Hiring Managers Reveal The Most Bizarre Interviews They’ve Ever Had

When you’re fresh out of college and looking for a job—or even if you’re looking to make some extra money in high school—it’s usually considered a good idea to try putting your best foot forward and to appear as professional and sincere as possible. After all, making a good first impression on future employers is in your best interest if you’d like to land a job.

But not everyone follows this approach, apparently. Some employers have been privy to some pretty atrocious interviews with applicants. From the unprofessional and unprepared to the straight-up weird and bizarre, some people just don’t get what it means to be interviewed by a potential employer. If you’ve ever wondered what not to do, here’s just a sampling of the stories that employers have experienced from the interviewing process…

The One Who Didn’t Know Anything

I was interviewing this one applicant for a job at my company and, let me tell you, this person had apparently done zero preparation and didn’t know anything about anything. He came in, sat down, and we began the interview. Pretty early on, I asked the applicant what qualities he thought that he could contribute to the team. The applicant responded with, “Um…I don’t know.”

When I tried another tack and asked him what he thought were his best qualities, I got another, “Um…I don’t know.” This kept going on until I got to asking him about why he had applied for the job. The applicant told me that “they told me to apply for the position.” I was confused by who “they” were and asked the applicant what they meant. “Um…I don’t know.”

Saying Yes…To Everything

I interviewed an Italian girl who couldn’t speak English. She had moved to the country a few weeks prior, and I think this was her first interview, but it was all so painful. Nearly every question was answered with, “Si…yes.” Even questions that you shouldn’t answer with a “yes.” I decided to be nice and go through all of my questions, but it was ridiculous….

I would ask something like, “If you had multiple tasks coming from different parts of the business and they were all due today but you couldn’t finish them all in time, how would you try to balance this?” And she’d just respond with “Si…yes.” At the end of the interview, I was just asking her general “shoot the breeze questions” and she said she was currently learning English. After the interview, I told our recruiter that she can’t speak English and we wouldn’t be proceeding further.

A Delivery Driver Without A License

This was not the worst interview I’ve done, but definitely the weirdest interview I’ve ever conducted. A guy applied for a warehouse and delivery position. We had emailed back and forth with a few questions before the interview, and it sounded like he was a promising candidate.

The guy comes in for the interview, sits down, and says, “So, what’s this position?” I tell him it’s a warehouse and delivery position.“Oh, really? It’s delivery? I can’t lift anything. Also, I lost my driver’s license a few months ago. I guess we’re done here.”

And then the would-be candidate just decided to randomly get up and leave. Didn’t say any “thank you” or even say goodbye. He just up and left without saying another word. To this day, it was the still the shortest and most bizarre interview I have ever conducted.

Not Even A Hint Of Mortification

A guy who was scheduled for an interview arrived 40 minutes late. He didn’t apologize or even acknowledge that he was late. I told him that the managers were getting ready for their next interview and, if he wanted to be considered, we would give him another chance to come in at a later date.

He showed up five minutes late for his second interview, which wasn’t acceptable, but we went forward with the interview. His phone rang in the middle of the interview and, instead of apologizing and turning it to silent, he looked at it, rejected the call, and then proceeded to do something on his phone for the next 30 seconds.

Then he put his phone down, face up, on the table and looked at it every time he got a message or notification. He didn’t get the job. When we told him that we found him ineligible and unprofessional, he was genuinely surprised and thought that we had it out for him.

From Naruto To Politics

I want to begin by stating that the call center I work at is top notch. We pay well, have flexible hours, and pride ourselves on our local reputation. One morning, my boss called me into his office and asked me to conduct my first interview. About three minutes later, a kid walked in.

His outfit was a hodge-podge of all kinds of things. “You’re wearing a Naruto headband,” I said in some disbelief (he had made it through the first two rounds of interviews earlier). “Oh, you recognize my headband. Plus one to you! I was almost worried I’d have to deal with some lame suit!”

