Worst interview EVER!!!!! Care to share?

[Bella_Vixen]

Last year at Target.

Got interviewed by two people (seperately).

The two questions/answers that I know killed all chances were:

Why do you want this position (backroom/stock)? I'm tired of cashiering. I also explained that I had done almost nothing BUT cashier for the past 6 years and wanted to get away from that. But that I wouldn't mind being a backup cashier if needed; I just didn't want that to be my main job.

I don't remember the second question exactly, but it had something to do with leadership skills and getting something changed. My answer was not what they were looking for, even though it was the correct answer for the question.

Even after all that, I think I still had a really good chance at the job. Then I told them that I had an offer for another job that was closer to home that wasn't seasonal.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have taken the Target job instead.

[BlaqueKatt]

I burst into tears at an interview.

background-my husband had just left me-had my mom not taken me in(driving 8 hours to come get my son and myself, I'd have been homeless within 8 hours-military housing). I hadn't worked for two years, and my estranged husband was only giving me $50 a week to live on. I was at such a low point I didn't feel i "deserved" anything

The interviewer asked why I deserved the job, and I just lost it, all I could think of was my son growing up with a mother that couldn't get a job.

Needless to say she handed me some tissue, let me cry for a few minutes, finished the interview, and didn't get the job.

[Victoria J]

I was called in for an interview at the court house and was greeted by 4 attorneys and 3 judges! They asked dozens of questions EACH and I answered every one of them well and never got nervous. Of course, it helped that my allergies had been REALLY bad and I was under the calming influence of Benedryl. :-)

How ?! How on earth do you interview well in front of 7 people ? That's appropriate for a firing squad not an interview panel.

It isn't possible to do the address the person who asked the question but make regular eye contact with the others thing. It isn't possible to keep track of them all, for the visual feedback to see if they think you've answered fully or to track who might be taking notes. It's just scary and people loom at the side of your vision.

I wasn't doing terribly until the question I just didn't understand (which turned out to be a mismatch of jargon between my organisation and theirs) but just being that outnumbered would have made it a horrible experience.

It was also embarrassing to fluff the interview so totally because they had actually changed the interview panel for me. My then manager was on their board and would have been on the panel but withdrew. One of their people was on our board too, and I used to go to meetings at their offices sometimes. Didn't help.

2 or 3 people seems about right to me. Keeps the interview on track, and less likely to be anything inappropriate. But not overwhelming.

Victoria J

[Reyneth]

There was a time where I was looking to move out of state. Found a company based where I wanted to move that fit a lot of my experience and talents. Interview was set up. Drove a total 8 hours for the interview (I think I started after working that morning and stopped overnight), checked in to this crummy hotel and cleaned up, got to the interview and the first thing the sorority chick interviewing me said was "How about {suburb 15 minutes from where I was living}?"

They sent interviewers/recruiters to my area not 3 weeks later. I was hired for that location, but I should never have taken it. Driving all that way on my own dime to end up working right where I was in the first place and they NOT ONCE mentioned the new location and upcoming interviews in my area? Just the first of many, many red flags.

[Sheldonrs]

I was once interviewed by 5 people. ...

Beat you by 2. But is was actually an interview I was proud of even though I didn't get the job. This was for a library asst. job in San Luis Obispo, CA.
At the time the pay would have more than doubled my crappy nursing asst. job I had at the time.
I was called in for an interview at the court house and was greeted by 4 attorneys and 3 judges! They asked dozens of questions EACH and I answered every one of them well and never got nervous. Of course, it helped that my allergies had been REALLY bad and I was under the calming influence of Benedryl. :-)

[Dips]

My worst interview ever was when I was working at the teaching hospital and getting laid off b/c the boss's grant had run out.

I applied to a company that made plexiglass lab equipment (such as electrophoresis boxes, radiation sheild boxes, etc.

This was before anyone commonly used the internet (so Mapquest didn't exist) and cell phones were a novelty of the rich.

