Weirdest Interviews

[factotum]

I've been on some pretty weird interviews and was just wondering how many of you guys have had weird interviews, too. It's good to know what kinds of peculiar interview formats are out there.

Here are 2 examples:

1) Group interviews: I have been in a group of 6-8 people and there was only 1 person asking us all the questions. I hate those.

2) A group interview at H&M: I think I was supposed to be sworn to secrecy, but I didn't get the job so I tell you anyway. We had to build things out of Legos and cardboard boxes as a group. Pretty bizarre.

I'd love to hear what else people have been through on their job-hunting quests.

[LaFille]

2) A group interview at H&M: I think I was supposed to be sworn to secrecy, but I didn't get the job so I tell you anyway. We had to build things out of Legos and cardboard boxes as a group. Pretty bizarre.


seriously? to see how you interact with each other or who takes the lead or something? weird...

i don't think i've ever been on a weird interview at all.

[veniqe]

Hilarious!! I wish I could've gone to the second interview.. It's been a while since last I played with Legos!

[factotum]

seriously? to see how you interact with each other or who takes the lead or something? weird...

i don't think i've ever been on a weird interview at all.


Yeah, it was pretty puzzling. I didn't know what they wanted us to do. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the fake advertising agency!

In the paper they described themselves as an ad agency. They had people lined up all around the office for the quickie 5 minute 1st round interview. Then they invited me back for a 2nd interview so that I could "shadow" an employee for a day. So I ended up riding in a car with another person who was being interviewed and 2 current employees. We drove about 20 miles to another suburb, where I got to see them in action. Advertising? Hardly. Turned out the job was door-to-door sales and I had to follow this guy around all day watching people slam doors in his face.

It was a very unsettling experience and I'm just glad I didn't end up as a Special Victim or a Cold Case or something... Now I try to look up companies I've never heard of on the Better Business Bureau's site or on the Rip-Off report.

[CTGirl]

In the paper they described themselves as an ad agency. They had people lined up all around the office for the quickie 5 minute 1st round interview. Then they invited me back for a 2nd interview so that I could "shadow" an employee for a day. So I ended up riding in a car with another person who was being interviewed and 2 current employees. We drove about 20 miles to another suburb, where I got to see them in action. Advertising? Hardly. Turned out the job was door-to-door sales and I had to follow this guy around all day watching people slam doors in his face.


A friend of mine had the exact same experience, I wonder if it was the same company, or if there is more than one that does this......

As for your lego experience, I'd say it was prolly to see how you worked with a team.

[Skyblade]

Yeah, it was pretty puzzling. I didn't know what they wanted us to do. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the fake advertising agency!

In the paper they described themselves as an ad agency. They had people lined up all around the office for the quickie 5 minute 1st round interview. Then they invited me back for a 2nd interview so that I could "shadow" an employee for a day. So I ended up riding in a car with another person who was being interviewed and 2 current employees. We drove about 20 miles to another suburb, where I got to see them in action. Advertising? Hardly. Turned out the job was door-to-door sales and I had to follow this guy around all day watching people slam doors in his face.

It was a very unsettling experience and I'm just glad I didn't end up as a Special Victim or a Cold Case or something... Now I try to look up companies I've never heard of on the Better Business Bureau's site or on the Rip-Off report.

These types of jobs are very common!

[LaFille]

Yeah, it was pretty puzzling. I didn't know what they wanted us to do. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the fake advertising agency!

In the paper they described themselves as an ad agency. They had people lined up all around the office for the quickie 5 minute 1st round interview. Then they invited me back for a 2nd interview so that I could "shadow" an employee for a day. So I ended up riding in a car with another person who was being interviewed and 2 current employees. We drove about 20 miles to another suburb, where I got to see them in action. Advertising? Hardly. Turned out the job was door-to-door sales and I had to follow this guy around all day watching people slam doors in his face.

It was a very unsettling experience and I'm just glad I didn't end up as a Special Victim or a Cold Case or something... Now I try to look up companies I've never heard of on the Better Business Bureau's site or on the Rip-Off report.

i always see listings for jobs that i imagine to be like this. the headlines are like "ADVERTISING!! NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED!!" probably because they know people see advertising as an exciting and glamorous career... far more than door-to-door sales, anyway...

[PenforPrez]

Yeah, it was pretty puzzling. I didn't know what they wanted us to do. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the fake advertising agency!