And then, he handed me his ‘resume.’ I want you to understand how loose I’m being with that word here, because what he actually handed me was about four pages of prose beginning with the sentence “I was born in 1988 in the small town of….” As I flipped through the pages, I noticed two important things about it.

The first thing was that I had initially assumed the kid was about 18 years old, but he was actually 25. The second was that there was no work experience in it. He’d gone to college and that was it; that was his entire resume. “When do I start?” I’m staring at this ridiculous man-child, and there’s zero irony on his pierced, fake-glasses-wearing face. “You don’t start here. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.” When I said “this interview is over,” I didn’t mean that in a good way.

And now this kid starts shouting at me, screaming that I’m a fascist, that I don’t know anything about anything, that he’s a billion times better than me, and when he’s a millionaire, he’ll buy this company just so he can fire me. When that somehow fails to procure immediate employment, he then, with tears in his eyes, begs me for a job. His mother, he says, will boot him out onto the street if he doesn’t get this job.

Lying On The Resume

I’ve had a few interviews with people that put down that they have experience with doing something and then when I asked them about it they don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about anything tough, either. But the one that sticks out to me the most is when someone applied for a job with us in IT….

They put down on their resume that they have experience setting up a wired and wireless network. So I asked them, “I see you put down on your resume that you have networking experience. What kind of experience do you have?” The guy said, “Honestly, I don’t have any networking experience.”

My co-workers asked him a few more questions that didn’t really give us a ton of confidence. At the end, he asked what he could have done to leave a better impression. I told him, “Honestly, don’t write something on your resume if you don’t know anything about it.”

Using The Mother

Back when I was the HR manager for a market research firm, one of the most awkward interviews was with a candidate and his mother. This 19-year-old, who apparently had previous work experience in customer service, brought his mother into the interview with him.

I politely questioned his mother as to the reasoning of her joining the interview, and her response was, “I’m just making sure that this is the right company for him and making sure you’re asking fair questions.” I decided to roll with it (why not, this is the most interesting thing I’ve had all week), so I asked my first question…and she answered for him. I politely explained that the interviews I conduct are with the candidate only unless special accommodations are required. She said that she wasn’t going anywhere.

So, I thanked them both for coming out and explained that the position requires problem-solving and critical thinking on an individual level. Unless I’m hiring the both of them under one salary working together as a “full-time equivalent,” this wouldn’t work. The mother told me that I would be sued and that I should go off myself.

Skype Can Be Tricky

I work in software development. As part of the interview process at my company, our candidates interview over Skype using a code-sharing website for them to complete a small and relatively simple coding problem. In one of my interviews, I started with the usual introduction of myself and explained to the woman that there will be a task on a code-sharing website and that I’ll send her a link.

I paste the link into the text window and explain to her how to access it (some people haven’t used Skype before and don’t know how to access text chat in a video call). She smiles and nods and asks me when I’m done, “Will you be writing the link on the whiteboard?”“No,” I explain, “I sent you the link within Skype itself. If you’ll just click….”

I’m forced to trail off as she reaches forward and picks up her webcam (which I’m assuming was mounted to the top of her monitor). I ask her what she’s doing. “Trying to find the link,” she replies. Dumbfounded, I once again explain that the link was sent over Skype. I ask her to wave her mouse cursor over my face until she sees some buttons appear. She takes her hand off the mouse, raises it, and waves it over the screen.

I explain to her again that she needs to use the mouse, and she smiles and nods again. After about 15 minutes (of a 30-minute interview), she did finally discover the link in the Skype text chat, but she proceeded to type it into her browser by hand. She did not make it to the next round.

Wanting To Just Hang Out With Friends

This kid was in high school. He had to fill out the application for the company a second time after he messed it up the first time and, as if that weren’t enough of a red flag, he put his personal friends down as references. I asked him why he had applied for the job—I know this is a pretty standard question, and I like to see if applicants can come up with a reasonable and cogent answer on the spot.

