Most ridiculous job interviews (red flag?)🚩

[BroccoliBanana]

I once had a guy ask me to complete a 40 hour online course, for free, during my final year of university in order to get the role he was advertising. The interview was the worst (from his end!) I had ever encountered.

Essentially, he wanted two job roles combined into one pay cheque and I, like many people I assume, only had the skill set for one of those roles. He kept me hanging for weeks, claiming my work was exceptional but he had been busy.

In the end, after I told him I wouldn't complete the course, he chose someone else. I saw the person he chose doing a completely different role as to what was advertised a few weeks later, and in hindsight wish I just told him to f off!

 

[Inforapenny]

This is getting me so angry for companies messing people around.
I am considering contacting the interviewer as it was understood they would be in contact to give me the salary.
But I'm feeling like that person after a date....if they liked me or were serious they would have been in contact. Right?
But there is part of me that thinks no they said they would be in contact so I want to follow it up.

 

[BroccoliBanana]

This is getting me so angry for companies messing people around.
I am considering contacting the interviewer as it was understood they would be in contact to give me the salary.
But I'm feeling like that person after a date....if they liked me or were serious they would have been in contact. Right?
But there is part of me that thinks no they said they would be in contact so I want to follow it up.

I would chase them up. If they said they would do it, they've probably just forgotten. Though I do find it odd that they didn't just disclose it to you in the interview... that's a very standard interview question to have.

At the end of the day, the worst they can do is not reply, and then you'll be able to leave them behind and focus on another position.

 

[Rxt156]

I was royally fucked around in an interview years ago in many ways including not informed of the plan for the day, taken straight to a presentation with no time to spare and loads of people watching in silence whilst I logged in/found the ppt/set up, then abandoned in reception afterwards… I wasn’t sure if I should stay and wait or go home? So I left. No one contacted me for 5 hours. They then said sorry you didn’t get the job would you like some feedback? I said no thank you 🥲. Not interested in your opinion if you can’t even arrange an interview day and keep people informed. Goodbye!

 

[Inforapenny]

After being told by the interviewer hr would contact me and then to contact the interviewer with the salary I waited then sent a follow up email just incase she was waiting for me to give her the salary expectations WHICH SHE ASKED ME TO DO
My email was ignored.
Radio silence.
Just got a generic rejection email

I really don't mind not getting to the second round what I do mind is being told expect something, waiting patiently and then not knowing what i should do. I feel rather messed around.
Thank god It stopped at round one.

I think I've learnt my lesson that companies who have crappy recruitment policies are crappy.full stop.

 

[emm]

After being told by the interviewer hr would contact me and then to contact the interviewer with the salary I waited then sent a follow up email just incase she was waiting for me to give her the salary expectations WHICH SHE ASKED ME TO DO
My email was ignored.
Radio silence.
Just got a generic rejection email

I really don't mind not getting to the second round what I do mind is being told expect something, waiting patiently and then not knowing what i should do. I feel rather messed around.
Thank god It stopped at round one.

I think I've learnt my lesson that companies who have crappy recruitment policies are crappy.full stop.

similar has just happened to me, i was contacted by them yo attend interview, didnt even apply. has first interview, was told if i didnt get a second id at least get detailed feedback, instead i just got a generic rejection email of about 2lines

 

[Inforapenny]

similar has just happened to me, i was contacted by them yo attend interview, didnt even apply. has first interview, was told if i didnt get a second id at least get detailed feedback, instead i just got a generic rejection email of about 2lines

Wankers
It makes you feel really crappy even though its their lack of manners, unprofessionalism

 

[wearedoomed]

A recruiter once sent me to an interview without actually having one arranged with the client. He must have been hoping they'd just take me on anyway but they didn't even have any open positions. To their credit, the client made time for a chat but admitted they couldn't offer anything.

Worst thing was it was 150 miles from home in an area I was considering relocating to. A very long and wasted day.

 

[tomato123]

I was interviewed by a solicitor firm. They showed up 30 minutes late, and the first thing they said was “I haven’t read your CV, is it okay if I take 5 minutes to look at it?” So for the first five minutes I just had to sit there whilst the person was reading my CV.
they then also asked if I could read quickly and asked me if I could recite any poetry.

 

[insilverandgold]

My favourite one was where I was called the wrong name all morning, they’d clearly chosen who would get the job and the other 4 of us were there to make it seem like a fair process, and I was told to shorten the lesson I was about to be observed teaching right as I was about to start by a headteacher who then wandered in and out during the lesson and barely saw any of it.

My second favourite was where we were told that due to ‘covid reasons’, a headteacher was observing all candidates teach first, then would decide who to formally interview later. We all got sat in tiny rooms and waited alone with nothing to do for two hours. I was more than happy to be sent home at lunchtime because I’d have declined the offer to formally interview anyway. An interview will always tell you how they’d treat you as staff!

