Job interviews can be the most stressful situations on the planet. There's a lot riding on just a 15 to 30 minute conversation. These interviewees share the moment they realized they probably weren't getting the job thanks to their terrible interviewing skills.
(Content has been edited for clarity)
Literally The Worst Thing You Could Say In An Interview
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“I was being interviewed at Pancho Villas and the manager asked me, ‘Do you know any Spanish?’ To which I responded, ‘Yeah, puta madre.’
Basically called her mother a ‘female dog’ if you catch my drift. I used to work in another restaurant and the back of the house was always saying it jokingly so it was just ingrained in my brain I guess.”
He Left A Burning Memory On These Video Game Execs
“This was for an awesome video game job. I was offered a cup of coffee by one of the designers who was showing me around before my interview. We went into the kitchen area, and a couple of big shots were standing in front of the big giant coffee machine. My guide gave me a mug and asked me to go first.
They were chatting it up, and so I reached in to grab the pot to pour my coffee. They must have been waiting for it to brew but I didn’t notice. When I grabbed the pot, one of them screamed ‘Nooooo’ in slow motion, and then my wrist and back twinged suddenly from surprise as the coffee pot tipped the brewing chamber and knocked it out as it sailed to the floor like a North Korean nuclear bomb.
Filled with nearly brewed coffee, the brewing chamber landed on the floor and sent coffee grains and hot boiling coffee into the air towards the executives.
One guy dodged. The other guy left a silhouette of coffee and grains behind him and was scalded.
I never realized how many grains of coffee there were but I offered to clean it, and they all just asked me to leave.”
His Boss Made Sure He Wouldn’t Get The Job
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“I interviewed for a job as a children’s storytime singer in a library. I am a hairy, beardy guy, but I was working in a manual job, and I wanted something less physically taxing.
My boss at the time was rather a cunning jerk, cool, but he was quite the troll boss. I was the only trained and qualified staff member, and he needed one. He just couldn’t afford to pay me more.
So he took me out for a small celebration drink in my favorite pub, which served delicious drinks. On him naturally.
I woke up the next morning somewhat the worse for wear, and my boss had promised a group of polish field workers that I would be their tour guide ’round the local town before my interview. They were banging on my door, eager to be off to enjoy the sights with this amazing free tour guide. I don’t speak Polish.
I arrived at my interview hungover, harassed and with a splitting headache. The polish guys were cool, but it was hard work! I didn’t interview well, I probably looked and sounded like the Gruffalo.
Touche troll boss, you win this one!”
He Might Not Have Scored Points With The Boss, But He Did With The Employees
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“I went for an amazingly well-paid communications job interview with a UK/US business that sold a tiny, pointless object (think sporks, but less useful). The interviews were professional, competitive and interesting. They were conducted in stages, and I got to the third interview, and to make it look like I was professional I even hid my crappy car down an alley instead of the workplace carpark. The potential UK coworkers were great, even the managers were down to earth and not too hierarchical. A perfect workplace.
In this interview, I had to meet the American Sales Manager, who I would be working closely with, and flying between different European and US cities with for meetings. Yes, this job was pretty awesome. However, as soon as I met her things went rather downhill. She looked like Jackie O, and she never smiled. She had a roller suitcase. She kept stating how important her role was, and how important crappy spork manufacturing was in the global marketplace. The UK managers looked in pain, but she was their higher up so just seemed to be taking all the bollocks on the chin, and I was trying my best to keep up, trying to nail a tasty paycheck and the promise of international travel.
She then proceeded to ask me, ‘In your opinion what is the impact of international terrorism on crappy spork manufacturing?’ I should have made up something to stroke her ego, as it was obvious she thought that she was on some terrorist hit list, as she was such an amazing business leader. Sadly, I had one of those mad clarity moments where I just stated ‘None whatsoever, why would terrorists even care about crappy sporks, they aren’t rockets you know.’
