Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Tell Me YOUR story!

I had an interesting experience yesterday... a job interview gone frightfully wrong.
Once I see how things turn out I'll share more of the details here.

But for now, just to get a bit of perspective, I am inviting any and all to share their stories of job interviews - no matter which side of the table you were on. What weird things have happened to you when you were either interviewing someone else or being interviewed yourself?

Come on gang, bring on your tales!

4 comments:

Michelle said...

I interviewed for a job and they asked that I make a profit and loss statement for them as part of the interview. I made one with fake numbers and fake categories that I pulled out of my head. I thought it was weird that they didn't give me any information except "make a profit and loss statement". I figured they wanted to know if I knew how to make one. Anyhoo, after I turned it in, in all of its glory, the man looked at me and then looked at the paper a little confused but he didn't say anything. The interview was over. When I got to my car I looked at the pile of documents they gave me. On one of the pieces of paper it had the numbers for the income statement on it. I felt like a total idiot. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.

Grandma Pat said...

I don't have anything to compare to your recent ordeal, but one of the most unexpected interviews I had was as follows.

I had been working for the school district as a para professional and the director of the program wanted to hire me as her secretary over the whole program.

But, legally the job had to be posted and interviews had to take place. She told me to go to HR for the interview.

Anyway, I expected the usual secretarial type questions such as how fast can you type, do you keep confidences, etc.

I can't remember everything the HR person said but I know the questions were totally different than I expected and totall took me off guard.

I do remember one question.... it was "If your boss/supervisor asked you to do something that you knew was unethical or illegal, what would you do?"

I came out of the interview nervous that maybe I wouldn't get the job, but I did....

Amber said...

Two stories for you:

First, I was a branch manager at a local bank, and we were interviewing for a teller position. A young girl walked in for the interview wearing a fancy see-through outfit w/ fishnet stockings (I kid you not!). One of the first questions we asked was why she wanted to be a teller. Her response still makes me giggle. She told us she DIDN'T want to be a teller because she never really believed in all that fortune teller stuff!

Next, I was in college and REALLY wanted a job at a Mariott hotel. The hours were perfect and I knew I would have time to do homework when we were slow. When I spoke to the manager, he mentioned they had about 30 other applicants. Having no previous hotel experience, I knew I had to do something to stand out and make him remember me. So I baked homemade chocolate chip cookies and gave them to him before the interview started. I got the job and worked on and off there for almost 10 years. And my boss STILL tells that story!

Belladonna said...

News flash - for those of you who know the back story to this posting, I now have a scheduled interview with the people I THOUGHT I was taking to in the last one...we'll see how it lands.

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