Just had the worst job interview ever. Anyone else care to share?

[EggNogRules]

I am morto and at myself. I was in and out in 20 mins .

I am used to initiating meeting with new clients and thought I had prepared well. I was so nervous, I had to keep drinking water to stop my lips from sticking to my teeth. It was all I could think about. None of the answers I prepared were useful. I need to rewind and do over because I have better answers now (after the nick of time).

Bugger.

And i couldnt apply through the Travel to Interview scheme as the building society only phoned and asked me to come in the day before so there wasnt time.

About 12 years ago I was living in a small local town for local people place and I had an interview with a small firm for a job. I was treated as greatly exotic, not having lived there for long. I knew it wasn't for me when the man interviewing me asked me if it was true that 'they let the blacks run things' where I was from (midlands).

My friend went for a job as a Social Work assistant. Every scenario they gave her to suggest how she would deal with it got 'Well I would make a cup of tea.....................' in response, as if making tea could cure every ill she would ever come across. She realised this was ridiculous and I still tease her about it, never moreso than when she went to uni for her interview for her dream career training (not social work).

when I was about 19 and still studying I went for an interview for a part-time job as a general office dogsbody.

The man interviewing me came towards me, stuck out his hand and said 'Hello. I'm Willy Gubbins' ....and I just burst out laughing and then couldn't stop.

For the love of the little baby cheesus fakegingerbreadhouse will you not explain about the potato?

When I was a student I went for an interview at a supermarket. I left a lecture early to get there on time, paid out for a taxi because the alternative was taking two buses and I was worried one of them would be running late, and borrowed a smart outfit from my housemate including shoes that made my feet bleed (I'm a trainers or wellies girl normally!) When I got there the first question the interviewer asked was "are you a student?". I said yes and he said "oh I'm sorry, the HR people were supposed to tell you before, we're not considering students for this position" and that was that. I was in there for less than five minutes! I thanked him politely and left, got on the bus and then missed my stop and ended up riding around the city for an hour. That was not a good day.

Ahem Nancy.

I remember thinking 'spit, don't fail me now' (it did) and then 'what the feck am I supposed to be talking about?'. Total short term amnesia. I might as well have taken my own potato to the interview (to trip over). I agree FakeGingerbreadHouse, for teh sake of baby cheeses, please elaborate.

I'd also like to know what DownTheRabidHole 'There is a word to describe my function at the time which is the same as a famous "perfume shop". The fuckwit thought I meant I'd worked in a fucking make-up shop' means.

Since I have been home I have vomitted about four times and feel truly awful. It could have been worse timing. I feel a bit better reading some of these.

THIS job would have been perfect and I know I can do a cracking job. I had another interview last Friday and have got through to the next stage.

Some of your experiences have been awful/unlawful. I succesfully interviewed for a MOD position in which a panel member asked me about marriage and babies. I told him I didn't want to answer and he said blustered something along the lines of 'that wasn't really part of the interview'

Willy....i'm so sorry!

(tee hee)

I had an interview a few weeks ago with a company I really loved for a job I thought I'd love, and I was really looking forward to the interview...I wasn't cocky but thought I was in with a chance, especially as they had about 20 positions going. When I got there , the interviewer was the rudest person I think I've ever met. She kept interrupting me, talking over me, kept looking around/yawning/rolling her eyes and was playing on her phone the whole time I was trying to answer her questions it completely put me off and I didn't get the job, which was hardly surprising... It really knocked my confidence, it was awful.

Another awful interview experience...when I was 18 I got lost on my way to an interview, turned up an hour late and missed all the group activities but still got the job

I went for an interview for a fairly junior admin job with a big famous accountancy firm. One of the biggest in the UK.

I went in to the interview and they started asking questions and I started answering them appropriately to the job. To start off these are just for example talking about how good I was a data entry and how happy I was to muck in with the team doing as much of it as I could and how fast and accurate I was. And they were giving me funny looks and saying 'Oh it's only once a year you'd have to do anything like that' which made me think it was a bit odd as the agency had told me that it was primarily a data entry role. Then they start asking me about pricing matrixes and budgeting and I'm saying I have an idea what involves and would be happy to be trained up to be doing that type of work and the interviewers start giving each other funny looks. Then they started asking me about staff management and I told them that I hadn't been aware that the role was supervisory but that was something I'd always been interested in and would be happy to pursue.

I think I'm giving all the right answers and can't understand why the interviewers are looking more and more outraged at me and am feeling quite upset.

Anyway eventually I have to turn round and say 'Say, look, I've been told one thing by the agency about this job, but it's not chiming at all with what you're saying, could you please tell me exactly how you see the job and what it entails. And they slide me over a bit of paper and they're only bloody interviewing me for a senior management level job.

Turns out a woman with the same first name as me was being interviewed for that job but she'd gone into my interview when they came out and called 'Bridget' and I'd been in the bathroom checking my appearance. I'd gone into her interview when they'd come out and called 'Bridget' again and I'd gone into her interview. This other Bridget, poor cow, had gone to uni and got years experience and then gone into an interview where they were asking her how fast she could type and if she minded doing the coffee run.

The worst thing about it though was that they blamed it all on me (even though she'd gone into the interview first) and took the attitude that I had wasted the time of all these senior managers who were far too important to have their time wasted by some jumped up little admin assistant. And it wasn't my fault at all.

