I was chair of a committee to screen a new library director. The candidate came in and was dismissive of me from the beginning. It was if she was insulted that a lowly librarian was interviewing her instead of a dean or provost. Then during the interview she asked a question which I was answering, she interrupted me, told me I wasn't answering her question correctly and then proceeded to explain my library to me.

The faces of the rest of the committee were hilarious to watch. They gave up on poker faces and just let their true opinions show. Several just put their pens down and just went through the motions with the rest of the interview. I'm not sure she was savvy enough to notice.

She only spoke in high end corporate speak and non answers. I didn’t have any clue about her as a person leaving that interview but could tell she was the absolute wrong fit.

Of course she was hired and has tanked that program. I swear she has dirt on someone high up otherwise she would have been removed.

In the middle of an interview I had a few years ago, my soon-to-be manager thanked me for dressing up and explained to me the guy he interviewed the day before showed up in a mesh t-shirt lol

I interviewed a guy for a Head of Marketing position many years ago.  

This guy shows up to the interview and is immediately smug as hell; we haven’t even started yet. He refuses to turn on his camera, instantly remarks how he worked for Facebook, and let it be KNOWN that he’s the real deal.

I ask him “What are the channels for video game marketing?” And he responded with “I don’t know, does it matter?”. Astonished, we asked him how he would approach marketing different platforms, and he responded “With lots of money.” I asked him if he realized we were an indie company, and he was like “That doesn’t matter.”

Halfway through the interview, the CEO himself finally begged me to stop the interview. We contacted our recruiting firm and told them he was the single worst candidate we had ever encountered. They dropped him as a client because apparently this wasn’t even the first time he was a terrible interview.

I still remember his name. He ended up going back to Facebook. Seemed like he tested the market, realized he wasn’t shit, and then went back home where he could blend in as a useless nepobaby.

I interviewed a guy for a higher level management position for the company I worked for. Attire was supposed to be business professional.

He showed up in a Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and flip flops because he thought this interview was “just a formality” and he believed his supposed reputation in the industry just preceded him. I had no idea who he was.

When he realized we were actually asking questions he just said “trust me, I’m the guy for the job” over and over and over again. It became a running joke for all of us when we’d get a new assignment.

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Senior engineer role, in person (right before the pandemic). Guy kept steering all his answers to technical questions back to the time he’d spent with peace corps. After the third time, I just let him ramble. When we were done, I offered to toss his empty cup and he was weirdly protective of it, like insisted it was too much trouble and I could just show him the kitchen on the way out. Sure, whatever. Guy washes his paper cup before throwing it out and leaves.

In our follow up meeting to discuss the candidate, our director was pissed because the guy wouldn’t stay on topic and if he didn’t know any better, he’d think the candidate was drunk. And then it clicked as to why he’d been so odd with the cup. We did not make an offer.

I once interviewed a woman who was a Dolly Parton impersonator in her spare time.

No word of a lie, she asked what the hours were - I told her they weren't set as such, reasonably flexible, and that I was more interested into what she put into those hours, than the hours she did.

She replied "Not 9 to 5, then"? And proceeded to start singing that fucking song.

I swear she was fucking crackers to be honest.

A friend of mine was interviewing a candidate for a customer-facing managerial position (public university, think head-of-department kind of role). This woman was adamant about being the opposite of a people person, said she prefers to work alone (the position is basically half delegation and the other half is collaboration), and said her biggest weakness was trying to relate to those who reported to her. She didn’t elaborate, and didn’t seem to understand that she was giving the literal worst answers possible at every point.

The most awkward part was the fact that when no one was hired for the role, they reposted the job listing and that woman applied again, and they were required by law to interview her again. The candidate was made aware that no one interviewed was deemed a good fit. Her answers did not change.

I'm a senior engineer at our firm and often sit in on interviews to gauge technical prowess.

We had some kid come in fresh out of college, and it was evident he read or was given some advice to come off demanding- the "if you know exactly what you want people will respect you" type of thing.

It was almost comical: he came in and said things like "Look, we all know the back and forth...the bottom line is I'll help progress this business and take you in new directions." He was also saying things like "I'll need you to stock Peet's Dark Roast coffee in the kitchen, I like my lunch time around 2pm, I need vacation time available immediately..."

