Terrible interviews

antodeco · 26-02-2019 09:28PM

JustAThought wrote: »

Lucky you - getting an interview onna one day turnaround - your cv must be good - you mwver know it might have gone well - unterciewers who can only ask what month and day from q0 or 15 years of detailed synopses should be retured to man the uswage of cups in the office waterfont - its about as meaningful and as much a waste of the companys time in paying them a salary

listermint · 26-02-2019 09:32PM

I don't really understand the opening post.

You sent the CV and they questioned you on it but the information you provided didn't match the CV you provided?

Why didn't you have a copy of your CV yourself

gormdubhgorm · 26-02-2019 09:32PM

bear1 wrote: »

Just had a fecking nightmare of an interview which I admit was my own doing.
I was contacted by a recruiter for the position of team leader in one of the big banks.
Told me to send my cv and the managers would review and get back to me.
So I uploaded the cv and sent it on.
Within an hour I had the interview set up.
Went in and the interviewer started to ask about my cv.
I began talking about my past experiences and dates, the interviewer looks confused.
He then stops me and says "there isn't anything about this on the cv".
"Err it should be there"
"Nope"
So he sighs and asks me to give him my experience so he can work out the dates.
I get flustered and desperately tried to remember the exact dates.
I apologies and advised that I obviously sent the cv incorrectly, to which he gets slightly snotty.
Went on with the interview and did the best I could but seems I fecked that up nice and good.
So... ah'ers, what say ye? Anything to make me feel better?

What you need to do in future is look up the 20 questions that are normally asked at interviews on Irish jobs.

Then answer them with examples from your work experiences.
Learn them off and whether you send the wrong CV or not in future you should be well covered.

26-02-2019 09:49PM

road_high wrote: »

I hate that about interviews- they can go back over ten years and focus on some relatively insignificant aspect of work or education that you’ve long since buried in the back of your mind and you struggle to string two sentences together about it...despite having a plethora of far more relevant and trying experience since then- they want to talk about something that’s virtually irrelevant to the present day!

While all that is true, in my case the interview was only a couple of months after I'd finished the damned thesis! So it was pretty inexcusable.

Though in my defence it was my first "proper" job interview, and I was told I did well in all the other parts of the assessment (which included psychometric tests and giving a presentation from scratch), it was just the face-to-face interview that I fell down on.

20Cent · 26-02-2019 10:10PM

Worst one.

Do you know the entry requirements for this course?
Yes.
What are they?
Emmmmm

McCrack · 26-02-2019 10:15PM

Pat kennys interview with Pete Doherty was terrible

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eNNRvqhKYOs

Max Moment · 26-02-2019 10:37PM

Went for an interview a few years back via a head hunter. CV was sent to the company and the company seemed really keen to interview me.

Attended the interview with a company director and a hr manager. Interview kicked off well with the usual ‘tell me about yourself and career to date’. Everything was going great until the hr lady asked me my motivation for moving jobs. I was totally honest and said I was very interested in the new position they had on offer, but I was also looking to reduce my working hours as I had a young family. (Note at this stage I was doing over 65 hours a week minimum and some weeks 7 days a week for years which was not sustainable, but the job demanded it).

As soon as I mentioned reduced working hours to a ‘normal’ working week (when compared to my current working week) the director guy absoloutely tore into me saying “don’t think you’re coming in here trying to do 40 or 45 hours a week” and how I would be expected to do whatever hours & weekends that was needed without question (and in a very aggressive tone too). He continued “ye, don’t be thinking you will be doing 9-5 around here either” and “yeh, we’d all like time with our family and kids but that’s not going to happen”. He went on this rant for a good five minutes. I was disgusted and should have just walked out there and then.

Imagine working for this guy when he can’t even be civil in an interview!

I let the rest of the interview run it’s course and then left chalking it down to experience and expecting to hear nothing more.

A few hours later I get a call from the hr lady offering me the job! I almost burst out laughing at her on the phone declining it. She got very defensive when I told her the reasons. Obviously a bad culture in there - No wonder they were looking for staff!

Very strange

corner of hells · 26-02-2019 10:49PM

Army Interviewer " Do you take drugs ? "

Me "Yes , would you like some ? ".

