknowledging/excusing himself)

Another answered the phone multiple times

When I worked for one of the big accountancy firms the graduate scheme interview process included two mock meetings with actors whilst we took notes in the corner. One of the male candidates had a female actor for their first ‘meeting’ and asked my male colleague who was taking notes if he could have a male actor for the second ‘meeting’ as he got in much better with men as “they were better at their jobs”.

He was immediately asked to leave.

Love this!

I have done this when being interviewed, although I did phrase it better.
It was a Sales role though so we are supposed to be “assertive “
I did get offered the job and my new manager said that he loved the approach
Wouldnt work with all jobs and all interviewers though

For several years I ran graduate recruitment in an advertising agency. To say we had some colourful applications is an understatement.

One young woman listed under 'interests':
'Spending Saturday afternoons in bed with my boyfriend ... not sleeping'.
(It was in the days before emojis but I'm sure there would have been a winky face).

Another hopeful brought us a powerpoint presentation about herself (which we hadn't asked for). About halfway through she clicked on a slide that simply said 'I love anal' in massive letters. She then did a whole OTT 'oh, whoops, can't think how that got there!' routine. I still cringe thinking about it.

Fun times :)

Yes, sorry if that didn’t come across. It was tragic. It was just so shocking for him to just real out these horrible details.
what was really sad was that the folks that job centre sent to us were long term unemployed. Clearly this guy had probably had other interviews and come out with similar things and scared employees off. I don’t know what feedback our company gave to him and job centre, but he did really need to know that using such terrible experiences is very difficult for employers to handle in that scenario and help him identify more appropriate examples for the occasion.
it was horrible becuase clearly he need to talk and tell people…but it just wasn’t the right place or time to do that
the fact I still think about him 30 years later says something…it had a profound effect on me listening to him casually coming out with this horrible history.

Interviewing a chartered Surveyor specialising in managing commercial properties. In the technical questions we asked him about the Landlord and Tenant 1954 Act. He'd never heard of it, which is like a doctor never having heard of Diabetes.

3 months later we were Interviewing again (expanding the team) and the same bloke walks in again. I think, ok, interesting choice to try again, perhaps he's revised this time. No. He still said he'd never heard of it.

I'm not joking, 3 months later he's back again. I had told HR I wouldn't waste my time on him but HR said it was compulsory that I interview him. HR said he could make a claim if we didn't interview him again. (I'm not an employment expert but I'm guessing that's nonsense. )

At the third interview, asking precisely the same technical question, he again didn't know.

He applied a 4th time and I persuaded HR to decline a 4th interview.

@PipeScatter

I'm not sure what Mum was proposing - coming along every day and sitting with them?!

I worked in a job where we did shifts and some technical staff did nights on their own.
We discovered that a recently qualified, fully trained, staff member was bringing her Mum to work on nights. Her dm was sitting in the staff room, she had no expertise whatsoever in her dd’s work.
She was a very self entitled woman who once refused to drive to a clinic in bad weather and expected me to stand in for her although I lived the same distance away.

A woman in her fifties applied for a job in accounting. She did not have relevant experience nor a relevant education but she had 30 cats.

A former sergeant applied for the same job. He too had neither relevant experience nor a relevant education but he felt he was a good match as he was "good at making people do as they are told".

I once, in an interview for a role in compliance, referenced those who had gone rogue as 'baddies'. Still cringe 20 years later.

Got the job though 😅

I have a few.....there was the occasion when I was rather enthusiastically waving my hands around whilst asking my question and managed to knock a full glass of water all over the candidate. Full credit to him as despite being soaked through, he laughed it off, carried on and secured the job.

Another time the candidate arrived and I took his coat to hang it up on a wooden coat stand. It weighed a tonne, I don't know what he had in his pockets - bricks or something. Anyway halfway through the interview the coat stand buckled under the weight and the wood snapped in two and his coat fell to the ground in a heap. Unlike a normal person who would have acknowledged what had happened, the chap carried on talking like nothing had happened and unfortunately this put me and my fellow interviewer into a fit of giggles and the more the interviewee carried on regardless the funnier it got. Somehow we managed to get through to the end but I could see our shoulders bobbing up and down as we struggled not to laugh out loud - how very unprofessional!