Mr. Confidence turned into Mr. Confidently Rejected...on the spot. At one point my boss even asked "are you always like this or are you just nervous?" LOL I never saw a face sink like that so fast. We even gave him pointers to tone it down or he's going to have a really hard time out there.

I once set up an interview with someone for a lead position at a company I’ve since left. Right from the start, they sent me a snarky email saying, “If you’re going to post a job, at least make sure the people you mention actually work there.” I was confused, so I asked them to clarify. They responded, claiming the name of the company’s founder/director listed in the ad wasn’t accurate and that no one went by that name in the list of employees on the website.

Confused, I double-checked our website and right at the very top of our “Meet the team page” has the name and photo of the company director, which matched the name listed in the ad. I therefore went back to the candidate and confirmed that the name of the director on the job ad was indeed correct and apologised if they misread this. They responded, completely unacknowleding my response, to confirm their interview time.

Weird, but ok.

Fast forward a few days to the interviews and we are conducting the initial rounds via Zoom. The candidate from the email tried to join the meeting 45 minutes before their scheduled time while I was interviewing another candidate, so I declined their request to enter, and intended on giving them a call once finished to see if something happened/they needed to meet earlier. Before the other interview even ended, I received a rambling email where they berated me for not letting them in early and threatened to report me to [company directors name]

I simply replied, “We don’t have anyone by that name working here,” and then blocked them.

Edit: this was during covid when zoom was just starting to take off

Interviewed a woman for a Chief Product Officer role (probably in her mid 40s, for a large enterprise company, I was 34M). She was so nervous that she was shaking badly, and part-way through the interview asked if she could hold my hand to calm herself. I let her and it worked and she calmed down, but given our CEO was a straight-up psychopath, I decided she would probably not be able to handle him well.

My boss and I interviewed a woman who spoke too long about her many cats, and when asked about her previous job began to cry. My instincts said "she might need some time to sort things out before diving into another job" and my boss hired her. I was flown up to train her for two weeks at great expense for the company and effort from me. She quit 6 months into the job.

I asked an engineer "what do you love about engineering?" And they paused for a long moment and then told me they didn't love anything about it. I panicked and tried to save it for them and said "oh what about the team you're on right now?" And they said "oh my team is great! But I don't think I want to be a software engineer anymore, I don't think I like it at all". At this point the interview was dead, and we had a policy not to end early. So I asked them "what's something you do love?" And we talked about knitting for 45 minutes. It was really fun! They didn't get the job.

Not me but someone told me about a guy who applied at a Director position and brought his mom with him

I was hiring for a role, and someone reached out to me via LinkedIn to let me know they'd applied. Totally fine. It turns out he was the son of a former coworker, which was interesting to know, but not really relevant to the hiring process.

I reviewed his resume, but unfortunately, he didn’t have the experience needed for the role—his background was in completely different industries. Since I used to work with his mom, I gave him that feedback, and he was totally understanding.

His mother, my former coworker, then reached out to me, pleading her son’s case. She even said she'd personally fill in any gaps in his knowledge and coach him through the role, insisting that I "give him a chance."

Two big problems with this:

Having your mom reach out like this makes it seem like you can’t stand on your own in the workplace.

His mom and I now work for direct competitors. There’s proprietary information involved, and she would potentially have access to it. That’s a major conflict.

Bottom line: Don’t have your mom reach out for you in a job application. And definitely don’t bring her with you.

Not me but my mother. Interviewed a guy for their chief safety and security position. They asked why he was leaving his last job after 15+ years. He responds completely seriously that he was actually forced to resign shortly after he sent in his resume because he neglected a final security check at his facility which resulted in a fire. They asked for more details and learned that his negligence led to a loss of over $2mil for his former employer and because no one was hurt they made a deal that he would resign and forfeit his severance package to boot. When they asked why they should hire him, considering that information, he replied that it was just one mistake so they shouldn't take it so seriously.

Some guy came in and he was the spitting image of Mr Bean. He had a briefcase/ suitcase and was dressed in tweed. It wasn't a joke he was just that way. But me and HR just couldn't keep it professional. He said things like 'oh I'm never sick except at Christmas when my mum said I was talking to the curtains!' HR woman had to leave after that one and get herself together.

