topic Re: Worst job interview in Career Discussions

Worst job interview

rslade — Sat, 18 Jan 2020 20:36:21 GMT

So, someone over on Twitter asked, "What's the worst job interview you've ever had?"

And SO many bad memories came flooding back.

There was the time I was sitting in the waiting area, and realized the people I could hear over the divider were the HR person and the superior to this position, trying to figure out what to ask because they had no idea how to hire for this position.

The "what do you want to be when you grow up" question has been very popular for a while. (Usually worded "where do you want to be in 5/10/15 years.") In one interview the HR person worded it very strangely so that it was sort of like "what do you want to have done before you die." (I told her that I knew it was the wrong answer, but I'd already done it: wrote my first book.)

I've had a few "panel" interviews, one where I was facing 15 inquisitors. The job was in teaching, and somewhat remote, and one of the interviewers, noting I had some first aid background, asked what I would do if one of the kids got a "bad burn." So I started to ask him to define the situation more precisely, and laid out about a dozen factors you'd need to consider. He sat in silence for a few seconds and finally said, "Well, I guess you know what you're talking about ..."

I've had numerous job interviews where I've seen, in the interviewer's eyes, the exact moment I lost the job, generally over a single word or phrase, usually not related to the job at all.

I had one interview for a systems analyst position, where they wanted me to take a written test. It was a Lotus 1-2-3 trivia quiz photocopied out of a computer magazine. (I took one looked and walked out.)

(All in all, though, they were great training for what not to do when I came time for me to do the hiring ...)

Re: Worst job interview

AppDefects — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 15:43:07 GMT

There's a new obstacle to landing a job after college: Getting approved by AI. What worries me about AI is AI can't tell the heart of a person and the drive a person has.

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 16:11:57 GMT

Had a few bad interviews.

Nothing approaching what I read on the twitter thread (people being drunk etc). Usually just people be rude/stupid, giving me the run around for a position, etc.

One with a tech firm, the "technical recruiter" asked me several stupid questions. Then asked me if I knew firewalls. I don't, I've never worked with them, hence why no mention on my resume. He then rejects me for the position after we've spoken for at least a half hour because the position requires firewall knowledge per the hiring manager.

Then I spoke to the person who got the role. Whom I know. The position didn't require firewall knowledge, it was all about risk. Which I know pretty well. Not sure why this guy brought that up just to get rid of me.

Re: Worst job interview

10sneONE — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 18:43:08 GMT

The most difficult interviews are those where the interviewer seems hypercritical and is overtly looking for a reason to reject the applicant. Every word, every answer seems suspicious. They make me feel like I am in a police investigation.

I realize people lie in this process, but I believe the general atmosphere should be trust. Bad interviews are where the atmosphere is mistrust.

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 19:45:43 GMT

@10sneONE wrote:
The most difficult interviews are those where the interviewer seems hypercritical and is overtly looking for a reason to reject the applicant. Every word, every answer seems suspicious. They make me feel like I am in a police investigation.

I realize people lie in this process, but I believe the general atmosphere should be trust. Bad interviews are where the atmosphere is mistrust.

Hmmm. Something I've seen which I don't like is this attitude with many hiring managers that the candidate MUST have done EVERYTHING in their long laundry list of items. Recruiters have told me that if you've done 80% of what they want, you're a good candidate, but so many hiring managers take this attitude that you need to have 100%. And they seem to more focus on you have done everything vs are you capable of doing it. I've been fortunate to have had some interesting experiences, but there are areas I've not have the opportunity to do, but am capable.

I look back at my past career and I got moved to new responsibilities because management saw that I was capable of doing something. Often times they'd move me to a new position, I'd say "I haven't done this before" and they'd give me training. Which I got, did well in the job, and this would repeat. This is how you advance and have a career.

Now companies only want people who have had all the experiences they want, no gaps. And then wonder why they can't fill positions...

Re: Worst job interview

CISOScott — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 21:45:16 GMT

So I got hired without an interview once for an IT position. After I got there I found this out:

The lady doing the hiring said "We were hiring two people. We knew we were going to hire you based off your resume but we had to interview for the other slot. The candidate they hired was asked this question: What is a server? The person that got the job replied "The person who brings you the water at a restaurant?".

That person was the most qualified of the rest of the candidates. Not joking.

She turned out to be a good worker, just had only done primarily data entry and not worked with actual IT servers.

I once sat on an interview panel. The interview lasted 8 minutes. There were FIVE questions asked. EIGHT minutes!!!! Needless to say the person did not get the job.

Re: Worst job interview

cJAY — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 14:11:04 GMT

I have been the hiring manager on a few bad interviews. One of the worst, was my fault.