The other interviewers peed themselves laughing, one fell off a chair, and Jackie O pierced me with a rage-filled glare. Interview over. The UK managers thanked me, both for the laugh and the interview but said I was unlikely to be offered the post. Bullcrapping Jackie O seemed an important part of my job. So I got my nailed up banger of a car and peeled it past the office, with quite a bit of style. The guys laughed out the office windows, and I got a follow-up call that they wished they could have employed me due to my balls to the wall hilarious chutzpah. First time I heard that word used effectively, so at least I Improved my vocabulary as well as my interview skills…”
You Serious?
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“Moved down to Kansas City from Alaska. I go to interview for some entry level position at a local bank. The interview is going well until he gleams from my resume that I’m from Alaska.
Interviewer: ‘Oh cool, we’ll need to see your green card though.’
Me: ‘Ha, funny.’
Interviewer: ‘I’m serious. Without a green card I can’t legally hire you to work in America.’
Me: ‘Whoa, you’re serious? You know how there are 50 states in the union? Alaska is number 49.’
He continued to insist that I would need some sort of paperwork to allow me to work ‘In America.’ I lost all respect for him and ended up walking out of the interview.”
“I Totally Bombed That Interview… Why Am I Getting A Job Offer?”
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“I had an interview with a Wells Fargo call center once. It was a good position that would make a pretty large amount of money (more money than I make even now, four years later). The trick was, you had to have a 26-percent referral rate, meaning for every four calls you took, one of them had to be ‘referred’ to another department for sale. So when the interviewer asked me how I would approach it if I had an issue meeting my sales quota, my response was that I would seek help from people who are well known for hitting their quotas, ask my supervisors what I could be doing better, etc, etc. Thought it was a pretty good answer.
The problem was, we were interviewing over a SMALL table, and I could see everything he was writing about the interview. After my response, he looked at me, gave me a blank nod, then wrote down ‘Needs help with sales.’ My mental jaw pretty much dropped, and from then on I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the interview and pretty much messed up every single answer.
The funny thing is, I got called back later that day with a job offer. I was excited, thinking about the amount of money I would make, then I realized ‘Wait, I bombed that interview…why am I getting a job offer?’ And it occurred to me that with the type of questions they were asking, they must have problems with people reaching sales quota, which means a high turnover rate, which means low job security and high stress. Turned it down after I realized that.”
She Had To Go Off About The Ethics Of This Boss’ Hiring Process
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“I went for a job interview in a town a few hours away from my parents, where I was staying when job hunting. The interview was going pretty great, wowing with my epic librarian knowledge until…
The interviewer explained the wage was a little lower than advertised. Also, I may have to take over the role of IT support, as I seemed knowledgeable. The IT guy was sitting in another room blissfully ignorant. Also, the contract terms were a little shorter, illegally short, so bad that they could let me go with about five minutes notice. But I was OK with that right?
I calmly explained how I couldn’t afford to work for that wage, the job insecurity worried me, and I would have to be able to rent somewhere, which the massively reduced wage wouldn’t cover. So sorry no, but thanks for the interview. I got up to leave and…
The interviewer looked annoyed and stated that he assumed the address of my house was quite exclusive, I was obviously living with my parents and money wasn’t a problem particularly. I should just commute in, daily, because jobs don’t grow on trees and I shouldn’t have wasted his time. He saw nothing wrong with my living as an adult, with my parents, to subsidize his poverty wages when he had every intention of actually saving money when he employed me by firing his IT staff member.
I lost it, a teensy bit at that point. I went a little socialist on his tail for about ten minutes and ranted about workers rights, capitalism and the terrible state of society that I laid directly at the feet of this horrid specimen of an excuse for an interviewer.
Didn’t get the job. Didn’t want the job. High fived myself a little on the way out.”
Right Time, Wrong Place
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“I had a pitch meeting scheduled for a television show I had been developing for over a year. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into the project.
The meeting was set up a few weeks in advance, and I was counting the days. I had a pitch meeting with this same network, and they purchased the show in the past, so I was feeling pretty good. This project was even better.