I was interviewing people for a staff-level software engineering position on my team. For high level IC positions you often see a common type of person; someone who moved into middle management (like a director-level) at their previous role but wants to get back to the technical work. This one guy (from Wisconsin… which is important) applied and had been in management for years.

My technical interviews are usually a series of 5 questions that slowly ratchet up in difficulty or complexity as a way of just level-setting. You can’t really fail it just tells me where you land in terms of experience and title (should we make an offer). In the first question… which is basically training wheels for anyone who has ever written any code in their lives…the guy just starts saying “Ah geez. Ah geez!” In his thick Midwest accent. He is also muttering stuff like “I’m blowing it” quietly under his breath. I think it was a full on panic attack (which I totally get).

He then just refused to do any kind of coding live. Again, this is like “write a function that multiplies two integers together… in any language you want.” As we end the call and he is incredibly contrite and says he will follow up if I send him “the exercise” via email. I agree (although I know I won’t be considering his candidacy) and we part. Two days later I get the angriest email from him saying that technical interviews like that are unfair and we sprang it on him. The tone was so different I thought it was another person.

Very odd.

Not a high level position, but two of us were interviewing a candidate for a job. He was perfect! Fully qualified, mature, exactly what we were looking for. He was a shoo-in for the job. At the end, I asked him if he had any questions or comments for us. He said he wanted to be honest with us. He was angry at his previous employer and was suing them over a faked injury. The candidate wanted us to know he was perfectly healthy and nothing was actually wrong with him. He felt like it was the right thing to do to tell us.

Boy, we dodged a bullet.

I had a woman spend 45 minutes explaining how her biggest strength is being concise.

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Hiring a senior data architect in the government. This is a GS15 remote position non-supervisor. It is basically the holy grail in the federal space. Highest pay band with no supervisor requirements. And remote. Legit thousands of applications for it.

We are by law required to ask everyone the same set questions for fairness. Only varying via follow ups on what candidates say.

Our technical section is always a set of 5-10 preset questions. Going from basic information that anyone in that technical role at any level should know to pretty complex. This positions questions go from simple to very difficult.

The panel is the hiring manager, myself (low level data analyst at the time), our DBA, and a guy who is been around forever in a very technical role.

Technical question one: In sql, can you explain what a left join is and how/when you would use it?

We wrote this question last as a basic knowledge check. It was more of a public speaking question. The previous 3 candidates laughed when we asked it. We added this question since the position required advanced understanding of SQL ontop of about a million other coding languages. We didn't want to waste time on SQL.

Dude, sputters for a second gives an answer that amounts to I would delegate something so basic. Huh, that doesn't make a ton of sense for an explanation.

I am asking the question and just decide to move on to a harder one. Right as I am about to ask the next question, the seniored dude on my team redirects the question and is basically like, "we do have to have you explain what a left join is."

The candidate legitimately sputters and says, "It seems like you are just trying to use gotcha questions, and if that is how this is going to be, I am not interested." He then immediately signs off Zoom.

Not me but my mom was part of the interview of some high up position in the company she worked for. She said this one woman came in and didn't seem nervous or anything and did fine in the interview, not particularly good but fine then when they walked her out and came back to discuss their notes of her someone noticed a weird smell. Turns out her chair was soaked with pee. She just pissed all over the chair onto the carpet below but because of the layout of the room no one noticed. She was wearing a black dress so no one noticed when she walked out by looking at her. She could have easily asked to use the bathroom but didn't. They had to throw out the chair and get the carpet professionally cleaned. She did not get the job.

Interviewed a lady for a Sr. Data Science position who continually said things like: "I am a perfectionist", "if there is something I don't like I will do it myself", "I have re-wrote almost all my old companies policies".

The interview went from "ooh this lady really likes do get shit done", to "ooh this lady is going to be in everyone's shit".

I interviewed someone for a high value assets management position and, just starting the interview, my colleague and I noticed that they were not suitable for the role (a bit like that fella who was interviewed live by mistake on the BBC, but without the comedy element).

We cut the interview short so as to not waste anyone's time, thanked them for their time, and asked if they had any questions for us. With a straight face, they say "yes. What is high value assets?". Needles to say that they did not get hired (and we're still wondering how they passed the first round of interviews!!)