I brought a young tech System Matter Expert in to help with the technology questions. What i didn't know was that the SME was a very insecure jerk. Every question he asked was way to detailed and was using the questions as a platform to show he was the smartest person in the room. I felt bad of the interviewee, i tried to steer back to a general dialog, but my SME kept it in the weeds. At the end of the interview, the candidate thanked me and let me know She was no longer interested in the position.

The best interviews I have ever had, didn't feel like interviews at all. They were a few people having an interesting conversation. Those are the candidates I want to hire, and interviews I look forward to.

BTW: the SME never came in an interview with me again. I learned enough about the tech to handle it myself.

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 15:18:38 GMT

@cJAY wrote:
I have been the hiring manager on a few bad interviews. One of the worst, was my fault.

I brought a young tech System Matter Expert in to help with the technology questions. What i didn't know was that the SME was a very insecure jerk. Every question he asked was way to detailed and was using the questions as a platform to show he was the smartest person in the room. I felt bad of the interviewee, i tried to steer back to a general dialog, but my SME kept it in the weeds. At the end of the interview, the candidate thanked me and let me know She was no longer interested in the position.

The best interviews I have ever had, didn't feel like interviews at all. They were a few people having an interesting conversation. Those are the candidates I want to hire, and interviews I look forward to.

I hate the interviews where they seem to want to focus on grilling me on my technical knowledge. Especially on topics that I made clear I haven't worked on or with for several years. I used to be a Unix admin early on my in career. Like over a decade ago and haven't done anything with Unix since. Why are you asking me Unix questions? Especially when I'm NOT interviewing to be a Unix admin but an infosec manager.

I would prefer the conversational interviews when its more an open discussion on ideas and concepts. Sadly, many of those I've had where at the end I thought things went well that am disappointed when I'm told they aren't moving me forward, they have better candidates, yada yada yada. I start wondering if I somehow said the wrong things (or didn't say the right things) in the conversation and just didn't know.

Re: Worst job interview

GerryS — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 21:01:08 GMT

This was not part of an interview but a discussion regarding hiring people for cyber security positions with someone who was in a position to hire staff.

The quote in the discussion that stuck out was "I won't hire anyone unless they've changed jobs every couple of years, they don't have enough exposure"

I've been at my place of employment for about 22 years, in two positions (three titles due to a job title change) with many job duties going well beyond what the job requires.

So I would never be employed by them because I didn't change jobs enough, even though the knowledge I have would far surpass most candidates.

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 16:59:34 GMT

@GerryS wrote:
This was not part of an interview but a discussion regarding hiring people for cyber security positions with someone who was in a position to hire staff.

The quote in the discussion that stuck out was "I won't hire anyone unless they've changed jobs every couple of years, they don't have enough exposure"

I've been at my place of employment for about 22 years, in two positions (three titles due to a job title change) with many job duties going well beyond what the job requires.

So I would never be employed by them because I didn't change jobs enough, even though the knowledge I have would far surpass most candidates.

Similar for me.

I was 17 years at the same employer. Got 3 official titles due to promotions to higher pay grades, BUT have held different duties usually about every 3 years or so that increased my responsibilities. I started out as a local sysadmin helping one group at the site I was at to, at the end, being a global security architect working for the CISO.

I actually put on my resume these many roles, as it shows my growth and development.

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 15:01:10 GMT

So just had a really lousy job interview experience that I'm still a bit annoyed about.

Just after Christmas was reached out to by a recruiter for a MAJOR computer company. She had seen my LinkedIn profile and the cybersecurity group there was expanded and needed people with excellent security & compliance experience, which I have.

She sent me a questionnaire to fill out and scheduled a call with me a couple days before New Years. After our conversation she setup a half day of video interviews with the team. Sent me other stuff to prepare for it. I asked for half a day off for "personal matters".

Interestingly, someone from this same group is in my network of infosec folks, and reached out to the group that his group was hiring. I even PM'd him about my upcoming interview and we chatted a little.

After confirming the interview, filling out an NDA, etc, I figured all was set.

Get up, dress nicely (being able to see me was a big part of doing a video interview vs just a phone interview), and got on the system. And waited. And waited. About 10-15 minutes, I did an email response to the interview message to ask what's going on. Maybe the first person got delayed for some reason.

The recruiter who had setup the interview (separate from the first one who spoke with me) got on and said the team was busy, the manager was re-evaluating things, and they would setup a new interview with me at the end of the month. Was a little annoyed that no one contacted me, but ok. (Needless to say, I went into work)

I emailed back to the original recruiter to start things rolling for the re-scheduled interview.

Instead in a couple of days I get a message basically telling me that the manager had "re-evaluated the position" and that the company was no longer interested in me for this role. Frankly I find this to be pretty cr*ppy. The time to figure this out is before you setup an interview with someone. I had made arrangements for the interview and all, sat waiting for things to start with nothing, and not even an apology for all this. To me this shows poor leadership and a bad corporate culture if this sort of thing is ok.