I was mortified at the time, I think it's funny now but it was horrid at the time. They made me feel awful but I think judging by that I had a lucky escape not working for them.

Anyway, makes a good story for down the pub.

For some reason a recruitment consultant thought i would be suitable to send along for an interview to a huuuge corporate-type printing company who needed a new marketing manager... i HAD worked in business print and was a very good sales person but that was as far as it went... dc2 was a month old, i had severe sleep-deprivation/breasts simply BURSTING with milk and was still wearing maternity clothes! i literally suffocated my body to stuff myself into a (once) loose-ish black dress, even my shoes were tight. you can see where this is all going... i left newborn with grandma, drove for 90 minutes boiling hot with fear, expressed into the washbasin etc etc (had to take the dress off completely!) And the interview - am sure its what they make you do when you go to hell. A four-strong panel of be-suited smug men asking me questions, the answers to which I knew nothing. they might as well have been speaking in Klingon - it was mortifying for ALL concerned but they were 'polite' enough not to rush me and it was 30 minutes of the most bottom-clenching/cringe-making time of my life. at the end i presented a very clammy hand to shake and of course when i got to the loo afterwards, there were rather fetching damp patches on the front of my dress

For a job as a teacher, I once had to play the piano in front of the governors; interview panel. 2 pieces I had taken in. 2 pieces sight-unseen. One of which was proudly described as "the school anthem".

I did my best, but it completely threw me for the questions part.

Didn't get that job!

Many years ago I had an interview for a charity which raised funds for cancer research. I had only a few weeks before lost my dad to cancer, really traumatically obviously. I did quite well in the interview right up until the question 'so have you any personal experience of people suffering from cancer?'. Of course I burst into uncontrollable sobs and just couldn't stop. I'm not sure I even managed to get them to understand why I was crying. I just couldn't control it and in the end managed to get out 'can I go now?' and just left!

It was the sort of thing that would really have made my dad laugh though, he would have called me a daft old thing, and now all these years later I can laugh too.

Nancy/Willy what a coinkydink

Oh and my names not actually Bridget, but you know what I mean.

Where's the MNer who turned up pissed at an interview and lit a fag halfway through? That made me howl

Fryonefat good for you.
The previous intervew was running very late and so my interviewwas at least 30minutes late in starting. The interviewer started my interview by statin that as the prvious interview had taken so long, mine would be very short and there would be no time for me to ask questions at the end.
I should have left at this point. I presented the powerpoint presentation that they had asked me to prepare but was hurried along because, as the interviewer said, they were short of time. Clearly I was not going to get the job - and I didn't.

Journoem - we have to do that in our interviews! The candidates have 3 interviews and in one the whole point is to destabilise them and see how they react. I've even been told to get a friend or DH to ring me and to have a personal chat.

But it is linked to the job we do and how to remain professional with clients who are inappropriate...

I had to go for an interview in the university department where I already worked. My fixed term contract was coming to an end and there was no more funding so I had to find something else. I knew all the people interviewing me and had managed one of them on a previous project.

It was the worst interview of my life! When I went into the room, no one smiled, or stood up or put their hand out to shake. I was already in interview mode so thrust my hand forward with a beaming smile anyway. Sadly it was the hand holding a glass of water which I pretty much threw over the desk and the knees of the interview panel.

The hr guy handed me a pile of those shiny napkins that are non absorbent and I ended up just pushing a puddle round and round the table while the panel stared at me in horror.

The new professor decided to start the interview as they were short on time so I had to start answering questioning about how excited I was about their waste of taxpayers money project while I was failing to mop up the water.

The guy I used to manage barked his questions at me while staring at the floor which really wrong footed me. It was like talking to an angry wall.

Oh, and to top it all off, I was twenty weeks pregnant and draped in a waterfall cardigan hoping they wouldn't notice!

I got the job.

Bartimaeus - what is the correct way to react when your interviewer does that? It probably wouldn't happen in my line of work, but I'd still like to know!
Do you sit patiently? Tell them they're being rude? Whip your own phone out and start a game of tetris?!

I'm a teacher. I went for an interview a couple of years ago where, instead of referring to lower-ability children, I talked about stupid children. Repeatedly. It was like my brain was frozen - I knew I was saying something wrong but I couldn't work out how to fix it.

I didn't even realise until I was halfway home and thinking how well the interview had gone.

I didn't get the job. Luckily I got a much better one a few weeks later, but I still cringe thinking about it.

Many years ago I went for a promotion interview within the area of criminal justice I was working at the time.

Interview was going well and the then they asked me to discuss "the peace process". As the Northern Ireland troubles were still in the headlines at the time I whittered on about the troubles trying not to be too political (not the done thing to be too "political" in a job interview within the civil service) obviously not picking up on their faces.

They quickly wound up the interview and thanked me for my time and I spent the next 2 weeks telling any one who would listen about the very odd question they ended the interview on...my, then, boss finally, very kindly, took me to one side and told me they had asked me to discuss PACE process - the core framework of police powers and safeguards around stop and search, arrest, detention, investigation, identification and interviewing detainees.

Yep that made more sense.........didn't get the job
I am still cringing typing this 15 years on