In the paper they described themselves as an ad agency. They had people lined up all around the office for the quickie 5 minute 1st round interview. Then they invited me back for a 2nd interview so that I could "shadow" an employee for a day. So I ended up riding in a car with another person who was being interviewed and 2 current employees. We drove about 20 miles to another suburb, where I got to see them in action. Advertising? Hardly. Turned out the job was door-to-door sales and I had to follow this guy around all day watching people slam doors in his face.

I did that interview once myself. The first interview was with this 6-foot-4 Irishman who talked so fast that I wasn't sure if he was trying to sell me on the job or if he was trying to sell me swampland in Florida. :rolleyes:

Paul

[MollyMe]

I think the lego thing is a good idea because your natural behaviours are going to come out.
With regular interviews, you know what they want to hear. Even with interviews were they ask you how you would act in scenarios, you know what is a good answer. Interviews are so fake.

[weary]

i think the lego thing woulda weirded me out at first, but then coulda been kind of fun!

(i kept my kid's legos when he decided he'd 'outgrown' them. still have them. :redface: )

[WorkInProgress]

i think the lego thing woulda weirded me out at first, but then coulda been kind of fun!

(i kept my kid's legos when he decided he'd 'outgrown' them. still have them. :redface: )

My mom's still got ours. I think she's saving them for whenever one of us has kids. Or something.

[Kitty]

If I find out there's a group interview (meaning there's a bunch of candidates and one interviewer), I just leave.

When I first graduated from college I went to an interview for a scam company and they actually asked me to come back the next day for a "test" and to wear comfortable shoes because I was going to be doing a lot of walking. Turns out it was some kind of door-to-door sales thing and they were trying to get a free days work out of me. Lame.

[jrwilheim]

I had one once with a recruiter who asked me how I'd feel about being followed to the bathroom for security purposes (this was for some paralegal job working on stuff in a high-profile case).

Last week I had an interview (if you can call it that) that ended in the interviewer offering to circulate my resume around to other people he knew in the field I was really trying to get into (not his), because I was so overqualified for the position he was interviewing me for.

[cache]

When I first started interviewing people, I had this book of interview questions - yeah, a book with hundreds of questions for all sorts of interviews and fields. Anyways, I always took a couple of the psych ones and asked them to people. I can't remember any of them, but they were difficult, and most people couldn't answer them. The funny thing is, I was asking executive level interview questions to people applying for clerical type positions. Or I would ask about a complex business dilemma to someone applying to be a telecom technician.

I know how foolish and unfair it was, but back then, I was green and didn't know any better. I thought everyone should know everything, and if they didn't, they weren't the right person for the job.

[factotum]

When I first started interviewing people, I had this book of interview questions - yeah, a book with hundreds of questions for all sorts of interviews and fields.


Ooh! Do you think they sell that at Amazon or Borders? I want to better prepare myself for the strange questions I might be asked...

[gymgurl]

I had an interview in Tim Hortons once, that was the sweetest thing ever (i'm a coffee junkie :D)

[cache]

Ooh! Do you think they sell that at Amazon or Borders? I want to better prepare myself for the strange questions I might be asked...

I know a good one that I recommend for people is "The Everything Job Interview Book." That has a lot of questions in it with ideal and not so ideal answers. That one I had was left in my office by a predesessor and it just had lists of potential questions for an interviewee...I left it there too when I left.

[CTGirl]

I had an interview in Tim Hortons once, that was the sweetest thing ever (i'm a coffee junkie :D)

My boss conducts a lot of interviews at Starbucks and other coffee places around (we dont have Tim Hortons here)

[weary]

i once had an interviewer ask me if i were to get the job and start the same week they [the whole office] had to go to a big industry conference 2 states away, would i A) feel comfortable being there by myself, and B) what would i do in the following scenario [remember, they are ALL gone to this conference out-of-state]:

the biggest [and most difficult] client calls screaming bloody murder that EVERYTHING'S WRONG with their order and if it's not fixed by close of biz THAT DAY they're pulling all their biz from us!!! oh, and i can't reach ANYONE @ the conference to get help. :eek: "what would you do?"

this was 10+ years ago and all i remember is staring blankly @ the interviewer. oh...and it was for some crummy low-paying receptionist position. ppfff... :googly:

[asm198]

i once had an interviewer ask me if i were to get the job and start the same week they [the whole office] had to go to a big industry conference 2 states away, would i A) feel comfortable being there by myself, and B) what would i do in the following scenario [remember, they are ALL gone to this conference out-of-state]:

the biggest [and most difficult] client calls screaming bloody murder that EVERYTHING'S WRONG with their order and if it's not fixed by close of biz THAT DAY they're pulling all their biz from us!!! oh, and i can't reach ANYONE @ the conference to get help. :eek: "what would you do?"

this was 10+ years ago and all i remember is staring blankly @ the interviewer. oh...and it was for some crummy low-paying receptionist position. ppfff... :googly:

Ooo, good question! What kind of business was it? Heh, I'm already forming an answer in my head, but I like those 'crazy kind of scenerio' type situations.