AllForIt · 26-02-2019 11:05PM

You have to anticipate questions and have an idea how to answer them in advance of the interview. Not necessarily word for word as you would have a lots of lines to learn off but the essence of the answer. Then you won't have that wide eyed look as if you've been totally taken by surprise by what might be an obvious question. This will make you look competent and your preparation will show your really interested in the securing the role. It's not that hard a thing to do really, why not figure about the answers before the interview instead of sweating it at the interview. Your making the interview much easier for yourself by just spending an hour to 2 thinking about it.

road_high · 26-02-2019 11:54PM

Max Moment wrote: »

Went for an interview a few years back via a head hunter. CV was sent to the company and the company seemed really keen to interview me.

Attended the interview with a company director and a hr manager. Interview kicked off well with the usual ‘tell me about yourself and career to date’. Everything was going great until the hr lady asked me my motivation for moving jobs. I was totally honest and said I was very interested in the new position they had on offer, but I was also looking to reduce my working hours as I had a young family. (Note at this stage I was doing over 65 hours a week minimum and some weeks 7 days a week for years which was not sustainable, but the job demanded it).

As soon as I mentioned reduced working hours to a ‘normal’ working week (when compared to my current working week) the director guy absoloutely tore into me saying “don’t think you’re coming in here trying to do 40 or 45 hours a week” and how I would be expected to do whatever hours & weekends that was needed without question (and in a very aggressive tone too). He continued “ye, don’t be thinking you will be doing 9-5 around here either” and “yeh, we’d all like time with our family and kids but that’s not going to happen”. He went on this rant for a good five minutes. I was disgusted and should have just walked out there and then.
they were looking for staff!

Imagine working for this guy when he can’t even be civil in an interview!

I let the rest of the interview run it’s course and then left chalking it down to experience and expecting to hear nothing more.

A few hours later I get a call from the hr lady offering me the job! I almost burst out laughing at her on the phone declining it. She got very defensive when I told her the reasons. Obviously a bad culture in there - No wonder
Very strange

Wow. Imagine that pyschotic episode in an interview where they usually put up a fake veneer of harmony! Least it was brought up lest you had taken the job and then found out it was another crazy workload place.

26-02-2019 11:58PM

I'm sure anyone whos ever sat any kind of finance/quant interview has had to put up with this, but questions like 'why are manholes round and not square', or 'how many bottles of wine could fit in this room?'

'I don't know, JEREMY, but I feel like a drink right now'

Laois_Man · 27-02-2019 12:09AM

Had this French dude interview me once - he was a one-man company - as arrogant as **** he was - starts the interview by going on about how Irish workers are arseholes and totally inferior to their French counterparts.....if I had that day back again, I wouldn't do what I did....which was basically to nod and smile politely.

Then he gets me up to do a whiteboard session to interview him as if he was a customer giving me system requirements - which I was totally unprepared for and which I made a complete balls of, although he wasn't gonna be happy no matter what I did anyway.

Then I got pulled over by a cop on a motorbike on the M50 10 minutes later for being on the phone while driving telling the recruitment agent what a massive dickehead yer man was.

I should have been on high alert cos the recruitment agent had told me they had already succeeded in getting someone into the job but that he walked out on day 1.

DeanAustin · 27-02-2019 12:13AM

I’ve had a few nightmares where my mouth was ahead of my brain but my worst experience was a couple of years back when I was being made redundant from my job and started interviewing for others.

Went for a second interview with the European Director and it was at 11:30. Got there 15 mins early. No sign of yer man at 11:30. Gets to 11:45 and no sign. Five minutes later his PA comes down and says “sorry he’s on a call and will be down in a minute.” I’m fuming at this stage. 12:00 comes and I decide “**** this” and walk out. Rang the agency and told them what happened and that I was no longer interested.

Later that day the agents boss rings me to talk me around. I told him I wasn’t interested. “But your man is very busy.” Red rag to a bull. “Yeah so am I but I’m sure if I turned up half an hour late, do you think I’d be getting the job?” That ended the conversation there.

In fairness to the company in question, they did apologise afterwards.

tylercheribini · 27-02-2019 12:15AM

Ive been on a few interviews where they haven't even bothered to look at your cv and expect you to reguritate it to them verbatim, really disrespectful and lacking basic common courtesy.

road_high · 27-02-2019 12:29AM

With interviews your instincts are usually spot on- if they are arrogant twats in the interview then they’re like that to work alongside also. So run a mile unless desperate

tylercheribini · 27-02-2019 12:34AM

road_high wrote: »

With interviews your instincts are usually spot on- if they are arrogant twats in the interview then they’re like that to work alongside also. So run a mile unless desperate

The public appointments service recruitment system has been outsourced to private firms in my last few experiences, now one is expected to deepthroat the corporate cock for a public sector job, thanks Fine Gael

take everything · 27-02-2019 01:14AM

Ficheall wrote: »

I've had multiple interviews where I've either decided mid-interview that I didn't want the job, or decided I couldn't do the job, and just panicked, and asked to end the interview.

