Had a guy who was a little rough but was looking quite promising for a design role. He blew it with me by saying “I’ll turn this company around in 6 weeks” and a few more comments along those lines with a theme of “you are currently messing it up”. This is a small successful company. I wanted him to fit in, not “turn us round”.

I was interviewing clerks for a gas station. One was a relative of a friend of my supervisor. He was clean and showed up on time. He also answered every question with “Back when I was selling crack cocaine…” My supervisor said I had to hire him, so I did. It went as well as you might imagine.

A woman casually mentioning that she wanted to set her ex on fire. Totally unprompted and unrelated to anything that had been asked. Later, when asked how to handle difficult customers she said she would set them on fire as well.

Had a guy literally SPRINT out of the building. I wasn’t the interviewer, I am a web developer, but as we were trying to hire a second developer I was asked to prepare some basic web development questions. These were not hard. These were absolute bare basics babies first code stuff. This guy came in, started interviewing and was apparently doing okay, not fantastic but enough to keep him in consideration. Then he saw that we had a test and he apparently grabbed his bag and ran out of the room. All I saw was this guy sprint full-tilt past the rest of the office, shoulder-barge out the door and run off into the distance, followed by our two directors stumbling out of the interview office laughing uncontrollably. I guess he lied on his CV?

Q: On a scale of 1 to 10 how are your C language skills? A: 10 Q: What does i++ do? A: I don’t know.

I was interviewing someone who had previously worked at the American embassy in his home country. The language barrier was very difficult and he was having a tough time with the interview. Part way through, he showed me some certificates he received from the embassy job, as awards for good work. The conversation then went like this: Me: Can you tell me the story about some of these awards? Him: Huh?

Me: I’d like to know why you received these awards. Maybe you can pick one of them and tell me the story about how you got it. Him: …awards? Me: Yes, these things you’re showing me right now. Tell me about them. Him: They are awards. Me: Right. Tell me how you received them. Him: How? Me: Yes. What did you do to get them? Him: …I dunno. It’s your embassy, you tell me. That last bit was the longest sentence he spoke to me during the entire interview.

Been doing a bunch of interviews lately for an intermediate network engineer. I had a guy start off an interview with “I don’t really know anything about networking”

My dad is a QC/QA manager with an asphalt company (they build roads and stuff like that) and he said that once a guy with really good qualifications came in for an interview as a lab tech and said “you can go ahead and fire all your other techs because I’m the only one you’re gonna need.” The interview lasted 5 seconds before my dad told him to fuck off.

For a while, I did “secondary” interviews to help out a new store. They’d do the recruiting for candidates and pass on to me the ones they liked best. I’d get some okay results but ONE supervisor had no idea how to shut down a candidate that wasn’t suitable. I coached her over and over but she had too soft of a heart (I miss when I had one, pre-retail). This meant I got all kinds of characters. The worst: a candidate who laughed at me. He didn’t have an answer for my first two questions then just LAUGHED at my third and shook his head. I shut down the interview and made it clear it was due to an inability to complete it. I politely asked if he had any questions and he said “is the job paid by direct deposit or a check? Do you need a void check from me?” No sir, you’re never getting a pay check from us… EVER!

Friend of a friend (call him Bob for short) got a job despite not being the best “qualified” candidate. Down to the final two for a teaching job, there was Bob who was a solid, unremarkable candidate. Clearly good enough for the role but nothing special about him.as a candidate… and then there was Charlie. Charlie was an absolute rock star teacher. Won awards, young dynamic and driven, outstanding teaching demo, just the nicest guy who had glowing references. Then they asked “any questions?” and he replied “could you tell me if you’d have a problem with a teacher dating a student?” …yes. yes they would.

– making comments about getting into an employees skirt as they walked past (also how to get reported to HR before even getting the job). – explaining how they took copies of all the companies code home. – explaining how they used to work two jobs at once, pretending to work for one from home – explaining how they program games for their playstation with notepad… While being interviewed by programmers for a sales role – telling the interviewer that the problem they are trying to solve is impossible (even though it was literally 3 lines of code… It was a warm up question)

A guy turned up where I worked once for an interview and started giving the receptionist grief because the interviewer was running late. It clearly wasn’t her fault and it was entirely unacceptable. The interviewers didn’t even bother, just invited him to leave.

I worked for a big, well known company and we were recruiting interns straight out of college. The questions are more of a get to know you questions, rather than actual knowledge of the work or experience. The company actually gave us a paper with some example questions, like the one below, that we could ask if we ran out of ideas. So it’s going pretty well, very bubbly, chatty girl and I have impression she would fit the team. Until: Me: how do you handle multiple deadlines in a short time period? E.g. if you have 2-3 exams close to each other or an exam and a big class project? Interviewee: well, you try to do your best, but if I realize I cannot meet both deadlines, I just call in sick.

When I worked in a bank as a manager, one internal candidate I interviewed put her finger in front of my face while I was talking and said” I’m gonna stop you right there” . I went with the other person who didn’t put their finger to my face.

Was interviewing for a call center role in the health care industry and the following all happened in the same assessment center; – lady wouldn’t stop talking about how her mum had cancer. I sympathized initially, but every answer would turn into “my mum had cancer and I dealt with cancer patients”. Even technical questions about familiarity with systems would somehow lead back to her mum. No doubt she was qualified for the role, but when you have to deal with individuals going into hospital you cannot start harping on about your personal experiences.

I was once around when my old boss interviewed a potential bouncer candidate. This guy lived about 45min drive away from the location, had no license to drive nor a car. And no, there were no busses or other method of transportation available around the time the club closed. When asked if he had a friend or some other accommodation figured out, he simply told that he’s going to pick up some girl every work night and spend the night at her place. Because hey, isn’t there always a line of chicks just waiting to bang the bouncer, right?

Former head teller. My old Manager once came over to my desk after an interview and let out a massive sigh and declared (quietly so only i heard him) that he needed a double of scotch. Apparently the person showed up to the interview in a white “wife beater” tank, ripped khaki shorts, and had the n- word in his email on his resume (interviewee was white if it matters). Needless to say, my boss did not hire them.