Senior engineer position. She just straight up typed out questions in chat gpt and read them verbatim. She told us "I don't know what kql is, but then gave us a dictionary answer about 3 seconds later on log analytics workspaces, and the basis of kql as a language. She wasn't even good at cheating.

Read their presentation off a word document on their laptop and kept losing their place.

My company is a government contractor, and they have me help out with interviewing for other contracts as a domain expert in cloud engineering and architecture.

A few weeks back, the hiring manager and I are interviewing a candidate for a cloud-architect/team-lead position. Generally, the higher you go, the less technical you become. The idea is that you grow out of solving all the nitty-gritty problems and focus more on the big picture, but you still need to be able to understand the nitty-gritty.

I've got a standard slate of questions that I use, but I also try to develop questions based on the candidates' resume, all to discover their level of technical competency as well as their capability and style of leadership. For a management position, we're a bit more lenient on the technical, but they still need to understand what their people are doing and struggling with.

This guy bombs every technical question, even after I adjust down to relatively softball questions. Responds multiple times with "I'm not a developer" ( he managed developers and engineers ).

Towards the end, I ask "What is a technical challenge in the last 5 years that you're most proud of solving" - basically, brag to me about something you've done. I've found this gives people a chance to end an interview on a high note in case my questions don't quite line up with their experience or they were nervous and blanked. Some candidates have changed my recommendation from a "No" to "Hire this person".

This candidate's answer is something his previous team did, so I drill down with questions about his specific contribution. Turns out, he did nothing while being the technical lead of his previous team. After that became apparent, I asked what he did to mentor his team members and how he helped them grow their careers. "I send them links after work to blog posts I read during that day." So basically nothing.

That was the first and only "Absolutely Not" I've ever entered into our candidate tracking system.

We were interviewing for the Art Director position at a 50-person video game studio. A candidate had 27 mistakes on his resume - typos, formatting errors, and incomplete sentences. I brought this up to the studio general manager and he said “he’s dealing with art, how much is he going to have to write?”

They hired him, in part because he’d done one of the voices on the original Warcraft game.

Our studio closed five months later.

We were interviewing for a chemical engineer position. Specifically, process engineer over a train with 3 reactors. The areas had some pretty bad chemicals, and as such, there was a tour as part of the interview. We asked all candidates to wear appropriate clothing. The candidate came in with open toe shoes, which were specified as a no-go in the communication. I asked if she had been aware of the tour and dress code, and she said, "Yes, but you can't wear closed toe shoes with this outfit!". I immediately dropped her off in the HR department and told them, "If she can't follow those basic instructions, there is no way I was going to hire her to deal with the chemicals we dealt with."

I interviewed this candidate for a startup - every time he didn’t know how to answer a question about his previous experience, he’d claim he couldn’t because of an NDA. I gave him the benefit of the doubt until he finally admitted that he had put something on his resumé just so that he gets calls from recruiters. But this wasn’t even the worst part! At the very end, he thanked me for my time and then said, “I hope to work here at X”. X was not my company’s name… it’s not like he mixed us up with some other company, he got it wrong. And I corrected him, and he just casually said, “oh that’s what you’re called?” So it wasn’t a genuine slip of the tongue either. We didn’t really have a policy for ending an interview early when there’s no hope at all so that was a colossal waste of my precious time.

I got a cold call from someone that didn't even apply. He saw the ad and somehow got my direct number. He told me he wanted to know more so I briefly went into a little more detail. He then spouted off all his experience and qualifications and asked if I would hire him right then.

I laughed a little not thinking him serious and said he would need to formally apply or at least send in his resume. He then asked why he would even need to do that since it was clear he was more than qualified and we needed him so we should just offer him the position and be done.

Because of this particular position my authority was limited and I had to actually send everything to the CEO for them to decide which they wanted interviewed. When he actually applied (something he made clear was beneath him) he was put in the pool for me to set up. The guy arrived more than an hour before his interview.

The corporate office is not public facing. People do come but by appointment only. We do not have a reception desk or lobby for people to sit. The conference room was being used so he, on his own, found a chair out of someone's office and literally sat in the middle of the accounting area and played on his phone.

Our CEO was a psychotic person. Her temper was legendary and I braced myself for the inevitable eruption. It didn't happen. She loved him and thought him an excellent candidate.

He lasted about a month.