I worked in Chinatown and the interview was in Charlestown near Sullivan Square. So I took the T over in my suit and heels and attempted to follow the directions the nice lady had given me to get there.

The problem was she got the Rte. 93 and Rte. 28 underpasses mixed up so my starting point was completely wrong.

I was tromping all over Charlestown back and forth to the pay phone at the station for two freaking hours. Every time I called them and tried to describe where I had gone and where I had gone wrong they kept giving me different directions and sending me off in another wrong direction.

I was wearing a suit and heels. It was a hot day. It was an industrial area so I looked like an idiot walking around in the middle of the day dressed like that. I was trying not to cry but I kept my voice on the phone completely calm and professional each time I called them despite my wishing I could reach through the phone and throttle the bimbo who kept getting me lost.

It was so frustrating because I am good with directions and also good at describing where I am so I can convey that to someone trying to GIVE me directions.

So I got there two hours late, covered in sweat and limping, and they still offered me the job after the interview.

And I ended up turning them down because I got a better offer from another researcher at the same teaching hospital.

[Victoria J]

I was once interviewed by 5 people.

They were sitting round 2 corners of a set of desks set out as a square, with me opposite. It wasn't even possible to fit them all into view, so they kind of loomed in peripheral vision.



It was an interview to work at a law centre. Now I do work for a charity and charities tend to overload interview panels a bit because the day to day management and the trustees both want to be oinvolved. My organisation normally has 3 people : the manager, a trustee from the board of governors and another member of staff. If the post doesn't report direct to the manager the other member of staff will be the direct supervisor. This place was run on some kind of semi-collective basis and they had 5 people from all types of workers involved.

This included someone from the admin team. I get the impression that they thought they were terribly progressive for including an admin worker on a panel for a non admin interview - but not enough to include the woman properly. She'd clearly just been assigned 2 questions to ask in turn.

How do I know this ?

She asked a question I didn't understand. And when I asked her to explain it I discovered she didn't understand it either. So she could only repeat it again and again as we both got more and more horrified, embarrassed and frantic.

I think she was actually somewhat more horrified than me.

After that even though I understood the rest of the questions I'd lost it and just had no confidence left. I didn't get the job and as soon as they let me go I practically ran out of the building.

*shake just thinking about it*

Runners up :

An interview for Asda just after they'd been taken over by Wallmart. They held horrible group interviews where you had to show what a people person you are.

I'm not a people person.

You got split into groups of 3 to do a presentation. My group had me, silent and bitter, a perfectly decent seeming woman and a woman who would not shut up. She just took over everything and was unbelievably bossy and annoying. I could not work out any way to reign her in without coming across as difficult, so I settled for comming across as introverted and resentful instead. I did feel sorry for the decent woman as I think she pretty much lost any chance of a job just being paired with us.

An interview for phone work back when I was scared of making phone calls. The unemployment benefit people made me go and I really did try. You had to interview over the phone by pretending you were talking to a customer and when I did it the phone didn't work properly. I was so horrified and scared I couldn't speak up to tell anyone this so I didn't really get interviewed.

These days I can't imagine being so scared and I spend a lot of time on the phone.

An interview where I just went blank. They asked for an example of a time when I'd helped resolve conflict and I swear all I could think of was conflict I had caused. I think I just sat there wtih my jaw hanging open. It had actually been going quite well up to then and I have no idea why I suddenly lost it.

An interview at which I lost my own job. I'd been working temporarily for this organisation but they weren't allowed to just give jobs out permanently. They had to advertise and interview and go through the whole process. They were certainly open to the idea of employing me though.

So I was working, got up and went off to the interview to be interviewed by my own manager and superviser and then went back to my desk to work.

I thought it would be easy.

They asked me the kind of basic warm up question about why I wanted to do the job, or why I thought I was good at it, and I couldn't answer. I didn't want the job, I wasn't good at it. I just couldn't bluff in front of people who knew me even though I certainly wanted the work.

