Interview 'Do'h!' moments

[kyser_soze]

Slagged off the interviewers award winning campaign...I was OK until I started getting nasty and sarcastic and called the lead on the creative team 'a chimp'...

 

[beeboo]

Ask him!

I have two friends with limbs missing, and they both expect different treatments. So go and ask him.. He will probably respect you for being honest about it!

That is really what I should have done isn't it?

Mind you I've got a friend who uses a wheelchair and she hates it being made an issue of AT ALL so sometimes you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[pinched_nerve]

Ooh I'll play

I was one of those people who didn't know entirely what I was being interviewed for, but that was only once. It was for a company named after our nearest star that made very small sounding systems... are those hints enough?
So I was sitting there and I was told "This job is going to be very hardware-based", I was studying software. I'm pretty sure the appropriate response isn't: "Erm, oh I see" or something to that effect.
My excuses: I hadn't attended their presentation as I wasn't in the first list of interviewees, I was called from the reserve list so they showed me the presentation in the room. My other excuse is that when expressing preferences for university work placements, I made sure to avoid anything hardware-related. I also wasn't given a bloody job spec. Still no excuse for looking blank though

At another one (again for a uni placement), after what I thought was an okay-ish interview we went to lunch in their canteen. I was fully aware this still had a massive bearing on if I got the placement but I still managed to make myself look a buffoon. This wasn't a matter of spilling gravy on myself or anything as minor as that, no no no, I recounted the tale of several nights previous, where I poured too much curry (chicken madras) onto my plate while at a friend's house, and remedied the problem by sucking some of the drip-prone sauce from the very edge, thereby burning my lips and turning my skin red.
My excuses: None... bugger...

I'm really not that much of a muppet at interviews or in general, but I have no idea what I was thinking... ahh well, I got one eventually

 

[scifisam]

I was once interviewed by a chap with no arms - just a stumpy hand protruding directly from his shoulder. I was completely thrown - first instinct is to shake hands...but...does one reach up and shake the stump? or not?

I think I just stood frozen to the spot for a moment and then just said hello with no handshake.

Then someone else entered the room. With a full complement of arms and hands. Panic! Should I shake his hand or not? No..because that makes me look like I deliberately didn't shake the stump...or does it make me look like a weirdo who doesn't shake hands?

I then spent the entire interview worrying about whether I had or hadn't observed correct hand-shaking protocol and completly ballsed up the interview. Didn't get the job.

I've sinced bumped into the armless chap at industry do's and stuff and I still haven't established whether shaking the stump is the done thing or not

That's fucking hilarious

I always do well at interviews. My bullshitting skills stand me in good stead.

The last interview I had, I got lost on the way there. If you've been there once, and had someone give you good directions/show the way personally, it's a ten minute walk from the station, via one of two back-alleys. If you don't know those back-alleys are there (they don't show up on streetmap), you, like me, will also get lost. In Epping Forest.

After a long time of wandering among big poplars and small streams and Kray victim burial grounds, but no live people or paths, I briefly had signal in the middle of an unexpected golf course, and got through to the school to say that I was somewhere with lots of trees, very big trees, and golfers, and I did intend on getting to the interview.

The golfers had no idea how to get anywhere by walking, because they drove everywhere. They directed me further back in the forest.

It was raining. Heavily. Fortunately, there were so many bloody trees that the only raindrops to hit me were dinner-plate sized after travelling over thirty big leaves on their journey down. That really does your contact lenses and make-up a lot of good when you're looking around trying to spy some signs of civilisation.

I spent over an hour getting lost in the forest, wishing for breadcrumbs, occasionally crying down the phone to my GF, wondering if I should give up and crawl into one of the Kray victim graves. Eventually I stumbled out into daylight, got a taxi and was an hour late for the interview, wet, streaky-faced and covered in mud.

I got the job.

 

[beeboo]

That's fucking hilarious

Me = George Costanza

 

[beeboo]

At another one (again for a uni placement), after what I thought was an okay-ish interview we went to lunch in their canteen. I was fully aware this still had a massive bearing on if I got the placement but I still managed to make myself look a buffoon.

The big-up city firm where my other half works has got a policy of taking people who have passed the formal interview stage out for drinks.

At the stage it may not appear that job is in the bag - it's been indicated that you've passed muster but you haven't got a contract yet.

And basically it all comes down to your behaviour down the pub. Stick to cranberry juice and treat the whole like another interview and you'll be cast aside as being a stuffed-shirt bore. Assume you've got the job, take advantage of the free bar and start treating the manager as your mate and you're also out on your ear.

There is a very fine line you're expected to tread between indicating you've got the necessary company spirit and looking like a freeloading alcoholic.

 

[bluestreak]

There is a very fine line you're expected to tread between indicating you've got the necessary company spirit and looking like a freeloading alcoholic.

that's another interview i'd fail

 

[Schmetterling]

plus i get nervous and chat shit too. i had one interview a couple of years ago where i had already done the job as a temp and thought i was a dead cert and i can't remember for the life of me what i said but it was going really well until i answered one of the questions in such a way that i knew that even i wouldn't employ me.

THANK YOU for making me feel normal for that is what I do. Or we are both eejits.
I was asked at an interview once about how I feel about working for people who use the right side of their brain ... and off I was yacking on about how I do Yoga (I didn't yet then; had just some knowledge from reading about it) and how part principle of that is that each movement is done on both sides blah blah blah wank wank wank bs bs bs ...
I did get the job but ab-so-lute-ly hated it. Management consulwankcy wankers they were.

 

[Zorra]

I was once asked to give an example of how I was a quick learner.

I told them that I went from legal novice to winning cases in 6 months when I was involved with a housing co-op and we were taking the council to court to try and stay in the properties etc. Which is fine but then I sidetracked myself and started going on about 'legalese' and council lawyers and generally being snide, until the guy interviewing me said 'I was a council lawyer, then chief executive, for 25 years'...

*deep intake of breath on my part*

'And I agree with you!'

Phew!

 

[marty21]

i had an interview for a fairly senior job at a housing association, i could do the job, but for some reason i fell apart at the interview, i had all the answers in my head, but my brain wouldn't engage and nonsense spewed from my mouth, it was like an out of body experience, I could see the interviewers looking confused because the agency had sent an idiotic fuckwit to the interview

i was so glad to get out of there

 

[5t3IIa]

I'd been temping for a few months for a massive national newspaper and was hoping to slip into a perm position. Meanwhile I was doing interviews through the agency to cover my back.

So I went to somewhere in London Bridge, had an excellent first half of the interview, all chatting and laughing with someone I could really imagine working with. So I relaxed...and started going on and on about this newspaper gig and how much I wanted it because it was my dream job and blah and this and that and the other.


Didn't get either