 

[HelloStereo]

My red flag is when they ask you to do a task that's not similar to, but exactly what you would be doing if you were employed by them.

I don't mind completing an example task to demonstrate that my skills are what they are looking for, but I'm not working for free.

 

[tortfeasor]

A recruiter once sent me to an interview without actually having one arranged with the client. He must have been hoping they'd just take me on anyway but they didn't even have any open positions. To their credit, the client made time for a chat but admitted they couldn't offer anything.

Worst thing was it was 150 miles from home in an area I was considering relocating to. A very long and wasted day.

Sadly not the only experience like that I’ve heard or read about but a 300 mile round trip!

In 2019 I applied for a job clearly advertised as an HR job and was contacted by he agency handling it at 6:30pm asking could I go to an interview with the client the following morning at 10:30am. I didn‘t see the email until 8pm and the silly recruiter hadn’t bothered to try ringing me. The job description sent across was also clearly for an HR job.
I was temping at the time so it was a lot easier to get the time off than if I’d been employed by the place I was temping at. However, it soon transpired within minutes of the interview beginning that the people on the other side of the table were interviewing for a finance job. It had noting to do with HR. I said, “I am sorry but I think we’re at cross purposes here. I was told this was an interview for an HR job?”
Cue very puzzled looking interviewers. They has my CV in front of them so why on Earth they’d asked to see me I don’t know as there was nothing on it that indicated past experience of the role they were actually hiring for.

I’ve avoided ever dealing with that agency since and the silly woman still emails stuff over to me!

I was interviewed by a solicitor firm. They showed up 30 minutes late, and the first thing they said was “I haven’t read your CV, is it okay if I take 5 minutes to look at it?” So for the first five minutes I just had to sit there whilst the person was reading my CV.
they then also asked if I could read quickly and asked me if I could recite any poetry.

What the duck does being able to recite poetry have todo with a job at a solicitors’ firm? It sounds like something from Cage & Fish, the wacky firm in Ally McBeal.

One of the worst I had for being made to wait was a stroppy cow of an HR manager for a food manufacturer, who for some reason had misread the email from the agency that set the interview up and thought I’d arrived 30 minutes early.
i hadn’t. I’d arrived 5 minutes before the scheduled time of 3pm. Reception called her and she appeared, spoke to the receptionist, glared at me and walked away. At 3:45pm she came back and took me to a room. During the interview at one point she piped up, “oh no. I’m really sorry. It seems I misread the email. I thought you’d arrived super early for the interview when you’d actually just turned up when you should have.”

So basically she‘d made me wait out of spite!

 

[emm]

I have an interview soon for a job that is a 0 hours contract, this is okay with me as I am freelance so work in a few different places, but considering it is not well paid, obviously very insecure, there is a pre-interview task to submit, and the process itself (if I get through) will be 3 different interviews. Just seems ridiculous

 

[SpindleWhorl]

Any sort of group interview. I'm not looking now but when I was applying for jobs if I got an email from a company offering a group interview I blocked them. Why should I spend my time travelling and attending an interview if you're not going to give me your full attention?

 

[Inforapenny]

Last Friday I got a rejection email for a job application. I'd actually forgotten about it and didn't give it any thought.
Monday get a phone call asking to come to interview and that they now want to interview me. I asked was it because a candidate had dropped out and they said yes. So I'm making up the numbers then.
It was 2 days notice whereas other candidates I'm sure had 5 to 7 days to prepare.
Knowing that this isn't great and considering they really apparently wanted to interview me they didn't exactly go out of their way make me think I should bother.
Any how I said I can't do 2 days time unfortunately I have meetings all day. They were very put out by this so I suggested Thursday instead.
They got back to me with a turse email saying nope it has to be Wednesday you do realise we're very busy.
So I just said no thanks.
What I concluded was they're an entitled organisation who can't be flexible so I wouldn't want to work for them and if they had a specific interview date in mind they should have clearly stated on the job application a few months back.
It was also very clear that they were simply making up numbers and keen to tick a box and if that was their only day they were more interested in filling a role ASAP than having a few dates for interviews to get the right fit.

Anyway on the same day as that tit show my director approached me and offered me the role of acting head of my department. So screw all the shite companies who treat candidates like tit.

I've come to realise it goes both ways.

 

[bunnyboo]

Very early in my career, I got a junior position as a product designer and I should have never taken it, I was fired after TWO weeks for having a panic attack. Now of course, they didn't say that was I was let go because of my panic attack... that would be illegal.. probationary period or not. They said it "wasn't a culture fit" or some waffle, but I was let go the day after having a panic attack and I was told by two people who worked there (we're now good friends ) that the bosses said my anxiety disorder was "too problematic".