The closest I've had with other companies have been promises to setup a followup interview that never happened (including one guy that stringed me along for 2-3 months with such a promises when I figured after a couple of weeks it wasn't going to happen. I was curious to see how long he'd pull this off. He continued up till they point they filled the position, btw). But to just not show up for a scheduled interview with no notice seems worse to me.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, or adhere to certain leadership principles, but just feel this sort of thing is lousy.

Re: Worst job interview

rslade — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:28:24 GMT

> emb021 (Contributor II) edited a reply in Career on 01-28-2020 10:01 AM in the

> Frankly I find this to be pretty cr*ppy.

Over the past four decades, I have found this to be increasingly common. HR
people seem to think they are doing you a favour just agreeeing to meet with you.
Companies no longer acknowledge applications, and no longer tell you when
competition closes and a candidate is chosen. Funny: with all the new technology
this stuff is increasingly easy to track, but followup is getting worse and worse.

====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from
giving in words evidence of the fact. - George Eliot
victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm http://twitter.com/rslade
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/
https://is.gd/RotlWB

Re: Worst job interview

CraginS — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:32:25 GMT

@rslade wrote:
> emb021 (Contributor II) edited a reply in Career on 01-28-2020 10:01 AM in the

> Frankly I find this to be pretty cr*ppy.

Over the past four decades, I have found this to be increasingly common. HR
people seem to think they are doing you a favour just agreeeing to meet with you.
Companies no longer acknowledge applications, and no longer tell you when
competition closes and a candidate is chosen. Funny: with all the new technology
this stuff is increasingly easy to track, but followup is getting worse and worse.

====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from
giving in words evidence of the fact. - George Eliot
victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm http://twitter.com/rslade
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/
https://is.gd/RotlWB

And HR departments wonder why so many job applicants ghost them after contact, or new hires ghost them and fail to show up on the on boarding day. Courtesy goes both ways.

Craig

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 14:40:27 GMT

@CraginS wrote:
@rslade wrote:
> emb021 (Contributor II) edited a reply in Career on 01-28-2020 10:01 AM in the

> Frankly I find this to be pretty cr*ppy.

Over the past four decades, I have found this to be increasingly common. HR
people seem to think they are doing you a favour just agreeeing to meet with you.
Companies no longer acknowledge applications, and no longer tell you when
competition closes and a candidate is chosen. Funny: with all the new technology
this stuff is increasingly easy to track, but followup is getting worse and worse.

And HR departments wonder why so many job applicants ghost them after contact, or new hires ghost them and fail to show up on the on boarding day. Courtesy goes both ways.

Yes on both.

I've experienced multiple times the lousy behavior of HR and hiring managers. So when I hear stories of how hard they have finding candidates, to me this behavior is a large part. Many companies have lousy reputations, so good folks are less likely to apply to them. Do they not understand that we tell our colleagues? Or there are sites like Glassdoor that people can tell of their lousy experiences with specific companies?

On ghosting, I thought it funny/sad when HR types get bent out of shape about it. Yet they probably overlook their ghosting of candidates.

Tho I do get upset when I heard of candidates who accept positions and then don't show up. Because they've just scr*wed someone else out of a job! That company probably turned away all the other candidates once that person accepted, and one of them could have taken the job had that person just turned it down, rather then accept and then not show.

Re: Worst job interview

CISOScott — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 15:04:48 GMT

@emb021 wrote:
Tho I do get upset when I heard of candidates who accept positions and then don't show up. Because they've just scr*wed someone else out of a job! That company probably turned away all the other candidates once that person accepted, and one of them could have taken the job had that person just turned it down, rather then accept and then not show.

Has to be one of my biggest pet peeves. At least have the courtesy to decline so that someone else gets a chance at the job. In government sometimes once a candidate fails to show up we have to start all over again when someone does this (not all the time). I have "lost" some jobs due to budget timing because we thought we had it filled but when the applicant cancelled, there was not enough time in the budget year to fill the position and it was taken from us. Which made it harder on my team, not only did we not get a new employee but since the position was lost, the remaining people had to work harder now as the unfulfilled position's work had to be absorbed by the team.

And yes people, and hiring managers do talk.

Re: Worst job interview

Caute_cautim — Sun, 02 Feb 2020 20:39:22 GMT

My pet peeve, especially by consulting companies is the question about "How may clients will you bring with you, when you leave your current organisation?". This gives me the solid impression, I don't want to work with you at all or you just want a sales person.