I showed up early at the network offices and checked in with security. They asked me to have a seat and would let me know when they were ready. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Thirty. I was starting to get nervous.
Finally, after 45 minutes of waiting, the security guy at the front desk approaches me. ‘Who are you here to see again?’ I give him the name. ‘Okay, that’s what I thought. You’re in the wrong place.’
It turns out the development executives moved their offices from the network’s Burbank location to the network’s Santa Monica location. I had no idea; I just assumed the pitch was in the same location I had previously pitched…
We rescheduled and, I am not positive, but I think an assistant got fired for not informing me while confirming the meeting the day before. Once we had the meeting a few weeks later… It did not go well.”
They Were More Than Just A GPA
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“On-campus interviews my senior year. Bell Labs (this was a long time ago) did a two-stage interview. Anyone could sign up for one of the first stage slots. Those were quick, like 10 minutes. People they liked they’d call back for a second interview.
I signed up. The first interview was fine. That afternoon they called me back for a second interview. After a quick introduction, the interviewer apologized for being unprepared and asked for a moment to scan my resume. I said sure. Ten seconds later he dropped my resume on the table and said, ‘I don’t know why they called you back. We never hire anyone with less than a 3.5 GPA.’ Then he just sat back in his chair like he was done. After a good 15 seconds of absolute silence, I said, ‘Maybe they think there are things more important than GPA.’ Then I stood up and walked out.
Don’t regret it for a second. I got a great job, grad school, more great jobs, and overall happy with my career. To heck with you jerk from Bell Labs. Who the heck wants to live in New Jersey anyway.”
Pick-Up Lines Probably Not The Best In A Job Interview
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In my first year out of finance school, my friend help set me up with an interview for a bank teller. I wasn’t super serious about the interview, because I’d already been offered a higher paying job the week before. But I had a massive crush on the person who would be interviewing me, and I felt like I should give them a chance to pitch this job anyway. Once the interview was winding down, he told me ‘Part of your job as a teller is to sell, such as getting customers to sign up for certain accounts, take out safety deposit boxes, etc. Here, sell me this pen.’ I twirled the pen in my fingers and responded, ‘Hey, this pen is really good for writing down phone numbers, what’s yours?’
They were not amused…
This Interview Made Them Realize They Needed A Career Change
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“I blew an interview for my master’s internship when they asked me ‘Why do you want to be a counselor?’ I blanked. After six years of school to become a counselor I suddenly couldn’t think of a single reason why. I ended up stammering through a terrible answer about wanting to help people. Worse than not getting the position was leaving with the realization that I didn’t want to be on the field anymore.
I wound up getting an internship at another site, but a few months later I dropped out of my program and moved across the state.
I went into business with my best friend. Now I work from home managing our online business, I screen print t-shirts, and a couple times a year I get to go to comic/geek/sci-fi conventions. A lot of my ‘work’ includes market research like browsing Reddit and Tumblr or watching tv and movies. My job is awesome.”
“What Position Are You Applying For?”
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“Interviewer: for which position are you applying?
My friend handed in my resume but never told me the job title, just what it was about. I just paraphrased what she told me.
Interviewer: I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
They Wanted Them To Work For Free On Day One
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“I thought I was interviewing for an administrative assistant job. I walked into a panel of five people who gave me a stack of business requirements, marketing standards, and customer surveys and left me for 30 minutes to prepare a presentation. I waited for five minutes and walked right out of the building.”
You Have To Know Your Competition
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“This was around 2001 I think. It was the third round of interviews for my first job out of college. I want a job, any job, in any field, that uses my newly earned degree. This job happens to be with Hewlett Packard. PCs, laptops and various other gadgets and stuff – sure, sounds great.
‘What are the top five companies for which you’d like to work?’
In my mind – ‘Any willing to pay me, I don’t care.’ But what I said instead was absolutely the worst, and I knew it was straight away. I assumed she wanted to hear other tech companies, so I thought sure, name five big tech companies…and I went blank. The answer was something like this ‘Ummm…..IBM. And…..er……um…..Dell would be good. Well, also…..like…..uhmmm…..do they have to be tech companies? I’d also like to work for [some sports management agency], that’d be cool.’