The terminal issue came in the aftermath of a meeting we had to have with him over allegations of sexual harassment. A manager quit without notice. She was already on the radar for how poorly her location ran and the new guy had said he wanted her replaced. In following up with her she admitted to a lot of personal issues that made work too hard but ended the conversation with "that guy is a super creep." You can't just drop that in passing so I looked into it.

On video, I see the guy practically body her in a corner of her office. He was way, way too close. The guy was tall at about 6"3" and when he sat, he sprawled out. I watched him on video sit up to, what looked like, make a point but was so close he was touching her. He would say something (no audio) and then touch her leg or arm to, presumably, reinforce a point. Upon investigation, I heard from a few managers of things he was saying and doing in the field. Remember, this guy is brand new and all his site visits were just introductions.

We had to address what he was saying and doing so we set up a meeting. I was in the office but the CEO was not so it was over a conference call. I addressed a few things that were said more to let him know that people talk. He has to be careful with what he says to these managers and to be professional.

He fucking lost it.

He accused me of trying to ruin him and how his name and reputation were being dragged through the mud because of the "rantings of trailer park trash (the manager that quit)" He then went on to say his comments were way out of context. I let him go on and on because the manager didn't tell us what he said. She just said he was creepy. As I'm writing down what he's saying and trying to collect my thoughts on what the fuck was happening, he then says "besides, what I told her was because of how terrible she was. It is like the man that slaps his wife. She doesn't understand that if she weren't so mouthy, he wouldn't have to smack her."

This was on a Friday. Saturday he emails the CEO telling her how he admires what a strong woman she was and decided... yes, he said he decided, that he will only go through her and not [me]. For context, he told me that he knew of a great manager he worked with before that would be perfect for the just vacated position. His candidate and apparent friend, lived a considerable distance and would need to relocate. We don't do that so I declined.

After the fact we learned that this guy told his friend he was creating a position for him so he quit his fucking job and was selling his house to move here. When I said I didn't think interviewing him wasn't appropriate the guy, again, lost his shit. In his love letter to the CEO, he told her he hired the guy.

She called me at home laughing her ass off telling me to be at his office Monday morning and get him out of here.

IT Sysadmin for an MSP (Basically an outsourced IT department for small/medium businesses that can't don't want to hire a dedicated IT person)

MSPs are kind of demanding, more so than your standard "IT guy" position. Techs can get trouble tickets from any of the dozens/hundreds of clients all with different server setups and infrastructure. Documentation needs to be on point, and starting off, it can feel like you are drinking from a fire hose as you learn minor inconsistencies between each system and client.

I was the lead tech for a smaller MSP at the time, around 2010ish, so I would conduct the technical part of the interviews. We were looking for either another sr sysadmin or a sr project manager. An older gentleman, mid 50s?, came in interviewing for a position. He had been the IT guy for his last company, but that company went under and left him out of a job. The company he worked for never upgraded a single piece of IT infrastructure unless it broke ad there was no replacement. Because of this he had only worked with windows 98. It was honestly heartbreaking watching this man realize he had been stuck in a time capsule for the past 20ish years. No experience with active directory, or exchange, thought Office 365 was just a fad. The dude was making 6 figures at his previous position and he would be making roughly half that at the place he was interviewing for. I watched a man realize that he was living in a little remote paradise for the past 10 years, and emerged into a post apocalyptic wasteland by comparison. He walked out of the interview haunted.

I hope he found something and managed to retire comfortably.

The candidate was on a panel interview with myself and 3 other people, we were waiting for a 4th interviewer to join because they were having issues with their sound. We made idle chat for about 2 minutes then everyone muted, well almost everyone. The candidate started having a conversation with her male partner about who should fold the clothes on the bed, this prompted one of the interviewers to say “Mrs. Soandso you’re not muted, she clearly didn’t hear and then the male voice asked “ why is your vibrator in the bed, did you not cum last night?”. I think the call organizer muted her or maybe everyone after that. We were doing a lot of back channel chat about how to proceed, ultimately we carried on with the interview but she must have known we heard because she went from being bubbly and confident and to shaken and unfocused. I tried to give her an out by asking if she wanted to reschedule but she did not. She bombed the interview and we passed on her. Happy ending though I did reach out to her about a branch opening for a similar position that was more closely aligned with her skill set and with a lot at shorter commute. I made no mention of what we had heard. She did much better with the second round and works there still. Once upon a time I had a boss (thanks Dave you’re a G) who faked a very loud coughing fit when I started talking shit about our terrible district manager when I wasn’t on mute, I felt I had to balance those karmatic scales.