And this kid—who had put his friends down as references—said that he had applied because all of his friends worked here and that it wouldn’t really be a job because he’d just be “kicking it with the homies.” After a follow-up question, the kid told me that his teacher wouldn’t let him and his friends work together because they caused too much of a disturbance. He apparently just wanted a place to hang out with his friends.

People Getting Lost Between The Door And The Reception Desk

I was working as a temp for a business on the day they were holding interviews for new staff. The business took up one floor of a large office building, and clients and potential employees would press a buzzer outside to be let into the building. I was the receptionist responsible for buzzing people in.

All went well throughout the morning. But then around lunchtime, two guys are asking me to let them in for their interviews. I check their names off and press the buzzer to open the door. Five minutes go by, and they still haven’t appeared from the elevator. They press the buzzer again. I buzz them in again. No guys show up.

For half an hour they’re asking to be buzzed in, and I’m pressing the button, and they’re failing to open the door. Finally, after almost an hour and well after their interview slots had passed, someone else opened the door for them to let them in. But they still don’t show up.

Then eventually, almost an hour after the guy let them in and two hours after their interview times, some lady from another floor comes in leading two guys. She says, “These two have been sitting in our lobby for an hour. I thought I’d better bring them down.”

The Valley Girl

I was working as a front-end supervisor for a big box retailer, and our store was going into the holiday season. We always need extra help during the holidays, so we put up an ad. A girl came in for an interview, and I explained to her that the job was temporary, as we only needed her for the season.

However, I also explained to her that we might consider keeping on some of the seasonal hires beyond just the holidays. After explaining this, I asked her whether she was looking for seasonal or a long-term position. In the most stereotypical valley girl voice I’ve ever heard, she replied, “Well, I got in trouble for bad grades and staying out too late and my parents are making me pay for my own car insurance this month.”

That was it. She didn’t say anything else other than that and just stared at me, apparently expecting me to hire her on the spot. I very much did not do that. I still wonder if she ever got a job that helped her pay her car insurance for that month…

The Sunglasses And Green Tweed Man

Our first interview was with a gentleman from a Fortune 500 company located in our town. He was a support technician there, and the recruiter said he fit all of our necessary skill sets. This gentleman comes in wearing sunglasses but, thankfully, he was wearing a suit. Less thankfully, it was green and tweed.

When we asked him about a software program we used, he said, “I’ve not used it on the job, but I’ve read about it in a couple of articles on the web. It’s something I’m excited about.”We ask what he knows about our company here, and he reads the first line of our Wikipedia page.

The company I work for is a rather conservative and old financial and banking institution. Ties are required for every male on staff, and suits are required for most positions. Between his attitude, his sunglasses, and his offensively-green tweed suit, the applicant didn’t get the job.

Fool Me Twice…

A colleague of mine called this guy who had applied at our company to set up an interview. The guy didn’t show for his time slot and, about two hours after he was due in, he called our company and said that he’d been hit by a car and he was sorry for missing his interview.

My colleague decided to be nice, and  give him the benefit of the doubt. We told him that we’d be able to arrange an interview for him for another day. The day arrived, and the guy still didn’t turn up, even though we tried calling him several times.

Later, we got a call from him, and he told us that he’d broken his tooth on an almond and couldn’t make it to the interview because he had rushed to see a dentist. My incredibly-trusting colleague decided to try one more time and gave the guy another chance at an interview. The day of the scheduled interview, the guy turned up completely drunk.

Beating Up A Co-Worker

One of my friends is the program manager where I work, and had to interview this guy that he swears was off the rails. When the program manager asked this guy about how he handled conflict and if he had experience in working with someone he disagreed with, the guy went off on this long story about his life.

Long story short, this guy we were interviewing had a previous co-worker who got his girlfriend at the time pregnant. He told the program manager how difficult it had been for him to see the guy who had impregnated his girlfriend every day and how he wanted to beat him to a pulp. When my friend, the manager, tried to say something non-committal like ‘oh,’ the guy he was interviewing felt the need to add “I mean, I got him outside of work, trust me, but I never touched him when we were at work.”

