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Can you remember a job search or interview that you’d rather forget?
Posted by
brian
in
Job Search HELP
on
Oct 3rd, 2010
|
9 responses
I can. Had to go for an interview in my late teens, a long ways. Got on the bus, it was raining, downpour really. By the time I got there and walked to the address I looked like a drowned cat. Needless to say I didn’t get the job, lol.
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9 Responses to “Can you remember a job search or interview that you’d rather forget?”
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yes, i had 27 teeth removed after a car accident…i recovered and while my gums were healing prior to the implant i had an interview,a follow interview with 3 managers…and got the job…with no teeth in my mouth…for a total of 2 hours or so of talking…
Yes. I went job hunting with a friend one day. Like, we spent ALL day running around town applying to several different places. She got like 6 call backs and I got none. The thing is we both had the same amount of experience…. NONE. She asked how many I got and I had to say none, ha ha.
Had an interview with a very large retailer. Interview was scheduled for 1-5. Found out that that salary was pathetic during the first 15 minutes. Had to interview with all sorts of people for 4 hours when I had no desire of ever taking the job. And they were using the stress interview technique at times. Asking difficult questions and gauging my response. Trying to tick me off.
And when someone asked me “why should we hire you?” for the 5th time, it took everything I had to remain professional.
Can you remember a job search or interview that you’d rather forget?
YES, it was…………………..
oh, I guess i could forget it.
I was an enlisted man in the Air Force and I applied for a program whereby you could go through Officer Training and become a Second Lieutenant. I spent over a year taking tests and a physical and having my background checked for security and so forth and so forth.
The last hurdle was to meet a board of four officers for a personal interview. It was scheduled for early afternoon. You were to present yourself to the board dressed in Khaki and answer a series of military questions. I spent a great deal of time reviewing the likely questions.
In order to take no chances, I selected my best uniform and had it freshly dry cleaned for the occasion. I had a friend let me use his barracks room in the same building as the exam (in case it rained and so I didn’t have to worry about being delayed).
I went to the room and carried my freshly cleaned uniform without removing it from the plastic wrap and hung it so it could not possibly get wrinkled. Then I sat on the bed and waited until ten minutes before the scheduled time so that I would not wrinkle the uniform. At ten minutes before time, I rose and dressed. The last thing was the pants. To my horror, I found that there was no pull left on the zipper. There was also no time to repair or replace it.
In panic, I rummaged through my friend’s closet and found a garment called a “bush jacket” It was really too hot for it but I put it on. I found that if I pulled my pants up really high and slightly leaned forward at the waist, it would just cover the unzipped pants.
I went through the interview like this… from time to time i would see them look at me strangely and I just knew my fly was viewable. What seemed like days later, the interview ended. I was soaked with sweat under the bush jacket.
Oh yes, I did get the appointment.
I have two stories – both tying for 1st place in the “Interview to Forget” contest!
While I was waiting for my interview with a large transportation company (I was still in college), there was another woman sitting in the waiting area to be interviewed for the same job. While we were both there waiting, this other woman looks down and sees some dirt on her shoe. So . . . she takes off her shoe and starts to “lick it” — I KNOW — I could not believe my eyes. Blah! It actually made me sick and I could not concentrate on the interview because I kept thinking about the “shoe licker”!
At another interview, the interviewer didn’t get to eat lunch when my interview was scheduled. So, he asked me if I would be so kind to walk with him to a local Arby’s so he could eat while we talked. I went, the interviewer got his lunch (didn’t offer to get me anything) and we sat in a booth in Arby’s. Now, over the interviewer’s shoulder was a “bum”, in off of the streets and he was drinking a entire 1/2 gallon of milk out of a giant carton and making crazy faces at me. It was so hard to focus my attention on the interviewer because of this “entertaining bum”. After the interview was over, and we got up to leave the Arby’s, the bum says to us “Don’t work too hard!”. I started to crack up.
