1.
Me: I see you managed a vegetarian restaurant.
Interviewee: What?
M: It says here you managed a vegetarian restaurant.
I: Oh, I guess I did write that. Not really though. My girlfriend had an art exhibition, and I organized the sandwiches for the opening. They were vegetarian.
This was a candidate that was otherwise pretty impressive seeming, and had been among the favorites for a quite sought after position, the interview had even gone quite well up until this point. Met him later at a party, he had no memory of me.
2.
This kid, probably 18-20, started picking his nose, like nuckle deep and digging for gold in the middle of his food service job interview.
3.
When she listed all of her ex-boyfriends that currently worked there, and said she couldn’t wait to see the look on their faces when she showed up to work. This was in the first 3 minutes of the interview so I wasn’t even close to offering the job yet. I cut the interview right there and sent her on her way
4. Hiring for an apartment building doorman. He kept telling me that he was just on the phone with Hong Kong putting together a currency exchange transaction and that he was working in another big thing in China. He asked me to wait a few minutes while he finished typing an email. Told me that he’s always on the phone.
5.She cried three times during the interview about how much she hated her current job. My coworker had to get up and grab a box of tissues for her. When she finally calmed down, she informed us that she'll need a special desk chair due to an injury she sustained at her current job, and yes, she did have a workers compensation court case against said job and she hoped to "win big". No one had said anything about hiring her, she just made an assumption that she got the job I guess.
The icing on the cake was that she was interviewing for a workers' compensation job, at a firm where we only represent employers, never injured people. While that doesn't influence hiring decisions, talking at length about her current case against her boss was just a weird thing to bring up. That and crying...
6. I hire a student (university) workers. One of my questions is “Tell me about a time at work where you made a mistake, and how you fixed it.”
This kid had no prior work experience, so I modified the question to remove the “at work” part. I thought he’d tell me about fucking up at school or at home and no. He told me about the time where he ripped his pants in gym class in the fourth grade. He didn’t tell me how he fixed the situation either, so I’m assuming his pants are ripped to this day.
This kid was a goldmine of what not to do in an interview, tbh. He did not get the job.
7. A few years ago, I was hiring for a new graphic designer. The guy didn’t have much working experience and was a little odd, but I liked his portfolio so I decided to interview him anyway.
The whole interview was bizarre, but ended with the question “what do you think are your weaknesses?”
He replied “ummm tbh. I have some pretty violent tendencies...”’
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