The Overbearing Mother

I conducted an interview with a teenage boy—his first interview for his first job ever. He was just the legal minimum age to start working and was clearly nervous to the point of being petrified. We always look past interview nerves, especially for kids completely fresh to the workforce.

He was actually doing okay for someone so nervous, stammering a lot and tripping up words. Until he started looking a bit green. He asked if he could excuse himself for a moment to go to the toilet. He comes back with his mother. He looks a lot better but just smiles and sits down again without saying a word.

His mum speaks to us, saying, “Oh, I’m sorry about [Boy], he gets quite ill when he’s nervous. I hope that doesn’t put you off!” We tell her it’s fine and that we understand, but the mother doesn’t leave. “Oh, good. I hope you don’t mind if I take over the interview. Like I said, he’s quite sick, and I think it’s best if I answer for him.”

That was the deal breaker. We gave mum and the kid one last chance and told them it was quite alright and that the kid was doing fine. But the mum insisted that she stay. We would try directing our questions to the kid and his mum would lean across and answer for him. Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.

The Call Center Applicant Who Hated Phones

I did an interview for a couple of temporary call center jobs in my office. We wanted to hire a few people to help provide phone support for our new website. The jobs at my center were usually in high demand because we frequently hired permanent positions from our temporary workers and gave good benefits and pay.

While interviewing potential temporary workers, I had a girl who seemed to have not read the job listing or anything. She easily spent 75% of the interview time making sure that we knew how much she loved working in customer service and how face-to-face interaction was her favorite thing and that she hated doing ‘menial’ tasks like taking phone calls.

And she did this by telling us a series of anecdotes about how much she had hated her old job for always making her take phone calls. In the end, we told her she wouldn’t be moving on in the process. To this day, I honestly believe that this girl had no idea what she’d been applying for.

Don’t Judge By Someone’s Age

I became the hiring manager for a mom and pop restaurant at age 18. I looked really young, though, and most people thought I was barely 16. At any rate, we were looking to hire some more help. I’d exchanged some emails with a woman who had applied to be a server.

Based on our emails, I was planning on hiring her because she had lots of experience and seemed really nice in our correspondence. I told her that I’d like to schedule an in-person interview and that she should come in the next week. The day of her interview comes around, and I just happen to be at the hostess station when she arrives. I didn’t know it was her, though, since I’d never seen her before.

When I tried to greet her with a “Hi, welcome to _____!” she cut me off with what has become one of my favorite instances of self-sabotage I’ve ever witnessed. “Alright, listen. I’m about to get hired here as a server. So what that means is that you, as a little hostess, are going to sit me with all the big tables and give me all the good regulars or I won’t tip you out and I’ll make your life a living hell. Got it? Good. Now, run along and tell your hiring manager that I’m here.”

I was stunned but smiled back sweetly and said, “Actually, I’m the hiring manager, though you probably don’t think that I look like it. I’m sorry to have you come up here for no reason, but I’ve already filled all of our open serving positions. Goodbye and have a nice day.”

Insulting The Hiring Company

So I work for a cabinet company. A while back, we were looking for an account manager to work on a mix of design and pricing projects. One of the applicants we got was a guy in Canada. We decide to call him for a phone interview out of curiosity and hand his info to HR.

As it turned out, his fiancée was living in our city, which is why he applied. HR reports that he seems normal, and we schedule an in-person for the next time he’s in town. So, we come to the day of the interview. Apparently, the guy came into the office with his fiancée and told her to wait in the lobby for him.

He gets shown to the interview room and the front desk person lets us know he’s there. The interview is conducted by our HR person, the department manager, and me as the office trainer. The three of us walk in, with me last in line. He jumps around the two women to shake my hand first and barely acknowledges the other two in the room. As the interview proceeds, he begins to do a couple of things.