They extended the time limit for making a decision and they had a lot of long meetings and eventually gave the job to someone else. I really couldn't believe they'd even acted like it was a hard decision. I wouldn't have given me the job, but it was still horrible. They ended up finding 2 different other temporary jobs I could take, but I got my current job just in time so it worker out well enough.

Victoria J

[JLRodgers]

I went for a systems admin position here...the interview consisted mainly of:

Interviewer: "What is <a>?"
me: "err...I dunno..."
Interviewer: "What does <b> do?"
Me: "I have no idea."
O_o

I had something similar happen once -- basically the place asked me questions loaded with acronyms (like "with a vb ODBC to db2, have you ever handled the PDLC?" I had to ask "what are you asking?" was offered the job those many years ago [the question could be rephrased to "have you ever developed, maintained, and supported a visual basic program that uses an AS/400 database?" -- AS/400 is a type of computer)

[Midorikawa]

I went for a systems admin position here...the interview consisted mainly of:

Interviewer: "What is <a>?"
me: "err...I dunno..."
Interviewer: "What does <b> do?"
Me: "I have no idea."

I thought for sure I wouldn't get the job, and never before have I come out of an interview feeling so stupid in my life. Apparently my honesty in admitting the limits of my knowledge impressed them, because I start as a Junior Admin Monday. O_o

[mandaliz8704]

Back about 8 months ago when I first found out i was pregnant, I was still applying for jobs because i wasnt showing yet. I had a doctor's appointment one day, and had an interview scheduled afterwards. I went to my appointment, and they sent me for an emergency ultrasound because they couldn't find the baby's heartbeat. Everything ended up fine, but I had to call and reschedule the interview. I felt really freaking stupid, and the job would have been perfect... needless to say, I didn't get that job. I stopped interviewing after that one also.

[elsporko]

I had an interview to be the night desk person at a hotel. It was only two nights a week but would fit in perfectly with my other jobs. I was doing great until they did one of those questions where you say a strength then a weakness. I explained that my weakness is how I'm bad at math due to dyslexia but I try really hard anyways. Oops, the night person does alot of accounting no job for me.

The worse part was they were going to skip the part about my weakness until I reminded the interviewer about it.

[Binky]

Well tiny update. No responce from the peopl interviewed with and threw up (suprised anyone? Me no) And didn't get the other job.

BUT I have another job interview lined and so far it sounds good. But After the last lot of dissapointments I'm not holding any hope to getthis one :S ahh well....keep the stories coming people!!!!!!!!!!

[chocoBug]

i think that even if you have the right experience, qualifications and manner sometimes you just need practice at interviews. I went for loadsa interviews after graduating for crappy, low paid jobs and never got any.

Then I went for an investment bank grad scheme and the first question in the interview was "Name someone in the press whom you think is a good leader." And I said the CEO of the bank in question. . . from then on I was on safe ground. I think its allllllllll bout practice

[JLRodgers]

I once showed up late by 15 minutes, even though I left for the interview with an hour to spare before the interview. Had road construction on every road, accident, then I had to take a detour, and the parking garage was full, then the bus transit worker gave me the wrong directions (I got lost as I had made numerous turns and curves unexpectedly -- as in the map I had did not have the roads listed).

Didn't get the job, wasn't shocked, but I didn't want to work with lawyers anyway -- nothing against them, my family has just had REALLY bad experiences with every lawyer we've ever had. Of course it was like 10 years ago.

[Boggles]

I've only ever had one formal interview which was a phone one last Friday.

Everyone else was interviewed in person but I had said in my cover letter I couldn't do that but would be happy to travel there should I get a second interview. They were happy to do that and the guy rang me back today to say that sadly I didn't get it but that was down to not having an established portfolio and offering to send me details of both future vacancies and a couple of other places that were hiring for similar roles.