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Worst Interview Experiences

December 8, 2021 by Kosmo 7 Comments

We’ve got another article by Kosmo today. It’s always entertaining to read other people’s horror stories. I included a few of my own at the end. Tomorrow, I hope to post a fresh article covering November’s passive income.

I’ve been pretty optimistic lately, and have focused a lot on the good aspects of my career.  Now it’s time to be negative and look back and some of the worst interview experiences I’ve had over the years.

My fault

One day during my senior year in college, I was awakened by the sound of people in my apartment.

Oh, crap.  This was the day the property management company was going to show my apartment to a potential renter.  There hadn’t been a conflict, because I should be showered and out the door before they arrived.  The fact that they woke me up meant that I had overslept.

Which also meant that I was running late for an interview with one of the big accounting firms.  I meekly waiting for the rental agent and potential renter to leave, and then got ready as quickly as I could.  After a sprint across campus, I arrived out of breath and fifteen minutes late.

I apologized, and they allowed me to interview as if nothing had happened.  But I knew that I had dug a hole for myself, and that the other candidates were going to look better in comparison.

Not surprisingly,  I didn’t get the job.  Also, I had to write a letter apologizing for my lateness.  The on-campus interview were arranged by the university, and if you didn’t arrive on time for an interview, your interviewing privileges were suspended until you wrote a letter of apology.  It was a good idea, as it tended to really cut down on people simply blowing off interviews.  I had the letter submitted by the end of the day, since I couldn’t afford to miss any interviews.

I also called the property management company to apologize for being in the apartment when I had told them I’d be gone – becoming the first tenant in history to apologize to a landlord.

Deja vu

About fifteen years ago, some changes at my company put my teleworking position in danger, and I started to interview at other companies.

One of the interviews was with a local software company.  I interviewed with the CEO, and the impression he gave was that their employees paid zero attention to the clock and were totally committed to the company.  I interpreted this as meaning the company put employees through the meat grinder and had them work long hours on a consistent basis.

It wasn’t the optimal position, but it might be worth considering.  After the on-site interview, I waited to hear from them.  I never heard from them.

About a year later, a headhunter was lining up some interviews for me.  They mentioned a job at this same company.  I said that I was reluctant to interview, since they had ghosted me before.  The headhunter showed surprise and said that it was most likely a one-time glitch.  I agreed to interview with the company again.

I went through the exact same interview process again.  After talking with the exact same people for a second time, they ghosted me again.

The token

I get a call from HR at a large trucking company that is headquartered in the area.  I applied for a position six months earlier, and this is my first contact with them.  He wanted to know if I was still interested, and I responded that I was.  We talked a bit about salaries, and it was clear that I was at the top end of their range.  He said he was going to follow up with the hiring manager and get back to me.

The next day, I hear back from him.  The company is still interested, even at a salary that is at the top of their range.  He sends me links to a few assessment, including a personality assessment and the Wonderlic test.  I carve out time that night and knock out the assessments – coming tantalizing close to finishing all the Wonderlic questions, but not quite making it.

A few days later, I hear back from the guy.  Assessments were good, and he wants to schedule an on-site.

The day of the interview arrives.  I’m going directly from my current job (where I wear jeans and a t-shirt) to the interview, where I’ll be wearing a suit a tie.  In a far corner of the huge parking lot at work, I cover myself with a blanket and awkwardly change my pants and shirt.  I arrive a few minutes early and check in at the front desk.

The hiring manager takes me back to her office and gives me a five minute explanation of her team.  Then she asks a couple of questions about my background.

Then she just stops.  No follow-up questions to my answers, no new questions, nothing.  I try to jump-start the conversation, but I fail.  The interview lasted less than fifteen minutes.

I try to make sense of things during the drive home.  The couple of questions she had asked were pretty basic, and I wasn’t sure how my answers could have raised any red flags.  Then I realized that likely scenario.  The company probably had a policy that X number of candidates be interviewed for any position.  They had a qualified candidate in house, but needed to rope in a couple of other candidates just to check that box.

I know that a lot of companies have a policy like this.  The idea behind them is good – making sure that you case a wide net instead of simply taking the bird in the hand.  But it only makes sense when you’re actually given each candidate serious consideration.  If you’re just having a couple of BS interview to pad the numbers, this doesn’t help anyone.  It’s a waste of time for the company and for the candidate.