However, a lot of job interviews these days are screened and filtered, sorted via psychometric testing to see if you fit their culture or particular profile or circumstances. Earlier in the discussion, someone raised the issue of AI, I see this increasingly being used either upfront where they explain you are on camera, and your voice is being captured and analysed independently, whilst you answer a standard set of questions and see how you react. Given that their is excess of 187 different nuances i.e. body language, facial expressions, twitches and other such items, including changes in the level of your voice and where you eyes are actually looking - all give indications of whether you are lying or even suitable for that particular job role.

The job interview from hell, which some have experienced, is the one whereby the interviewer will not make eye contact with you, look up or just appear to ignore you, until the point you have to do something to attract their attention. Having tried conventional means, introducing oneself, clearing the throat or walking to the door and knocking or deliberately making a noise to attract attention to no avail. I have heard of things being prominently positioned, such as a typewriter for throwing out of an open window. Which turns out this is exactly the reaction the interviewer wanted from you, to see how persistent you were to obtain their attention. It all seems to be part of the psychological profiling required in some circumstances.

Regards

Caute_Cautim

Re: Worst job interview

Steve-Wilme — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 11:46:14 GMT

The worst are those in which the candidate really doesn't want to be there.

I've done telephone interviews in which the candidate said after 5 minutes that they weren't interested in the role. Narrow escape, we could have hired him and he not be interested.

The interviewees that parked on a parking meter and ask to leave to put change in the meter.

The interviewees that go to the wrong address, and then bitch about it when they turn up hours late.

The interviewees that leave the interview early as they have a flight to catch and haven't allowed enough time.

But my favourite was a guy who sat down in his tee shirts and ripped jeans and on being asked why he was interested in working for us, said no he wasn't he just noticed it was a nice building so wandered in!

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 16:57:50 GMT

@Steve-Wilme wrote:
The worst are those in which the candidate really doesn't want to be there.

I've done telephone interviews in which the candidate said after 5 minutes that they weren't interested in the role. Narrow escape, we could have hired him and he not be interested.

The interviewees that parked on a parking meter and ask to leave to put change in the meter.

The interviewees that go to the wrong address, and then bitch about it when they turn up hours late.

The interviewees that leave the interview early as they have a flight to catch and haven't allowed enough time.

But my favourite was a guy who sat down in his tee shirts and ripped jeans and on being asked why he was interested in working for us, said no he wasn't he just noticed it was a nice building so wandered in!

Huh?

If they aren't interested in the role, why interview (other then practice). But then, if he wasn't interested in the role, hopefully if an offer had been made he would turn it done so someone else could get the role.

Don't get the one about wandering in. If he didn't have a scheduled interview, how was he there? Was this some kind of weird open call interviews?

As to the wrong address, that happened to me. One company had moved some of their folks to an office building across from their HQ. The recruiter sent me to the wrong address, but was able to get there on time. So not my fault for being at the wrong place, and more annoyed with the recruiter then the company.

Re: Worst job interview

Steve-Wilme — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 10:49:01 GMT

To clarify, agency sets up a telephone interview with a candidate (in fact we had a few lined up) so myself and the second interviewer telephone the candidate as he's not dialed into the teleconference. 5 minutes in he says he'd told the agency that he wasn't interested in the position. Common courtesy would suggest either the candidate or agency should have cancelled.

The guy wandering in off the street was to a recruitment event. He noticed the free food and drinks, thought it a nice hotel, so he wandered in and sat down. We asked why he was interested in a career in IT and why our company in particular. No, just noticed the free food and booze. It takes all sorts.

Re: Worst job interview

emb021 — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 19:02:56 GMT

@Steve-Wilme wrote:
To clarify, agency sets up a telephone interview with a candidate (in fact we had a few lined up) so myself and the second interviewer telephone the candidate as he's not dialed into the teleconference. 5 minutes in he says he'd told the agency that he wasn't interested in the position. Common courtesy would suggest either the candidate or agency should have cancelled.

The guy wandering in off the street was to a recruitment event. He noticed the free food and drinks, thought it a nice hotel, so he wandered in and sat down. We asked why he was interested in a career in IT and why our company in particular. No, just noticed the free food and booze. It takes all sorts.

Story 1- Yup, both should have cancelled, certainly the candidate should have. But could be he didn't have a way to contact you, and could only do so thru the agency? Did he receive a meeting invite from you all to accept (or not)? If it was setup by the agency with no way of contacting you all, that's on the agency.

Story 2- Yup, there are all sorts. Weird how some people have no shame. Saw something similar at an event we had at the local Hard Rock hotel. We were in the conference area which is close to the bus entrance. Thus a lot of elderly folks who are bused in pass by the area. One of them came into the conference room area to help themselves to coffee. When someone challenged them, they didn't stop. Well, at least they didn't help themselves to food as well.