{"id":45499,"date":"2016-06-29T11:16:35","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T18:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.creativecircle.com\/?p=45499"},"modified":"2016-06-29T11:16:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T18:16:35","slug":"worst-interview-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.creativecircle.com\/blog\/worst-interview-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Worst Interview Ever: True Tales from Both Sides of the Hiring Desk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The silver lining of life\u2019s most uncomfortable moments is without a doubt the comedy. All but the most harrowing of today\u2019s embarrassments and blunders eventually become tomorrow\u2019s knee slappers\u2014we laugh because we survived, and we survived because we learned something\u2026 albeit the hard way.<\/p>\n<p>Job interviews are an excellent arena for this type of fodder. When someone\u2019s very future is on the line, and they\u2019re looking down the path of a possible future (\u201cCould this be me?\u201d \u201cAm I home?\u201d \u201cAre you my mommy?\u201d) weird things can happen. Sometimes these things are very, very bad in the moment, but we can all laugh about them now\u2026 and take furious notes to ensure we don\u2019t make the same mistakes in our own interview.<\/p>\n<p>On the flip side, it\u2019s terrible practice to give a crappy performance as the interviewer, too\u2014acting bored, insulting someone\u2019s experience, getting their name wrong, making someone in an incredibly vulnerable position feel absolutely terrible\u2026\u00a0(or, in the case of the stories I heard, much, much worse). Unless you don\u2019t care about attracting good employees and coworkers? Either way, you\u2019ll get what you give.<\/p>\n<p>In that spirit, I recently solicited stories about people\u2019s worst interview experiences\u00a0\u2014 from both sides of the table.<\/p>\n<h3>The Bad<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe interviewer fell asleep during my interview. Right in the middle of my answer, his head just went down.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019ve had a few where candidates seem like they have a chip on their shoulder. I\u2019ve called it out.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI was like 30 minutes late! I couldn\u2019t get service on my cell phone, so I started to panic. And I ended up being way too dressed up\u2014I\u2019m talking super corporate attire\u2014because I\u2019d always been told that it\u2019s better to be overdressed than underdressed. I felt like it was the worst experience\u2026\u00a0but I got the job.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI had a candidate show up with nothing\u2014no purse, no pen, no paper, no resume\u2026\u00a0nothing. Another whose resume spelled \u201ccommunication\u201d three different ways\u2014for a PR job\u2014then kicked off the interview by talking shit about his current job. I interrupted him after two minutes to tell him he wasn\u2019t getting the position but then I offered to give him some tips on what not to do.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe following things happened: They took a polaroid of me, they played a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger giving a speech at a fat camp, and they made me fill out an \u201cemployee test,\u201d which was about five pages of math story problems that had been printed on a ditto machine (purple ink!).\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cSix months after giving birth, I was called in to interview at a high-profile ad agency. I was lumpy and tired and had lost my ability to think. I had cut my own bangs the night before\u2014like <em>Dumb &amp; Dumber<\/em> I wore so many Spanx I almost died taking them off. When I get there, I pull the front door and it somehow runs over my foot, which breaks the strap on my shoe. So I walk up the stairs kind of sliding so the shoe stays on. The woman comes out and she\u2019s all cute and small and has her shit together. We go to this caf\u00e9, and she starts talking about wine and looking at the wine menu. I order wine. She doesn\u2019t. She asked me to describe myself. I started saying stuff like \u2018You go girl!\u2019 I repeated myself and went into a dark place. Finally it ended.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>The Ugly<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201c[The worst are] hostile non-verbals, like furrowed brows, head in hands, near-throwing of pens, and\u2014my favorite\u2014the dropping of glasses on the table then looking out the window.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI had an interviewer on the phone ask if I was A) tall and B) blonde. Shockingly, I made it to the in-person interview, where he proceeded to walk me through the office\u2014shadowed by an aghast HR rep\u2014announcing all the derogatory nicknames he\u2019d given his employees.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI was once interviewed by a CEO who went off on a tangent about how, if he had to choose between meth and cocaine, he\u2019d go for coke every time because it\u2019s natural.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cOne guy recently actually had cocaine on his face when he came in at 10 am to interview.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI was in a group interview on Skype when, in the background of the person we were interviewing, a human crawled out of a refrigerator box in the corner. The box had been there the whole time, not moving, and he said nothing about it.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Have an interview story\u00a0of your own? Share it with us in the comments!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Marjorie is a former Creative Circle candidate based in Portland who recently accepted a full-time offer for her dream job. She is a writer\/editor and stylist\/producer with an emphasis in the design world. If you are interested in working with someone like Marjorie, please contact your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.creativecircle.com\/contact-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nearest Creative Circle office<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tardiness. HR nightmares. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Our roundup of the worst interviews has it all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":45500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employer-insights","category-life-as-a-freelancer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.1 (Yoast SEO v25.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Worst Interview Ever: True Tales from Both Sides of the Hiring Desk | Creative Circle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tardiness. HR nightmares. Arnold Schwarzenegger. 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