One such instance was an interview for a postdoc, which I was just doing for much-needed practice - 'twas via phone and there were three of them at the other end, which I hadn't expected. The only guy who spoke was Chinese and that, combined with the poor connection on my mobile, made what he was saying almost completely unintelligible.
I did manage to work out that I had neither any relevant experience or knowledge, and that the position didn't really sound like my cup of tea. I couldn't answer their questions about what I hoped to bring to the table, and the final straw was when I found myself unable to a fairly basic question about the software I'd worked on for my phd, so I said
"Look guys, this isn't going very well, but thanks for your time..."
The interviewer insisted that we drag things out for a couple more minutes, but things didn't really improve, save for my relief at having the pressure off.

True story.

Then they offered me the job, and that is how I ended up spending nearly two years working in the University of Birmingham, never really figuring out what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

I have, of course, made up for it since, by failing many times to get jobs which I would definitely be good at.

That's very interesting to me. You completely broke protocol for the interview simply because you knew it was not going right (which is not a criticism. It's actually something I find admirable, but have never had the guts/rationality to do).
But the fact they offered you the job is not unrelated to this I would imagine.

God I hate the bull**** of interviews

StupidLikeAFox · 27-02-2019 02:14AM

I remember going for an internship in college and putting on the CV that I did "Advanced Excel"

Now at the time I had done things like an invoice template, a project cost tracker things like that. I had made a template which let you add in costs in one sheet and it formatted it to an invoice in another sheet that could be printed out. Also at the time my friends and family couldnt turn on a computer so this was some black magic to them. Pretty advanced if you ask me! So fast forward to the interview:

Interviewer: Advanced Excel I see, so do you work with macros?

Me: ....I'm not entirely sure what a macro is?

I: Hmm, so just some advanced formulas and modelling?

M: Oh yes, I'm good with formulas *proceed to explain how SUM and cell referencing works*

His expression at this point is a mixture of "are you ****ing kidding me" and "are you actually this clueless". Didnt get the job anyway. But in my defence this was a long time ago. I am now getting into data analytics in work so at some stage i hope to swan back in there like julia roberts in pretty woman and say "You work with data right? Remember you wouldn't hire me because I was **** at excel? Big mistake - HUGE!"

Yer Da sells Avon · 27-02-2019 02:49AM

"What's your biggest weakness?"

"Probably my honesty"

"Ah now, I don't think that's a weakness"

"I couldn't give a fuck what you think"

Ficheall · 27-02-2019 02:54AM

take everything wrote: »

That's very interesting to me. You completely broke protocol for the interview simply because you knew it was not going right (which is not a criticism. It's actually something I find admirable, but have never had the guts/rationality to do).
But the fact they offered you the job is not unrelated to this I would imagine.

God I hate the bull**** of interviews

Nope. The other interviewee would have needed to organise a visa. I did not...

27-02-2019 08:41AM

tylercheribini wrote: »

The public appointments service recruitment system has been outsourced to private firms in my last few experiences, now one is expected to deepthroat the corporate cock for a public sector job, thanks Fine Gael

That's untrue. Panels always have a mix of public and private sector staff. Generally, the private sector staff involved have experience in or dealing with the public sector.

suicide_circus · 27-02-2019 08:52AM

Quote from the film Stripes (1981)

Army Recruiter: Now, are either of you homosexuals?

Winger: You mean like flaming?

Army Recruiter: Well, it's a standard question we have to ask.

Russell: No, we're not homosexual, but we are willing to learn.

petes · 27-02-2019 09:07AM

On the other side I was doing an interview and was asked what does ERP stand for, complete blank.

I've worked for the same ERP company for 11 years!

keano_afc · 27-02-2019 02:21PM

"So, where do you see yourself in 5 years time?"

"My biggest weakness? I'd say its not listening, to be honest".