I also had a candidate once who went on and on without answering the question properly and without taking a breath for us to intervene. In the end we had all put down our pens and sat so still that the movement operated lights plunged us into darkness! There were no windows in the room so nobody could see each but it did provide an excellent opportunity to interrupt and move things along.

I've had some other funny times too with powerpoint presentations with sounds effects added in which I'm sure seemed like an excellent idea at the time but not so clever when talking about your IT strategy with bullet points coming on the screen to screeching brake sounds.

Ah I love interviewing, you never know what you are going to get!

I interviewed a candidate with another colleague once, and the interviewee did not speak to me directly, referring only in third person during the interview. Answered my questions but looking at another interviewer, and repeated the question he was answering in passive as "So I was asked: ..."

He was technically absolutely brilliant and was hired, into a different project so we did not see each other much, but he had never even acknowledged my existence or returned a "hello" when I bumped into him at the coffee machine or watering station. It wasn't even offensive, just plain weird.

I was much younger then and now I just wish that I asked him directly what that was about. I will now probably die in ignorance.

Ah. that could be my ds. He has Autism & Dyslexia. which can lead to completely overwhelming anxiety in certain situations. The Dyslexia & Anxiety would mean he'd KNOW the formulae but be temporarily completely unable to access / present them in an interview situation. The Autism would mean he would consider reading them off the side of the coffee mug as 'cheating'.
Of course this person might be entirely different and, as your (rather kind) Father said, simply a bit slow on the uptake which is a different matter. Neither are esp. helpful in a candidate, but one is interview specific & one less so possibly.

3 awkward ones:

1. where the person kept saying they were very good at their job but would give no examples or directly answer the interview questions
2. where the person interviewed ok but we found someone better but they wouldn’t take the rejection so constantly emailed me as they couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t employ them even though we gave feedback.
3. when interviewing for my maternity cover told me he would be so good they wouldn’t want me back. That didn’t put me off as I knew them from another job and knew they were just selling themselves (they were actually very nice) but the director also in the interview was not impressed.

We were interviewing when we'd just had a consultation and revamp of our Service Level Agreements which involved liaison with us, regulatory bodies and auditing firms.
The interviewee came along with the draft copy of the agreement and claimed that he was pretty much solely responsible for this revamp. We just sat there in disbelief at his audacity and stupidity and asked him
A few questions. It was really embarrassing for him when it came to light that actually we were heavily involved and had never heard of him.

I had asked the interviewee to bring references from their current/ most recent employer. On her application she said she had been there 12 years .They had now gone abroad.

The (glowing) reference she brought to the interview was signed by the same surname as herself. When I queried this she replied "He's my brother, he knows me better than anyone. My employers have moved abroad ".

When she gave their name and old address I looked it up in the phone book.They were still living there and had refused to provide a written reference because she'd been sacked for lying and theft.

Reminds me of the time I was interviewing for an accounts senior who was expected to not only prepare accounts but supervise and provide guidance and assistance to more junior members of staff. He'd been working in accounts for about 4 years at this point and his CV looked good, but during a technical question he actually said "what's an accrual?"

And there was the time that my previous employer recruited an accounts trainee that had a false reference from his dad's mate, and actually turned out to be highly number dyslexic... what we'd assumed was shyness was actually his embarrassment at knowing that he was going to be totally hopeless at the job, but too scared of his father (who'd pushed him to get the job) to admit it. Poor lad.

Also, not interview related, but a note to anyone preparing their CV. If you have declared that you have "excellent attention to detail", please, please proof read your CV. It's at this point that I end up looking purposefully for a mistake and 9 times out of 10 find one...

I interviewed someone online. He was sitting on the loo. Don’t know if the lid was down or not and didn’t like to ask.

Years ago I had to interview students for holiday roles. Two of them insisted on being interviewed together, held both hands the whole time (not even facing me) and answered each other’s questions. That was a weird one.

One of the interviewers I was interviewing with fell asleep - horribly embarrassing.

I interview graduates for roles every year and some have cried through sheer nerves. I usually say let’s have a short break and then start over. That reassurance helps them complete the interview without any further issues. Sometimes you have to give a little bit of leeway, particularly to young people interviewing for their first professional job.