[weary]

i don't remember specifically...just that it was some sort of graphics/design firm. they were pretty small. like 25 ppl or something.

obviously, i didn't get the job. :rolleyes:

[LaFille]

i once had an interviewer ask me if i were to get the job and start the same week they [the whole office] had to go to a big industry conference 2 states away, would i A) feel comfortable being there by myself, and B) what would i do in the following scenario [remember, they are ALL gone to this conference out-of-state]:

the biggest [and most difficult] client calls screaming bloody murder that EVERYTHING'S WRONG with their order and if it's not fixed by close of biz THAT DAY they're pulling all their biz from us!!! oh, and i can't reach ANYONE @ the conference to get help. :eek: "what would you do?"

this was 10+ years ago and all i remember is staring blankly @ the interviewer. oh...and it was for some crummy low-paying receptionist position. ppfff... :googly:

like that would EVER happen. are interviewers trying to find people to do a job or just make job-seekers' lives miserable?

i'd answer 'that'd be pretty shitty of all of you, now wouldn't it?'

[CTGirl]

i'd answer 'that'd be pretty shitty of all of you, now wouldn't it?'

LOL, awesome answer, I'd so hire you if you said that :)

[asm198]

like that would EVER happen. are interviewers trying to find people to do a job or just make job-seekers' lives miserable?

i'd answer 'that'd be pretty shitty of all of you, now wouldn't it?'

You'd be surprised. I had been working at a hotel for a year when a similar situation happened. We basically were without any sort of manager for a month. We had managers from two other hotels who were on call to help us in an emergency, but we were basically on our own. Well, one day I was working the day shift alone, when the evening shift person called in sick. We only had a staff of 7 on the front desk and no one was picking up their phones. I called the other hotels, trying to get ahold of a manager, and finally was able to get one of them pulled out of a meeting to talk to me.

Stuff like that happened more than once during that month period. We literally had no management there day to day and none of the staff was willing to do the day to day running of the place. It was fun, but very strange. I ended up getting a crash course in hotel management.

[WorkInProgress]

You'd be surprised. I had been working at a hotel for a year when a similar situation happened. We basically were without any sort of manager for a month. We had managers from two other hotels who were on call to help us in an emergency, but we were basically on our own. Well, one day I was working the day shift alone, when the evening shift person called in sick. We only had a staff of 7 on the front desk and no one was picking up their phones. I called the other hotels, trying to get ahold of a manager, and finally was able to get one of them pulled out of a meeting to talk to me.

Stuff like that happened more than once during that month period. We literally had no management there day to day and none of the staff was willing to do the day to day running of the place. It was fun, but very strange. I ended up getting a crash course in hotel management.

But it wasn't your first week, though, right?

[asm198]

No, but just because it wasn't my first week didn't mean I knew what I was doing, as far as running things.

[weary]

No, but just because it wasn't my first week didn't mean I knew what I was doing, as far as running things.

i think WIP's comment was moreso about the fact that at least you knew who to call. can you imagine if that happened your first day or week on the job? even so, i don't envy you! sounds like you pulled it off.

i'm really glad i didn't get the job in my case...
;):

[asm198]

Yeah, I probably would have been freaking if it was my first day on the job.

In any case, it helped so much when they finally did hire a manager because he quite literally had no idea how to do his job. We got into it one day when he demanded I do the payroll stuff for him. I told him off and basically dared him to write me up for it. He puffed up and asked me if I valued my job. I shot back and asked him if he valued his and said that there were people who would be quite interested in knowing he had no idea how to do his job. It was pretty funny to see him suck up after that.

