What’s Your Weirdest Job Interview Experience?
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Here's an interesting conversation for today (that may also get serious): What's the weirdest thing you've experienced in a job interview, either as a candidate or an interviewer? We'd love to hear it! (It'll be nice to have a somewhat lighter discussion than one about about the current brutal job market, though we should probably tackle that soon as well.)
Here's what inspired this post: We spotted a NYT “Work Friend” column [gift link] a few days ago that's been making the rounds on the internet for featuring a WILD reader question.
In case you haven't seen it, here's the reader's, uh, unique query:
We recently had a job candidate come in to give a presentation as part of the interview process and bring family members with them — their spouse and several children. This included a 1-year-old who the candidate carried around and interacted with, repeatedly interrupting their own presentation. The candidate also kicked off their shoes and walked around barefoot during the presentation. No one from H.R. was at the presentation (not unusual), but I did mention it to H.R. staff after the fact. The H.R. representative said that it is a generational difference and many candidates are showing up at interviews with parents, spouses, children or other family members in tow. This does not seem professional to me. Have I lost my mind? Does H.R. need to make a “no-family policy” for interviews?
We were shocked to read this, as was everyone who's come across it, we're sure (except for the people who do this, I suppose!).
Some years ago, when millennials weren't yet nearing middle age, we all heard about young candidates bringing their PARENTS to interviews (and about parents CALLING hiring managers (though both were probably exaggerated to some extent). Now, supposedly, as the HR rep told the reader, “[M]any candidates are showing up at interviews with parents, spouses, children or other family members.” Really?! Are they doing this for staged TikToks or something? (Sadly, apparently not.)
Besides your likely reactions of “Seriously, this is happening?!” or “The audacity!”, what do you think about this “trend”? If this is indeed a growing trend, what on Earth could have prompted it? Sometimes you hear of single moms, desperate to attend job interviews (retail, food service), who feel forced to bring their kid(s) when last-minute childcare falls through and so on, but this is on another level.
The Work Friend columnist, Anna Holmes, told the reader that mainly she chose the bizarre question because she wanted to find out whether this is actually a thing. In addition to noting that her attempt to fact-check this “trend” turned up no similar stories, she came up with two situations in which bringing someone to an interview could be appropriate:
One: The candidate has mobility issues and needs assistance. Two: The candidate has other disabilities and needs assistance with communicating.
Do you agree with this, or can you think of anything else? Clearly, this situation involved neither.
Readers, do tell: Have you ever heard of bringing family to an interview? What's the weirdest thing you've seen in a job interview, on either side? (Silly or serious is OK!) What did you do, and what were the consequences of the person's behavior? Did you contact HR?
I was asked if I was a dog or cat person. Apparently they’re was a correct answer and it was dog, so I did not get the job. This guy’s theory was dog people are more independent and go getters? LOL. In hindsight it was a very good thing I didn’t work for him.
Hahahaha. But dog is the right answer ;)
As long as you like animals, any animals: snakes, hamsters, birds, whatever were cool. Disliking all animals is a red flag though.
I agree with this, but would not ask in an interview.
I guess he’s cool with people rushing home right at 5 every day to let the dog out? Might not be a bad thing!
In college, I interviewed for an office manager role in the trade industry. The owners were a couple, the wife did the accounting and the husband ran the shop. He was…difficult. The wife took me out to lunch for a one-on-one before a joint interview with him and let me know the husband was really a nice guy, just a bit handsy and as long as I was cool with that she wouldn’t stand in our way.
Needless to say, I was glad I drove separately to lunch. I ghosted on the post-lunch interview back at their shop.
wowwwwwwww
I was interviewing for judicial clerkships and one judge kept asking if I liked to have fun. I didn’t get an offer, must not have been fun enough!
was the judge male?
Yep …
Ew “fun” was definitely a euphemism
this is so gross! i feel like there used to be lists for this type of thing where women lawyers could keep track of which judges were handsy/gross. but that was maybe back in the post-kozinski days?
The judge I interviewed with kept asking me about sports. I told him I don’t follow sports. Kept asking my opinion of different teams. He ended the interview by explaining that he’d already hired one woman so… thanks for coming in.