Wrong answer

I had an interview with a smaller company in the area.  The meeting was with the director (hiring manager) and a vice president (her boss).

I arrived a few minutes early and checked in at the front desk.  Ten minutes after the scheduled start time, the director and VP retrieve me from the reception area.

The VP takes control of the interview, doing about 90% of the talking.  This seem a little unusual, since the director was the hiring manager.  Since the candidate would be working directly for her, I would have expected her to be a bit more active in the process.

His questions were very precise – drilling down into the minutiae of textbook knowledge of my discipline.  At this point, I had been out of college for 20+ years, and at the time I went to college, there really wasn’t a textbook for the type of work I was doing.  My work process had evolved through internal training and mentoring, and the process I used didn’t necessarily line up point for point with the current textbook, especially not in terms of terminology.  The focus of the question was on rote memorization rather than actual practical knowledge.  It almost seemed like he was trying to impress my with his encyclopedia knowledge.   I was not impressed.

I walked out of this interview not expected an offer, and also not wanting one.

Your experiences?

What are some of the worst interview experiences you have had?

Editor’s Response

I’ll go first on this. These are a little more about job stories than just the interviews themselves.

The Insurance Company

I actually don’t remember the interview, but this was my first job. The programming was interesting, but the boss was terrible. Everyone hated her, but I guess she got results which was good for the company. At one point she had mentioned having an identical twin and I thought, “Wait, there are two people on Earth like you?” My next thought was, “Why did we get stuck with the evil twin?” Fortunately, I didn’t say what was on my mind.

The Pulled Job

While working there, interviewed at another company and got a job offer for 30% more money. It was doing cutting edge web programming and I jumped on it immediately. When I accepted the offer, they said they already gave it to someone else. I think maybe a day passed. I had already written my resignation letter for the insurance company, but luckily I didn’t send it in.

The HR Blunder

A big internet company interviewed me a couple of times and I really hit it off with them. The HR person in charge of the hire though switched jobs and I was lost in the shuffle. I persisted, but it took about six weeks because it was this time of year of Thanksgiving and holidays. This time I got the job and the 30% raise working on cutting edge search engines. It was the best job I ever had and I moved up the ranks to be a manager very quickly. As a 24-year-old kid, I should not have been the hiring manager, but I was. I may have been the worst interviewer in the history of the world.

The dot-com bust happened and we merged with another big company, so the entire development team was axed. It was supposed to be on 9/11, but they waited a week given the events of the day. The top people at the company recruited me a few years later and I worked with them for a few years until those people left and the new management made things bad.

The Overdress

My first job interview in Silicon Valley was an interesting one. Everyone made fun of me for showing up in a suit. That’s simply not done there. I explained that it’s a culture thing in Boston (and well the rest of the world as far as I know) and it shows respect for the employer. I think it earned me some points, but they probably also viewed me as “Weird Boston Guy”, which I was.

The Facebook

I interviewed to be the head of Facebook’s mobile development division in 2006. Facebook was much, much smaller then, but still growing fast. I don’t think it was as big as MySpace because you still had to have a college account to join. The interviewers all explained how they live at the office and worked 18 hours a day. I had this Lazy Man blog at the time, so that wasn’t going to work. In hindsight, if I could have done the work (it was over my head), I probably would have made a hundred million in stock options. That would have been nice.

Filed Under: Career Tagged With: interview

The Interview

February 5, 2021 by Kosmo 2 Comments

The following is from frequent contributor Kosmo who has taken us on an extensive job search journey. That job hunt was successful, but in the last article, he added a new twist to the story.

In the last update of the series, our intrepid hero had started another job hunt and had an interview lined up.  How did things turn out?

Reinforcing knowledge

Fired Cartoon

Due to the holidays, there was a two-week gap between the point where I was chosen for the interview and the time the interview occurred.  That’s a long time to think – and overthink – about things.

The first thing I did was study up on some of the finer points of documents I create as part of my current job.  In theory, these documents follow a rigid framework, with each point fully fleshed out.  In practice, some portions of the document get significantly more attention than others.  I needed to make sure I was prepared for questions on any portion of those documents.

It was a similar exercise regarding common practices in my job.  I have a tendency to lean heavily on a couple of specific methods for eliciting software requirements, but I needed to make sure that I was prepared to answer questions about any of the methods that are commonly used.