One, he asks how long it will be before he takes the department manager’s job. Two, he begins to bash our product for not being the same as what he’s used to. And three, he starts explaining all the things we’ll be required to do to sponsor his visa. Afterwards, he kept calling about once a week for two months asking when we were going to be starting his visa sponsorship.

You Mean I Have To Come In Every Day?

I was hiring for a senior project manager, a full-on role that may have required some extra work at times (for which I was always happy to compensate with time off in lieu). A well-qualified girl came in to interview for the position. She hadn’t been working for several months. No big deal, but worth exploring. “I had some problems with my last manager….”

“What kind of problems?” “Well…, he, like, wanted me to come into the office EVERY day.” With a huge eye roll. “Hmmm. Was it a full-time job?” “Yes, I guess so. Would you want me to work, like, EVERY day? Because sometimes I just wake up and want to go back to sleep again.” “I see. Well, I don’t think that this role is for you….”

There’s No Such Thing As Too Much Honesty…

I used to work at Abercrombie & Fitch when I was in college. I have a close friend who loves the brand and would have given an arm and a leg to get a job there. Normally A&F (and its affiliated brands) won’t interview people who walk in and ask for an application; managers need to recruit sales associate candidates based on appearance, so getting a job there isn’t easy.

After months of vouching for my friend, I finally got my manager to agree to give him an interview at Hollister. The day of the interview comes and goes, and neither my manager nor my friend have said anything to me about it. I decided to ask my friend what happened.

Apparently, one of the interview questions was, “If you could use one word to describe yourself, what would it be?” Of all the words he could have chosen, my dear stupid friend chose ‘tool.’ Which was true, and honestly a pretty good fit at Hollister, but clearly they were not prepared for that kind of honesty. He didn’t get the job.

Road Rage

I worked for a car rental company, and our building was a bit awkward to get into. You had to go past the building in order to take a U-turn to get into our building’s parking lot. I was in charge of hiring new people, and I had been in interviews all day before I had a little break.

I had about 30 minutes before my next interview, so I opted to run out to grab some much-needed food. When I left the lot, a young lady cut across, driving the wrong way in traffic, then flipped me off when we almost collided. I came back, and she was waiting in the lobby, resume in hand, waiting for me to interview her. I told her to leave immediately.

From The Kangaroo Court

I oversaw the quality assurance team at a very large call center. I was interviewing for quality assurance associates with questions that were a mix of knowledge about our work and stuff to see if you fit the culture I wanted for the team. One of the questions was a simple one. “Tell me about a time you had to give someone feedback; what was the situation, what did you do, and what was the outcome?”

This one guy tells us that one of his employees at his old job had told him that another employee was sexually harassing them. His solution was to call a meeting of his team (about 20 people). In front of the entire team, he tells this guy for the first time that he’s accused of sexual harassment. The guy I’m interviewing basically berated his employee for sexually harassing his peers.

The funny thing is that he was an internal candidate up for a promotion from a telephone interviewer. He should have been familiar with our sexual harassment policy, but even if he wasn’t, the solution to this is never to publicly shame someone with a kangaroo court in the middle of your office.

The Under-Qualified Guy Who Wants To Be Overpaid

A studio I did some freelance work for was doing some hiring while I was working on a project for them. One guy who wanted a job at the studio had his mum come in to interview for him. The studio tried to tell her that she can’t do the interview for her son and that he needs to come in.

Finally, after several days, he finally comes in and looks like some random 24-year-old who should have a YouTube channel about conspiracy theories or something. During the interview at the studio, he told the studio that he thought their salary of $40,000 a year for an entry-level position was worse than minimum wage.

He then proceeded to berate the company and told them that they could do a lot better in the way they treat their employees. Thing is, this guy had absolutely no qualifications or experience in the field of work that the studio needed, but still had that attitude. 