I was between jobs, and I had been laid off from 3 jobs in a row. The first was a Fortune 500 company that decided to restructure and lay off 15% of their worldwide staff. The second was a very small company at which I made a huge impact, worked for over 3 years and the only reason I was laid off was because the company was tanking and they couldn’t afford me any more. The last one was a job where they replaced my boss with someone who worked 3 times as hard for a third the money, and was able to absorb my job into hers, saving them even MORE money. So, I found this job that was exactly what I was looking for, and I showed up, and interviewed with the hiring manager. This part actually went well, and then he asked me if I would stay and meet with the owner. Only problem was, the owner wasn’t going to be there for like an hour and a half, give or take, and then when he got there he was only going to be there for maybe 45 minutes, give or take. So, I had to leave and find something to do for an hour and come back and wait, because he could be there any time.
So, I waited quite a while for him when I got back, but I wanted to make a good impression. Then I see this loud, yellow convertible speed into the lot and park in the only reserved spot there was, kind of crooked as if the big reserved space wasn’t quite big enough. Out walks this swarthy “Borat” looking dude, wearing a gold polyester shirt opened to his navel, full thick chest hair flowing out of the open shirt, and covered by a number of gold chains. He comes in, buzzes right by me without saying a word, he’s told I’m there but he just goes to his office for a few more minutes, then he has someone else come usher me in. He starts going on and on about how he has to go to Turkey for a couple weeks so he doesn’t have a lot of time to chat, but what’s my deal? I take that as the cue to tell him who I am and what I’m looking to do. So, I tell him about my jobs, and he starts asking really pointed questions about this smaller company I worked for, because I told him kind of how the company had ups and downs, and he is grilling me, wondering why they’d lay people off if they had any money left in the bank. I explained that they had to make some strategic decisions before they ran out of money so they could keep the doors open. He clearly wasn’t buying it, and wanted to know, what the REAL deal was. He worked his way up to it, but essentially, he accused me of lying. There MUST be more to the story, NO ONE gets laid off 3 times in a row. He basically said I’d do better for myself if I’d just admit to what really happened. I told him as honestly and frankly as I could EXACTLY what happened, and he clearly wasn’t buying it. Then he pretty much got up and left and I was sitting there, I saw his convertible pull out, and finally someone came in and told me he had to catch his flight to Turkey.
I never heard from them again. Thank God.
Recruiters were anxious to hire newly minted MBA’s and one was particularly aggressive to get me to visit the North Carolina headquarters of the L’eggs brand.
I am not sure that a former Peace Corp Volunteer with extensive stateside experience with the Office of Economic Opportunity (poverty programs) and a graduate degree in Public Management would fit well in that corporate environment.
I wasn’t really sure where this guy’s head was at but I know where mine wasn’t.
It was a long time ago. I was new to the area, and looking for a job. I had an interview at a newspaper – some sort of assistant to the editor position, I think.
The problem was that it was in an area that was strange to me. And it was scheduled for the morning, during rush hour. I hadn’t yet really encountered Boston rush hour traffic, so I had no idea what I was getting into.
I got kind of lost. I managed to get off the highway and into the correct town, but I was totally confused about where to go from there. It was clear that I was going to be late.
Fortunately I’d had a little bit of foresight. I’d borrowed a cell phone from a friend for the trip (this was back when cell phones were nowhere near as common as they are now). So I called the newspaper to tell them that I was going to be late and needed more directions. It didn’t help that the traffic in town was absolutely insane.
While I was talking to someone at the office, I was stuck in the middle of the damndest traffic jam I’d ever seen. Some guy had his car pointed directly at the side of mine, not six inches from my door. He was honking and screaming at me. Suddenly I totally lost it, and screamed “YEAH, BUDDY, F–K YOU TOO!” at the top of my lungs.
Right into the cell phone.
I immediately apologized and tried to explain what was happening. Eventually I found my way to the office (very late) and had the interview. But needless to say, I didn’t get the job.