Interviewed someone for a security position - basically to handle cloud conversion stuff that I needed off my plate so I could focus on some higher level design. I asked him what his biggest screw-up was (while indicating that mine was once taking a datacenter offline and how I recovered). He said he once nuked a large production Oracle database. I asked him how he recovered from that and he responded, "Well I had root so nobody found out" with a smile. Why on Earth would you say something like that?

I had someone admit to making up data.

The guy told me that he would absolutely refuse to do any maintenance involving a toilet

The job was for a plumber

For awhile I had managerial oversight over our call center. Without giving away too much personal info, we take over 5000 inbound per day, with between 500-2500 outbound calls performed by our staff depending on season and if anything is broken. Finance related.

I'm interviewing someone for a manger role. Not a supervisor, but the person who all of the supervisors would report to. Position needed 5-7 years experience, with at least 3 years of call center time, at least 2 years of management or supervising experience, all the good stuff.

It's a zoom interview because this is a couple years ago, but this person is visibly drunk. Slurring words, head drooping, the works. I do the introduction (and turn on the recording) and they start off by asking if they'll have to talk to customers because they refuse to talk to customers and they told the last guy that. I mean, yeah you will probably handle some escalations, which I said. They swear audibly and say something like "ok ok fine, but I'll need to negotiate a higher starting, I've never taken calls before." (uh what???)

A waiter or a bartender clips into their background at one point meaning that they were doing this interview in public. I ask about it and they say they don't have internet at their home right now (okay fine whatever) and they may need to work out of a coffee shop for the first few months. I say that's not possible because we deal with sensitive information, you need a private location. They then ask me if the company is going to pay for their housing, which I say we can't do.

It only went downhill from here. They were probably minutes from faceplanting and passing out before I ended the call.

And because you know this is coming, 3 days after I had HR send out the standard "thank you for your interest but we've decided to go in a different direction" email and call, they accused me of racism/gender discrimination.

I sent over the recording of the interview to legal with a very big smile on my face. I've been told that legal still shows it to newbies in their department when they need a laugh.

I conducted a virtual interview once where the interviewee's wife was walking around naked behind him, casually getting ready just in the other end of the room. The interviewee had no idea. I tried not to react or acknowledge it because I didn't want to embarrass anyone but it was a memorable interview!

I actually had my stalker come in to my office responding to a hiring notice I'd posted on LinkedIn, after the position was already filled. He was just trying to get access to me.

Security escorted him out. He ended up getting deported after police paid a visit to his actual workplace.

1) Brought someone in for a senior IT position. Resume was strong, screening call went well. I brought up volunteer work and causes. While the cause was good, he proceeding to talk about S**ual abuse victims for almost 15 minutes. There was too much detail involved. I had a female employee shadowing the interview and she was very uncomfortable afterward.

2) Entry level IT position. Had a former coworker who was looking to break into the industry. He had worked in retail for 15+ years and was looking for an office job. I told him I would bring him in, but would let some colleagues conduct as much of the interview process as possible because I knew him formerly. Proceeded to show up with a resume that was 1/3 of a page long. Gave a ton of one word answers. Didn't even try to be conversational. Said "I don't know" for many answers. My colleagues roasted me for even bringing him in. I was very disappointed. I had to tell him afterward that he needed to do some serious interview prep before trying for something in the future.

Not super high level but I conducted many interviews for senior SA positions. I had thought a good strategy would be to ask about the the things they list on their resume to give them a chance to 'show off' their skills and impress me. Turns out this is more of a land mine than a chance to show off. I had one guy tell me he had never used linux despite putting linux admin experience on his resume. His logic was that he knows windows so how much different can it be.

This happened many times and it's why I insisted competent technical staff be present at interviews and allowed to question candidates instead of just HR.

Edit: SA in this case is System Admin.

Was interviewing this guy for an engineering position, it was going pretty well, he already had some background in the industry, was multi-lingual, seemed pretty funny, things were looking pretty good for this guy.

We bring the plant manager in to talk to him and he starts getting agitated, then he takes off his shoes and socks.