Being Too Honest On A Resume

At my company, we had a highly qualified candidate referred to us by an existing director. Naturally, we think that he’s kind of a shoe-in, all things considered, so several senior technical folks and managers, including myself, decided to just have a casual panel interview with him, figuring it was mostly a done deal. But boy, were we wrong.

We all get to the interview room and look at this guy’s resume. On his list of hobbies, he has things like “Boy Scout Troop Leader,” “fishing,” and so on and so forth. But then he has something called “pillowing.” We were all confused about what ‘pillowing’ was. The guy comes into the interview, and the first question asked was, “So, we’re all wondering what “pillowing” is?” His response was, “Oh! You know, intimacy!”

The Two-Person Setup

We had two candidates that we were interviewing, one after the other. An odd thing that we noticed though was that these two candidates had the same address on their resumes. The first guy chats me up, bouncing in his seat, talking the entire interview about how he can’t wait to get to happy hour at some bar.

He barely answers any of my questions with more than a word or two. He even talks about how much he loves our competitors’ products. I’m flabbergasted throughout most of the interview, and I concluded the 45-minute interview in just about 15 minutes. This guy then asks if he can leave me with a high five and an exploding fist bump for good luck.

I decided to take a 30-minute break until the next candidate, but I see the first guy talking to the second candidate in the lobby. It became pretty apparent to me that the second guy got the first guy to “bomb” his interview so that he would look better. Neither of them were hired.

Sometimes People Just…Leave?

Probably the worst interview I had on the interviewing side was when we had a guy come in to interview for a developer role who came in as a former IT manager. I looked at his original answers to the quick questionnaire we’d given him before coming in, and he was talking about having systems to handle 50 requests per hour. Which, for us, was a sign that he didn’t really know what he was doing.

So we had the quick chat with him and left him in the room with the tech test that we give all our candidates. He comes out 10 minutes later, asking to talk to my manager. He then leaves. And he takes the tech test with him. HR says we should reschedule an interview, but he took the test with him, which means that he could just Google all of the answers the next time around. The recruiter still tries to get this guy to come back but to no avail.

Insulting The Industry

I worked for a theater company. One day we get an application with a cover letter that was a solid page of stream of consciousness; the highlight was that the young man believed his ability to quote every line from “Dances with Wolves” qualified him for a job at our theater. Obviously, his resume got put in the round filing cabinet.

Fast forward a few weeks, and this guy’s mom calls our production manager. She was quite upset we had not already offered her son a job and asked if he had mentioned that he could recite Dances with Wolves in its entirety. Our manager said that we didn’t have any positions available for someone whose sole qualification was quoting Dances with Wolves and she got really huffy. She then informed my boss that her son is autistic and that “the theater industry is full of weirdos; I thought it’d be a good place for him to get a job.”

The Proprietary Secrets Of A Babysitter

As new parents, we were trying to hire a nanny to take care of our baby while we were at work during the day. The first candidate that we interviewed had amazing references from previous employers, including some line about how “Mary Poppins pales in comparison.” This seemed pretty promising.

During the interview, we asked her for an example of some of the activities she liked to do with the kids at her previous job. And she refused, claiming that they were ‘proprietary secrets.’ Like we’re supposed to trust you with our baby and you won’t tell us what you did while we were gone?

Then she gives us “advice” for asking better questions that won’t scare away good nannies. After concluding the increasingly awkward interview, she also randomly opened closed doors to look into rooms of our home on her way out. We didn’t end up hiring her.

Only Some Half-Truths

We were hiring some people for a lab tech about a month back, and most of the candidates we had interviewed so far had been okay. Not amazing, just okay. Except for this one girl. Her background was that she was a graduate from college and did a lab tech program.

After that, she worked several retail jobs. So, I thought, okay, there’s this girl down on her luck, and she hasn’t found a job that she’s really passionate about and went to school for. Let’s give her a shot. She was 30 minutes late and arrived in a BMW.