ILikeBoats · 27-02-2019 02:32PM

I had a technical interview over the phone with a large software company. I was a little rusty on the subject matter. I could answer the first question but didn't know the following four. He said "we'll just leave it there will we? It doesn't seem to be going in your favour!"

I still cringe at the thought of it

facehugger99 · 27-02-2019 02:36PM

I had posted this in another thread....

When I graduated from college, I went to London with friends for 6 months. Spent most of the time there doing casual work, but we had a great time.

So we were coming back to Ireland and I was looking for a 'proper' job in my industry. Spotted an advertisement, sent in my CV and got called for interview.

The only problem was they wanted to do the interview on the morning I was flying back from London. They were based out near the airport so I was thinking that it would work out perfect to go straight there when I got back into Dublin.

Of course, on our last night in London we hit the town. My earlier promises to myself to take it easy went out the window after a couple of pints. 6 hours later I'm E'd off my head in a club with my GF saying that we need to get going if we're going to make our flight. To this day I still wonder why we hadn't organised our packing before heading out - I'm putting it down to being young and stupid.

We dash back to our apartment and frantically pack our stuff. I realise I have nothing remotely appropriate to wear to the interview.

We head out to the airport, on route I stop in a cheap menswear store and, in a very flustered state, buy, what I later realise are, an incredibly ill matched shirt and trousers. They also don't match the shoes I have. Not only that, they're about 2 sizes too big and I've no belt. I should mention, that the extent of this only hits me when I get changed for the interview in the toilets of Dublin airport. My GF bursts out laughing when I emerge.

I'm also at this stage, in the jaws of the comedown from hell. I can't remember when I've last eaten, I haven't slept for 36 hours.

My sister meets me at the airport to drive me over to the interview. She bursts out laughing when she sees me too.

I walk into reception feeling like a complete spa. I kinda have to hold my trousers up by hand to stop them falling down. The secretary looks at me initially as if I'm some escaped lunatic but I explain I'm here for the interview.
There's two guys interviewing me and the first question they ask is the kind of simple question a first year on my college course would know. Obviously designed to put me at my ease.

My mind goes, quite literally, blank. I know I know the answer but I can't bring it to mind. After 30 seconds I have to say 'sorry I just can't recall that'. I can see the two of them exchanging a glance wondering 'WTF' as one of them explains the answer to me, like you would to a dimwit.
My already fragile confidence nosedives completely.

I try not to remember the rest of the interview. They keep it mercifully short. I can barely string 2words together and I just want to stand up and say 'listen, this has been a terrible mistake, can we just finish up'.

I leave, still holding up my trousers, desperately trying to preserve what little dignity remains.
'How'd it go?' my sister asks brightly when I get in the car.
'Just drive' I say.

Obviously I don't get the job, and despite working in a small industry, never bumped into the 2 guys again thank Christ.

road_high · 27-02-2019 06:14PM

I thought after all that you were going to say they offered you the job!

valoren · 27-02-2019 06:34PM

Back in 2007 was looking to get into QA/software testing. I was coming from a tech support role, which I hated.
Recruiter was based in Dublin and contacts me saying there is a QA role in Dublin with a major insurer and they're looking for a 'tester'.

He doesn't email me a job spec but says they are hiring for QA, gives me the big sales pitch..QA this....QA that.....QA! QA! QA!. I am sold and as I am based in Cork, I get the train up for the interview. I was planning to re-locate if I got the job. Get there in time and within two minutes I cop that they are interviewing for a customer support role. I ask what about the, you know, QA bit? Turns out that whenever there is a code release, they assign one of the call takers to run through a smoke/regression test to sign it off for release and then once this 2/3 hour's of work is done you go back to fielding calls. The QA bit was 5% of the role. I am livid at this point having paid for a train up and it dawns on me why the prick never sent me a job spec. I tell the interviewers that there has been a misunderstanding about the role and I tell them the recruiter wasn't very upfront with me. They want to continue anyway, get a bit uppity but I said I'm not interested in a support role. A complete shambles. Gave the recruiter stink on the phone and never used them thereafter.

Moral of the story - Always get the job spec from the recruiter.

Blackjack · 27-02-2019 06:59PM

pleas advice wrote: »

Parkinson interviewing Meg Ryan was one..

I forgot how very beautiful she was.

facehugger99 · 27-02-2019 06:59PM

road_high wrote: »

I thought after all that you were going to say they offered you the job!

Hardly.

Terrible interviews

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