I read that article and while the behavior in the presentation was obviously egregious, it’s actually not completely out of line for family to come along for an academic interview, which this was. Faculty interviews are often 2-3 days long, and for women with very young children, I’ve seen schools offer accommodation for the baby and a family member to come along to take care of the child. Otherwise it’s not typical for family members to come for a first interview, but some schools will pay for a second visit for the candidate and spouse before the offer is finalized or accepted, given that one of the biggest reasons people leave jobs in certain areas is that they or their spouse are unhappy with the location. They didn’t do that at any of the places I got offers, but a lot of the places I interviewed did include a tour with a realtor, trying to sell me on the location and to let me know more about the housing market, schools, and things like that. Large research universities can easily invest over million dollars in the lab start up for a STEM faculty member, and even smaller ones are spending a few hundred thousand, so they prefer that people that accept their offers want to stay.
The employer’s inviting the family along on a final interview *trip* for the purpose of selling the location to the spouse is much different from the candidate’s bringing them to the job talk and interviews. The latter is unprofessional, even in academia.
+1
I am in academia and was once at a presentation for a faculty candidate where the candidate’s spouse attended. The spouse was very visibly pregnant. I found it both weird and coercive, like, “give me this job or I can’t support my family.”
The person got the job but left within four years for a non-academic career path.
Oh, I have one. I was nearing the end of law school when the 2008 crash happened, and we were all increasingly desperate – so many really good students were getting no-offered or even having offers withdrawn. Responded to an ad for a local small firm – not the kind of law I wanted or even the city I wanted, but I was really running out of options. They called me for an interview, all normal, but when I showed up, I saw two of my classmates in the parking lot. “Hey, what are you guys doing here?” “Same as you.”
It was a group interview with 5 or 6 students all vying for the same slim-pickings job. The lead attorney didn’t really ask us questions or do any typical interview activities; instead, he showed us slides from a talk he’d given about criminal defense. The two memorable points made were: (1) just because you were driving drunk and a person was killed in a car accident doesn’t necessarily mean it was your fault (which I guess is technically true, but . . . ), and (2) just because a person has what looks like inappropriate pictures of kids on their computer doesn’t mean they’re real because they can do so much with photoshop these days, which was illustrated for some reason with a picture of Michael Jackson photoshopped to have huge breasts.
Lead attorney then pulled out a crisp hundred dollar bill and said he had some kind of project that needed to be done – we should all take a stab at it and he’d have $500 for whoever did the best job.
I was desperate for money and knew I could do a good job on it, but I passed, and turned down the offer of a second interview that came before said project was due. About a year later, I saw that his license had been suspended.
not a job interview but i once worked with a guy who said it was fine to bill if a thought occurred to you in the shower about a case — wasn’t too surprised to see his license revoked 15 years later either. (he may be serving time for fraud right now? was a major partner.)
I was once asked if I knew the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek in an interview to join an engineering team.
I chuckled thinking it was a joke and then realized he was serious. My response was that one is a movie series, and the other was originally a TV show. He visibly did not like that answer and just got up and left the room.
Ah the iconic duo of nerd culture and misogyny
again: wow.
My husband once interviewed with a company that started the interview day with a personality test. If you “passed” the personality test you got to continue with the full day of interviews; if not, you were sent home immediately.
I interviewed for an in house counsel position. One of the lawyers (who would have been at my level if I was hired) asked if I was ok with never being promoted again if I took this job. Um…no? This was a very competitive and flat department, and I think he was trying to set the stage that I should not expect to get promoted if a position opened up (because it should be him).
He also had the worst coffee breath I’ve ever experienced. So the whole thing was very unpleasant.
There must be funny stories for this question. My top two:
I interviewed with a major medical system in NYC, scheduled for most of a day. The first interview with the department head was fine, though he did almost all the talking. Second interview was clearly a time filler, but nice guy. Third interview with a peer, I walk in, he tells me he has to leave, you have two minutes, “go!” I mumbled out my elevator speech, and at the two minute mark, he walks out and leaves me. I wander around, find my next interviewer on another floor, and she walks me to her office door and leaves me. I wander around more, my next interview is with HR, but I’m super early. Finally, I randomly approach someone who looks like an administrator, who calls HR. HR can’t see me, so she takes me downstairs for coffee and shares all the gossip about everyone in the department. She does take me to HR, and the guy is in a borrowed office that is filled with hoarder level stacks of paper. When we finished, you guessed it, he walks me to the hallway and abandons me. At no point was I offered water or the ladies room! I think I could still be wandering around their office if I wanted.