I was tempted to ask how she could afford it but I bit my tongue. I asked her some standard questions, and she mentioned that she’s GOING to college for the lab tech degree. Part-time. One class per year. She is, at this point, woefully under-qualified.

She claims that if I put her in this position, she can learn. I ask her how an HPLC works: something she should have learned about in school by now, even with one class a year. She tells me that I just need to put the sampling tube in the sample and press the button. Which is absolutely not at all how an HPLC works.

The Hot Sauce Kid

We had some extremely socially awkward kid who was stuttering throughout the whole interview. It wasn’t too bad—I mean, I could tell that this was probably his first job interview, so I get it. But then as he was walking out, he turns around and says, for some reason, “There’s something you should know about me” while he fumbles inside his of suit jacket.

My other manager asked him what he was doing and he repeated himself, still stuttering. The kid then pulled out a bottle of hot sauce and chugged it down, right in front of us, only to throw it back up immediately. We were stunned. He started screaming out something that sounded like “I can handle the heat,” I think. He hoarsely said sorry and then ran out. Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.

Using Other People’s Work For A Portfolio

I was hiring another photographer for my company. I’m a woman CEO, and I have a male operations manager. I picked out the strongest portfolio of the group of applicants. This guy shows up and doesn’t acknowledge me. In fact, he gives one-word answers to me, even though I’m the one interviewing him.

During the interview, he admits that he doesn’t know anything about photography and doesn’t have a professional camera. Now, it’s not a crime to not have a nice camera, but this guy seemed to be missing huge chunks of very basic knowledge. I press him more about his knowledge of processing work because his portfolio was quite impressive, his lack of camera basics aside.

He admits he was hired by a company to do exactly 3 exposures on a pre-set setting and that a company in India processes his photos. So I asked him to show me some of his work that he himself shot and edited. And out came the worst processed images I’ve ever seen. I concluded the interview.

Completely Unprepared

The one that sticks out to me is the young woman that I interviewed for an entry level, mostly clerical position several years back. I asked her several questions and was kind of neutral about her as a possible candidate. So I figured that I’d have her interview with 1–2 other managers and see what they thought.

After interviewing her, I asked her if she had any questions.Usually I’d get questions about what I like and dislike about my job, how long I’d been at the company, one of the tasks related to the job, etc. But this young woman looked me straight in the eye and said, “Now, what exactly does this company do?”

If she couldn’t be bothered to read our very searchable, very detailed website BEFORE coming in for her interview, I didn’t want her working for me. I told her I was all set and someone would be in touch with her as I walked her back out to reception.

Don’t Be Racist And Political

This lady came in to interview with my manager and me. The interview was going okay—she was wearing yoga pants and we work at a corporate office, but I was willing to look past that. My manager then asked her what she didn’t like about her current job. We were expecting something basic like wanting growth or something. Instead, this was her answer:

“My boss! My fat, Jewish, Republican boss is the worst! He can’t even send an email. I teach him every day, but he just can’t. But my other boss…the company would go down if he left. He’s amazing. It’s just that I hate when he scratches his privates. He’ll just stand around scratching them, and I hate seeing it.” At this point, I was stunned and didn’t have any more questions. She didn’t get the job.

The One Who Wouldn’t Stop Throwing Up…

We had a candidate who wasn’t qualified for the job. He couldn’t answer the background questions on the subject matter and didn’t have adequate experience. Fine, whatever, not the biggest deal. Except that he got very, VERY nervous during the interview, grabbed a trash can, and threw up. In the middle of the interview.

Now, this has happened before, so again, not a huge deal. But he KEPT throwing up and retching for what seemed like days. We felt really bad for the guy, he was clearly embarrassed, and by this point, the smell in the room was awful. We thanked him for coming and then dismissed him.

But he came back in to borrow a phone, telling us he’s locked his phone and his keys in his car and needs to call his wife to bring a spare set from home, 2 hours away. The hiring manager had to stay 2 hours late and sit with this guy in an empty building waiting for his wife, attempting SOME kind of small talk, and both knowing how badly he blew the interview.