I'm now in a position where I'm the one hiring junior developers and designers in my current role and when I was looking at my email correspondence with this clown company from a few years ago.. there were SO MANY red flags in the interview.. I should have listened to my gut and rejected it;

1. It was a junior role but they demanded THREE professional references from roles in a similar field (where are junior staff supposed to find this experience?) and two 'personal references'.. I don't ask our candidates for personal references as it's just a waste of time tbh, you can get a feel for someone's goals and attitude by actually giving a tit about the interview process and knowing the right questions to ask
2. During the interview, the staff working for this place looked miserable and the two bosses seemed pretty scattered and standoffish
3. I got an offer but I was pressured to accept it and get the references over within ONE day... in hindsight, this seems so ridiculous but I was so desperate to be given a chance at something other than an internship or contract work so I just went along with it
4. When I accepted the role, I got a list of guidelines/rules for staff and the way they referred to missing work due to illness made me feel uneasy. You're only allowed to take 2 days of sick leave, if you were sick after that it would come out of annual leave.
5. Another contract detail, you needed to provide them with minimum of 5 weeks notice for annual leave request (in writing no less), and had to give them 2 months notice if you were leaving.. dick move, particularly for the pay (or lack there of) they were providing
6. There was an alarming amount of interns working for the firm, but they were doing the same job as me only they weren't getting paid to do it

The pay was also shockingly low, but what can I say... I was young, didn't know my worth and I was desperate to work.

I would never (and do not) treat any candidate or junior employees the way I was treated.

 

[tortfeasor]

Any sort of group interview. I'm not looking now but when I was applying for jobs if I got an email from a company offering a group interview I blocked them. Why should I spend my time travelling and attending an interview if you're not going to give me your full attention?

100% agree with your stance on this. A few years back I read a book about tips for ”assessment centres” as the preferred jargon at the time called them. To my surprise the first part of the book covered the authors really tearing apart most of the experiences I’d had in the past and advising job applicants to basically get up and leave if any of the following occur at your assessment centre because the company is wasting your time and disrespecting you!

In the point regarding “group interviews” or “group discussion activities” it essentially said companies will claim these help them to gauge how you interact and communicate with others in an workplace environment but it’s a load of nonsense. They‘re right too. At the end of the day you’re plonked with people you’ve never worked with, never will, who also don’t likely work for the company you’re applying to work for and you’re all there competing for the same job. So even if you’re cool as a cucumber your fellow interviewees are likely to be very anxious, which can result in some very awkward exchanges. How many times do you go through that process in the workplace? Errr… never. Quite really what companies think they’ll get out of watching people in this artificial environment is anyone’s guess. They won’t see the real you nor how you’d interact at work with their colleagues. Pointless.

 

[Peaches_xox]

A few years ago I was desperately looking for a new job as I hated the place I was at with a passion, so I spoke to a recruiter who got me an interview somewhere in the same industry I’ve always worked for a similar role I was doing so seemed pretty straight forward.

About 5 mins into the interview I realised she wasn’t interviewing me for the role I’d been put forward for, I was proper confused but I didn’t want to be rude and say ‘erm this doesn’t sound like the role I applied for’ so I went along with it the best I could.
Then she asked me the generic questions about my hobbies and interests and so i mentioned I was a mum… she went on to ask me if I have reliable childcare in place because she knows people tend to have days off work cos of their children
Finally she asked me one of those on the spot questions about celebs I’d like to have dinner with. She said she feeds it back to the team so they can see if I’d fit in. Not sure why who I’d have dinner with decided if I could do the job or not. Plus I hate those stupid on the spot questions.

I decided I didn’t want to work there half way through the interview. When I got out I had a voicemail from the recruiter saying they had fulfilled the role I’d applied for but put me forward for something else? Erm thanks for the heads up. I swerved all the recruiters calls after that so never found out if I would be offered the job or not. She called me a lot though so im thinking there would have been at least a second interview on the cards.

A few weeks later I applied directly to a company, had a very straight forward interview and got offered the job in the interview and have worked at this company for 4 years now!

 

[Kittypops]

Just spent four hours doing two applications, they must all go out of their way to make their individual application forms different so you can't just cut and paste say, your job history. Fucksake, this is severely testing my dry January.

Good news @Inforapenny really pleased for you!

 

[Moonflower]

Just spent four hours doing two applications, they must all go out of their way to make their individual application forms different so you can't just cut and paste say, your job history. Fucksake, this is severely testing my dry January.

Good news @Inforapenny really pleased for you!

It's ridiculous isn't it! It was like a full time job doing a the stupid forms.

I had one job (a charity), who asked me to print their paper application form and complete it by hand and scan it and send it back. Had to be handwritten, no exceptions! I didn't bother as that was a red flag right there that they'd be very paper based and a bit set in their ways (been there, done that, never again)