Second, I had a phone interview with three or four people, including a contractor currently doing some of the work. This was for a vice president role. I answered a question about a framework, and the contractor yells “you’re wrong, you’re wrong.” I answer a different question, and same thing, this woman is screaming at me. FWIW, I was not wrong, we were discussing things that don’t have a simple A or B answer. No one on the call intervenes. I actually dropped out of the process, and the recruiter told me three of the four people on their short list also dropped out.
I had a nice interview at a place I was interested in working. I was one step up from entry level so didn’t know much.
Then I interviewed at a second place and liked it better. Both places made me an offer but the second place made a better offer and felt like a better fit, so I accepted that one and turned down the first one, as graciously as I could.
Manager at the first place called me at home that evening. He was drunk, clearly, and very angry. He told me I wouldn’t succeed at the second place and would just be a “face in the crowd.”
I actually cried after that, which sort of embarrasses me to remember. In hindsight, bullet dodged! And I did very well at job 2.
I work in criminal justice research and several candidates I’ve interviewed over the years have made cringeworthy jokes about s-x crimes.
One dude with a Ph.D. came to his interview unwashed and unshaven, wearing beach shoes with no socks and a rumpled shirt unbuttoned at the collar with a loosened tie. He bumbled incoherently through his job talk. I voted against hiring him, but the old men all liked him because “he seems like he’d be fun to have a beer with.” After he was hired, he turned out to be every bit as incompetent and as unsuitable of being sent out into the world to represent the organization as he’d demonstrated himself to be in the interview. The old men refused to work with him, so I got stuck with him.
In college, I interviewed for a job at a startup. Aside from being a disorganized mess – complete with multiple 45+ minute breaks where I was left in a room alone and no one came to check on me or even offer water or to let me use the bathroom – one of the last interview segments was a series of riddles and logic games. I had already taken the LSAT and offered to get them a copy of my score if they were interested in my ability to complete logic games. At that point the interview had dragged on for 3 hours and I was pretty over it, I told them I was not going to spend time playing games with them. The interviewer was pretty shocked and asked me to confirm if I was refusing to complete this portion of the interview— a clear attempt to pressure me to do the stupid games. I said yeah I’m not doing this, do you have any more questions for me? He said he had to talk to his supervisor – another 20 minute break. I would’ve walked out but we had taken a lot of twists and turns in the building and I didn’t actually know how to get out.
Interviewer came back and said his last question was for me to give him feedback on his interviewing skills. I said that I didn’t think the schedule uses our time efficiently. He got defensive and made up excuses about people being available and so on. I did not get an offer — not that I would have taken it!
I was the interviewer, interviewing for a Chief Compliance Officer role. The person was telling me a somewhat nice but off-topic story about how they are really close with their father and always talk to him when they need help with something. Just recently he talked them through a thorny home repair project. Then later, they added on that the father, who they talk to frequently, is dead.
i had a job interview with a journalism startup in college that, with a bit of research, i realized was funded by a very liberal organization. i asked about it at the interview and they looked at me like i was insane to know about it and/or think it would affect the job.
i had several colleagues who interviewed at the same place and all of us had problems getting our stuff back — at the time in journalism people had clip books with clippings of all our newspaper/magazine stories and instead of taking the few photocopies they wanted the entire clip book (the only copy). and then they were lousy about returning it! one girl said when she went there to retrieve it they had to look around and found it sitting unceremoniously in the corner of a room like the breakroom or xerox room. really unconscionable.
In a creative industry, I was interviewing a candidate and asked him why he wanted the job. His response? To feed his family.
I had to stop myself from saying “That’s why we’re all here!” I was unable to elicit much else out of him. Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.
Nah, it’s so obnoxious to expect candidates to fake enthusiasm and passion for your random employer. Especially in a creative industry where you aren’t saving lives.