Perfman HR - Some Famous Job Interview Bloopers

Interviews can take strange turns. Here are a few favorite stories from the files of interviewers and career experts and also one or two of experiences of our own:



• Interviewer asks a tall candidate what his dislikes are. "Short people," he says, not realizing that the interviewer is sitting on a cushion to add inches to his height. (Needless to say, no job offer!)



• Interviewer sits across the table from a candidate at a Chinese restaurant. After the candidate has finished his own meal, he reaches across with his chopsticks and begins feeding himself from the interviewer’s plate. (Definitely no job offer!)



• Candidate tells interviewer she has heard that she shouldn’t accept the first offer she receives. Interviewer asks her how many offers she thinks she should consider before deciding. She says, "Eight." He says, "Call me then. Let’s not waste time now." (At this rate she’ll never get even one offer.)



Interviewers aren’t the only ones with tales of the bizarre. Check out these real life stories from job seekers:



• An interviewer said that he was looking for someone who had "10 years of experience with Windows 7." The candidate told him that it might take awhile to find the right candidate, like 6 years!



• During an on-campus interview, the interviewer’s cell phone rang and he answered it. He then apologized but left the ringer on. It rang again, he answered again, and this time it was a woman he was trying to get a date with. He spent 3 minutes talking her into going out with him.



• "One interviewer used the 30-minute interview time slot to milk me on my past work experience and my company because he was trying to do a transaction with them. He had absolutely no interest in me as a candidate. It was utterly disgusting behavior on his part."



• A candidate who had put "Fluent in Mandarin" on her resume was interviewed in Mandarin! "I went home and changed it to ‘Conversant."



• This one is very common – A candidate is ushered in to the cabin of the interviewer only to find that the interviewer is on an online chat with someone or is busy poring over a spreadsheet or composing an email, and distractedly conducts the interview with the candidate without once taking his eyes off the computer!



Sonal Aurora is director and co-founder of Executive Search Firm India. Perfman HR is a premier HR Consulting Company Founded in Mumbai, India. We are an inventive and dynamic Human Resource Company specializing in Executive Search, Recruitments, Training, Learning & HR Solutions.