Examples

Next, I spent time building out examples for the inevitable behavior questions.  In the past year, I have been on interview panels about a dozen times.  Being on the other side of the table gave me insight into which questions were likely to be asked – as well as which questions candidates were likely to struggle with.  If a particular question created problems for many candidates, it was a question I needed to prepare for.

I cracked open Microsoft Words and started to write.  For each behavior question, I wrote up a least a couple of examples, so that I could choose the one that fit the flow of the interview the best.

Questions

It’s critical to always have questions for the interviewers.  They’ll almost always ask if you have questions.  A response of “no” is generally taken as a sign of disinterest.  You’ll want to make sure to have at least a few questions prepared.  It’s possible that the interviewer will answer some of your questions during the interview, and you definitely can’t use a question that they’ve already provided an answer for.

My interview was in five parts.  Four parts featured one interviewer and one featured four peers.  That meant preparing five sets of questions.  I spent more time in Word.  When I was finished, I had at least three questions for each section.

You can – and should – add more questions as topics arise during the interview.  But a lot of people get nervous during interviews, and it’s good to have a stock list of questions to start with.

Relax

I couldn’t spend two weeks preparing without going crazy.  I prepared until I had reached a point of diminishing returns, and then I stopped.  Relaxing was next on the agenda.

Christmas and New Year’s activities were confined to the home, due to COVID.  We played board games, including a new one – Trekking the World.  It’s a great game that I would recommend.

I also managed to find Quantum Leap on the internet.  I had been searching for in on the streaming services for a while, to no avail.  While it’s not on the pay services, it’s on the free NBC app.  It has commercials, but that’s a small price to pay.

(Editor’s Note: I’ve had great luck with finding where a show is streaming with JustWatch.com. For example, here’s Quantum Leap, available to stream on Roku and NBC.)

Interview Day

Interview day finally arrived.  Typically, this would be a half day on site, but due to COVID, it was virtual.  It was on a platform I use every day (TEAMS), so I didn’t have to figure out a new interface.  I could also decompress during breaks in the process.  Overall, a pretty relaxing experience.

The interviews went pretty well.  As always, there were a few questions that I didn’t handle perfectly, but I had a strong answer for most of the questions.  Not surprisingly, the portion of the interview with my potential peers was the toughest, but that’s also the portion that I had spent the most preparation time.

Waiting

The interview was on a Wednesday.  The hiring manager said the expected to know something by the next week, or possibly even later that week.  Like most people, I absolutely hate waiting.

The next two days passed very slowly.  At 4 PM Friday, I resigned myself to waiting until at least Monday.  At 5 PM, my phone range.  We quickly reached an agreement on salary, and he agreed to the 60% work from home.

I knocked out the paperwork over the weekend, and a few days later I had passed the background check and drug screening.

Next Steps

As I’m writing this, I have one more day of work left at my old job.  I’ve spent the last two weeks finishing up some work and transitioning the things that I’m not able to get done.  I’m a firm believer in never burning bridges – you never know when you might want to cross them again.

I start the new chapter of my life on Monday.  A brand new industry and a slightly different role.  So much to learn, and I’m anxious to get started.

Filed Under: Career Tagged With: interview, job search journey

Readers: Ask Jean Chatzky a Personal Finance Question

May 6, 2009 by Lazy Man 7 Comments

While I know you believe that I’m the best personal finance guru on the planet, I’m going to let you in on a secret… There are some people out there who are also pretty good at person finance. One of those people is Jean Chatzky. Here’s a brief list of some of places you might have seen her:

  • SmartMoney
  • Money Magazine
  • Live With Regis and Kelly
  • NBC’s Today Show
  • Oprah’s “Debt Diet”

I’ve been in contact with Jean and she’s agreed to do an e-mail interview with me. While I could come up with questions myself, why not get everyone involved? Submit your personal finance question in the comments below. If I like it, I’ll add it to my interview.

P.S.
Congrats to Jean on her recent marriage. (Yet another reason why I love Wikipedia.)

Filed Under: Ask the Readers Tagged With: interview, Jean Chatzky

I Was Interviewed at Shark Investor

July 2, 2008 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

Shark Investor was kind enough to interview me for their investor profile series. He asked three great questions that made me think a lot more than I have in some time. In return he got some lengthy answers back from me. At the end of the interview I was thinking that I should have written a post here encompassing those topics long ago. Since I’m Lazy, this interview will have to suffice. Check it out at Shark Investor.

Filed Under: About / Admin Tagged With: interview, Investing

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