[cache]

When I started at my last job where it was just my boss and I, there were like 7 weeks left in the year, and he had 5 weeks of vacation that he had to use before the end of the year. He ended up coming in like one day a week just to make sure things were going OK. But ever since college freshmen chemistry where my lab partner just mixed together whatever chemicals happen to be within arm's reach, I never minded learning things on my own :huge:

[CTGirl]

When I first started my job, they had conveniently fired the office manager at the same time, and since no one else knew how to do her job, I had to teach myself how to use Microsoft Access in about a week before I was expected to use it to analyze data from a large survey project we were about to run :googly:

[Xander]

My weirdest interview was fairly recent. I had to fill out a long form and take a really easy "computer test" which took 45 minutes. Afterwards, I met the interviewer in the conference room. We shook hands, sat down, and she asked me a couple of questions. Three minutes later, she says she's busy and has to go. We get up, shake hands, and she leaves.

The second person came in, and it was a normal interview, but that first one threw me off. I liked it though because it was efficient, and employers basically know if they'll hire you after the first 2 minutes anyway.

[wordsmith]

I guess what most people would find weird about mine, I don't, and it's that they've been for the most part extremely relaxed and conversational and nonformal. But I've only worked in pretty intensely noncorporate environments, so it's not weird to me. What would be weird is if they'd been like scenes from The Apprentice or something.

[g8ergal83]

I had an interview with an advertising company and I'd sent them my resume and cover letter, etc. that shows how creative and talented I am in advertising and television and marketing, etc. I got there and they wanted me for sales. They wanted me to run an entire sales office in a different neighboring city all on my own without any supervision. I should have left.

Also, I had an interview with the county SCHOOL BOARD for a television production job. I majored in Telecommunication at UF and anyone who has actually majored in it knows that its not about telephone repair, it's televison production and operations and news. Anyway, one of the 4 interviewers says this: "You majored in Telecommunications.. tell me about your telephone repair experience and why you decided to change tracts and go into television?"
I really should have left. I wish I would have. If I ever see any of them again I'll tell them I'm working for Viacom or something.

[AbstractLotus]

I got to this place and it turns out that I was supposed to sell vitamins. I had to buy a kit which was at the least $500, the intro literature and then I had to give them peoples phone numbers so they could join as well. If I had people join, that was going to be how I made money. Till this day I shudder at the thought of that place. After resistance on my part, they introduced me to a girl who was about my age who was doing well. I mentioned I wanted to learn more about their product and they looked nervous. Never again

I've had group interviews too. I didn't get the job and when I returned to the store on numerous occasions I did not see any of the girls who were at the interview. Weird

Recently, I had an interview for a cookie decoratibg position, I thought they were going to talk to me about stuff and then decorate. It turns out the interview was only decorating the cookie. It didn't even matter that I showed up in nice clothes!

I've also had interviews, when people tell me to show up at said time and when I get there they could not remember I was told to go. Now, those are persons to work for :neutral:

[wordsmith]

Hah, when I was just out of high school, my friend dragged me with her to some scam "set your own hours, make millions" kind of jobs, and we met some guy at a truck stop who tried to convince us to sell knockoff ginsu-type knives door to door. What? :rolleyes:

[AbstractLotus]

where do these people come from? the vitamin 'job' was the same way. But thanks to that experience I am more careful now.

[wordsmith]

Well, I kind of knew what the deal was, but figured I'd better go along to prevent my friend from getting tangled up in that BS.

[AbstractLotus]

good for you looking out for your friend...I didn't know about the vitamin thing until I got there. Never again...

[sgh79]

I once had an interview for a nonprofit organization. When their E.D. came out to get me, I noticed she didn't have shoes on--just socks. Then in the middle of the interview she lit up a cigarette. Once she was finished asking me questions, her assistant director, who had a hilarious pompadour hairdo going on, told me I'd have to write a sample letter so they could see what my writing abilities were. I was in the teeniest, grungiest office ever, on what was probably one of the first computers ever made. The whole atmosphere weirded me out. About a year later, both of them were accused of stealing from the company and were fired. I was also on an interview once where the lady interviewing me burped as she was asking me questions. I can just imagine what these people were like to work for.

[wordsmith]

I once had an interviewer who made fun of the area I'm from. Awesome. :rolleyes:

[kdhmps]

Group interviews are very difficult. It is nearly impossible to determine what they are looking for so that you can be called back for a second interview. It is quite common in the social work field.

I've never gotten to play with Legos during one, though!

I remember way back when I had an interview with a "scam" company. There is a large group of advertising companies out there who schedule fifteen minute interviews and may or may not call you back for a day-long second interview... Has anyone else seen these companies? They always advertsie "entry-level." The positions are posted within any field on any major job site.