Yep. Not only did I look like I was trying to pander to what I thought she wanted to hear, but I also couldn’t name five competitors to their business or even five companies in the tech/electronics/PC market. I killed my first and second interview, only two people got a third interview…I did not get the job.”
He Didn’t Even Know The Basics For This Job
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“I was interviewing for an Ad Ops position and told the guy on the phone that his site was severely lacking in ad positions. I had Ad Block Pro enabled.”
They Dodged A Headache With This Company
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“So my interview with a project manager at a software company is coming to an end after going very well, I think, and then I get a chance to ask more about them. I ask for a brief tour and to meet the staff on the development team. They show me a bit of the product that they’re working. In about five questions, I determine with no doubt at all that the project has a fatal flaw in the design, and there will be no way to fix it without scrapping the whole thing and starting over. I don’t tell the staff because I don’t want to cause a scene.
So we finish the tour and get back to the meeting room to finish the interview. I tell the manager something like the following: I’m sorry, but there’s no way I can take this job because the project is doomed to fail for XYZ technical reasons. I take a few minutes explaining the details of why it won’t work, why their team hadn’t discovered the problem yet, and that there’s no chance of fixing it without a complete rewrite. The manager was polite, and we said our goodbyes. I walked out thinking, oh well, crap, that was a waste of time. I felt rather bad to have to be the bearer of bad news. The manager and the staff all seemed to be nice people.
I’m interviewing for some other companies on the following week when I get a call from my headhunting company saying that the manager of messed up project wants to hire me. I explain to my contact that I can’t take the job because the project is FUBAR. He tells me, no no, you won’t be working on the messed up project directly. The manager said that he suspected that the project was FUBAR, but I was the only one who could explain exactly what was wrong and why. He didn’t have the option to kill the project because it was being pushed by an incompetent VP above him. He needed me to work on the testing team writing the code to prove that project was messed up. So I ended up doing the contract, getting it extended, then the week after I finished, the whole R&D team was fired. The division was sold off to another company in short order. My previous manager had already lined up a job at another company, in part because I gave him the heads-up long before the whole thing self-destructed.”
His .Exe Stopped Working In This Interview
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“I was desperately in need of a job after moving to Los Angeles with nothing. I was at the end of my rope. I had an interview for an exciting opportunity that would have been perfect for me, working in video production. Editing was my life passion, and I spent so many hours getting to this point, a degree in broadcast production, I threw all my eggs into this ONE basket.
Interviewer: Simple question, what would be some types of video files you might work with or transfer?
Me: Ummm, like how do you mean?
Interviewer: What types of files?
Me: ————-
All I had to do was say ‘AVI’ or ‘MPEG’ or ‘DVIX’ would have been sufficient! I couldn’t think of a single name of a type of video file. Nada. That awkward moment where it seemed like I had lied on my resume pretty much ended the interview. My mind was as blank as an erased… one of those drives inside of computers.”
Nerves Just Got The Best Of Them
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“I went to an interview and discussed an internship that I worked on that was similar to the project for which they were hiring.
In my previous position, I was responsible for researching patient needs and preference for a small medical clinic that catered primarily to the homeless. I conducted focus groups, surveys, interviews, etc. While describing the project, I used the phrase ‘done for auditing purposes.’ They assumed I meant governmental audit and asked for clarification, and I stumbled on the answer because I thought it was more of a throwaway phrase to describe what I was doing and why.
I think they thought I was showing off. I wasn’t. I was very proud of the work I did and my research was partially responsible for a few awesome improvements at the clinic. I just was so nervous at the interview because it was my first major interview out of school and was having a hard time finding a job.
I did send a thank you note but never heard anything back. I didn’t get hired. Sometimes, I still kick myself in the rear. I could not have gotten the job for a lot of things, but I think that was it.”