Humorous and/or Disastrous Interviewing Experiences
Posted by Mark Avera on 22 May 2007 at 01:41 pm | Tagged as: Career Advice, Construction Jobs, Interviewing
Let’s be honest: people rarely feel completely prepared for interviews.
More often than not, the well-prepared individual will have nothing come of this uneasiness, warming during the interview and forgetting all apprehension. That is not always the case, however. Trepidation occasionally gives rise to goofy behavior in stressful situations, and the ill-prepared interviewee is the occasional subject of hilarious, often embarrassing, stories. While these disastrous interviewing experiences remain sore spots on the ego for some people, others freely share their quirky, humorous, sometimes catastrophic interview stories. Please take the time to share your own comic interviewing debacle, or any other interviewing story that may help our readers, or at least make them laugh a little bit!
Click Here to get tips and advice on becoming the well-prepared interviewee that doesn’t go through one of these stories!
I walked into an interview last summer only to find that the person conducting the interview was my age, graduated from my high school class, and someone who had asked me out on a date that I had turned down. My initial instinct was to immediately turn and run out of the door. At first he didn’t seem to recognize me, which was quite a relief. Then, as we started talking, he realized we were old class mates. As the interview came to a close and I stood up to leave, he shook my hand and said “we’ll be getting back to you about the job and don’t worry I won’t turn you down just because you turned me down.” Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, and to be honest, it was probably for the better.
-Abby
I was the inverviewer and the interviewee, a college student, dyed his hair orange for Halloween. Needless to say, it wasn’t a smart move.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of my most embarassing interviewing moments. Years ago, when I was interviewing for my first job, I walked confidently up to the interviewer and said “Pleasure to meet you Mr.-”. The problem is I completely butchered his last name…in fact it came out as a rather scurrilious sound. Anyways, I felt completely embarrassed for the entire duration of the interview, and performed awfully. It came as no suprise that I didn’t get the job, but you can be sure I never made that mistake again!
I was running to an interview during my lunch break a few years ago (good form, no? scheduling a job interview during the lunchbreak of the job I was trying to get out of!), got out of the car and quickly ran into the elevator. As I stepped out into the office, the back of my suit skirt felt really funny. As I reached back, I realized that I had sat on part of a snickers bar in my car and it had melted all over my skirt. Since I was already running late, I tied my jacket around my waist and went to the interview anyways. It seemed like everything was going wrong, but on the positive side, the story of my suit became a fantastic opening conversation for my interview and my interviewer and I ended up getting along great. In fact, I work for him now!