Job Interviews Require Shirts?

I used to work at a temporary labor agency. We accepted applications at 8am every day and then did an orientation with whoever ended up applying that day. An older guy, probably late 50s, came in one morning during the usual sign-in time at about 5:30am. He was wearing a leather jacket, a tie-dyed shirt, and he had a beard.

I asked this guy to come to the counter and asked him if he’s ever been with the agency before. He confirmed that he hadn’t worked with us before. I told him to please come back at 8am and we’d get him started. At 7am, he comes back. Something is different. Leather jacket. Beard. Leather jacket…beard…. “Sir, where’s your shirt?” “Well it got hot out.” “Sir this is a job interview. You need to wear clothing at all times!” He left and never came back.

The Power Of Facebook

I was on a team interviewing an engineering intern. She was still finishing her classes, but we scheduled around those. The team felt that she was great, knew the terminology, had read the right stuff, and had the right skill set, so we all okayed her. We were in a conference room in a five-person panel interviewing her when things started to go wrong.

After a few minutes, my manager looks at this girl and says, “After your last interview, you posted on your Facebook page that you had totally aced the interview and were now going to get off your face stoned. You also said that you would sleep with anyone if it meant getting out of harder work and that you would complain of sexual harassment quickly to get a settlement.

You also said that the jerks interviewing you spent more time looking at your body than asking questions, and for this interview, you said that you were going to pop another button to keep the boys interested. Why do you think we would want to work with you?” She didn’t say a word and just picked up her bag and walked out.

The One Who Put His Boss In The ER

During an interview, I had a candidate tell me about his previous job at a soda distribution warehouse and how he was terminated because of a disagreement with his supervisor. Okay, I thought, that’s pretty common, so not a big deal. Skip ahead 30 minutes and he starts talking even more about his termination and how he got upset because his time off was denied.

But that wasn’t all. This guy got really mad at his supervisor and started telling him off, apparently. The supervisor told him that he was just going to walk away and have the security team physically remove him from the warehouse. The guy I’m interviewing then tells me that he grabbed some of the collector glass bottles and threw them at the supervisor.

Apparently, he ended up knocking out the supervisor, and he had lacerated his head and neck with the broken glass. This was also the reason why our interviewee had a felony on his record. Needless to say, we decided to go ahead with another candidate for the position.

Insulting Women Outright

My company had candidate lunches with all prospective new hires. So six employees would take out six recruits to see how well they would mesh with the group. This one guy sits at a different table than I do, but I can hear him, and it sounds like he’s doing well—very social and funny.

As we walk them back to the conference room where the rest of their interviews are going to happen, I tell them that the hall we’re passing through right now has portraits of all of the company’s past presidents. And then this guy from earlier asks me if our company had ever had a woman as the president.

This seems like a fair question, and we tell him that no, we’ve never had a woman president, but we have a lot of very highly-placed women and that we firmly believe in equality. To which he replies, “I guess women just don’t have as much ambition as men.”

Recognizing Someone Who Doesn’t Recognize You

I was an executive for a big company and had been in the field for 20+ years, having worked for multiple companies in the industry. One of the first companies I worked at gave me the opportunity to manage a big project. Long story short, my management resulted in the project being really successful.

Fast forward to the company where I work now as an executive. It’s my job to interview candidates for an opening we have for a management position, and I have this one guy come in for his interview. I recognize him as one of the guys I had worked for on my big project all those years ago. He doesn’t recognize me.

So I don’t say anything because it would be awkward if I were wrong, but, sure enough, turns out that he had worked at the same company around the same time as me. The thing that killed the interview? This guy starts taking credit for managing the project that I had managed and saving the company millions.

He wasn’t even on the same project team that I was on. He was just one of those guys who liked to hang around and pretend like he was doing something. I never told him that I knew everything about that project, but he certainly didn’t end up getting hired.