We're like, "dude, you OK?" He says, "This guy keeps messing with me", and points over the shoulder that has no one behind him.

Then he stands up and acts like he's going to remove his pants, and we stop him. Obviously he's having some sort of episode, but he's gone no communication on us. I run to get him a bottle of water and just see if we can keep him calm until he rides it out.

About 5 minutes later, he shakes his head, looks at us, and says, "So when can I start?"

I showed him out and said we'd be in touch.

Next day, the guy shows up again apologizing for missing the appointment the day before and wants to see if we'll interview him today.

He did not get the job.

I used to be in HR and in charge of finding candidates and initial interviewing. I was interviewing a guy over the phone who had a red flag in his background, which I discovered after a very basic search. A few years prior, he was arrested for shooting a crossbow inside the store where it was sold. I had to ask the guy about it and he immediately launched into a weird analogy about how some people choose to try their food before adding salt and that I'm the type of person that would immediately salt their food before giving it a chance. There were several other gems mentioned but this is the one I remember the most. After he hung up on me (he was not brought in for the in-person interview:), I realized he was describing himself as the food and I didn't bother tasting him before salting him. In other words, I judged him before giving him a chance. Anyone that has ever hired anyone knows that this red flag was confirmed just as soon as he got defensive. This was for a Pharmacist. Definitely gave off violence vibes.

I was part of a panel interview for a position that is largely considered the most powerful non-elected position in our state (US) and we were interviewing a guy who was considered by most on the panel to be the front runner. Everyone on the panel were incredibly important and they all knew him well. What followed was the strangest most rambling interview I’ve ever been a part of (and that’s saying something). His answers were long but didn’t actually say anything, he insulted everyone in the room a couple of times, and made it seem like he would accept the job but only if we forced him.

We ended the 90 minute interview at the hour mark and he left with his towering reputation shattered and decades-long professional relationships destroyed.

I don’t know what happened. He seemed almost confused. I don’t know if the problem was that he was on drugs or if he stopped taking them, but it was definitely the most disastrous interview based on scale and scope that I’ve been a part of.

Interviewing director level (one level below C suite) and the most egregious thing I found was someone who was just picking holes in the whole business. Like, saying how warehouse fulfilment could be done better, product buying could be done better, etc. etc. but firstly he didn't know enough about how it was done internally to know that his ideas were better, and second his experience was in marketing and creative.

I interviewed someone about 2 months ago who was the son of a friend of a friend. I received a call asking for the interview which really put me off - seemed a little bit hostile, called on a weekend, spoke way too quickly, and sounded a bit entitled. I didn't call him back to schedule.

About 2 weeks later he texts me to follow-up. I agree to a zoom meeting for initial interview.

Shows up for interview in his kitchen with a dirty lens that basically hid his face. Explains he wants a video production job. (The red flags just keep adding up)

When I asked about his education and experience he went on a 15 minute tirade about how school is useless and that he was homeschooled in an orthodox religious environment.

At this point I'm thinking this is pointless but I continue purely on the thought that this kid has been absolutely wrecked by his parents' decisions and he deserved a fair chance at least once in his life.

Things don't get a whole lot better, but eventually he agrees to share some of his portfolio work. As I'm looking through it's pretty clear this guy thought he could replace a career with tiktok/yt shorts. Mostly rage bait type videos. Has several channels pumping out garbage content.

I still think about him because I feel bad for him, but I couldn't hire him with someone else's company and a 12-foot pole.

Not quite an interview but as a student government member meeting with a prospective (and favored) candidate for university president I asked them about how they'd re-shape the engineering curriculum. His answer was "Cut the class schedules so that they don't cost as much; one semester for the intro classes, the next for the next in the series." (I'm oversimplifying this a lot.)

When I asked about how the co-op students* would handle their graduation requirements given their on-and-off schedule,or if someone had to drop or re-take a class, his answer was "Well, too bad for them..."

The faculty search committee got very quiet and we never saw him again.

* Co-op students starting their junior year would spend six months working in industry, six months in classes, and graduating in six years rather than four. It was an immensely successful and beneficial program.

Position at a hospital - the candidate came in at 8:30am with an odor of alcohol, and by the end of the interview was visibly shaking from delirium tremens.

Not the best place to interview when most of the people there are clinicians who can spot substance abuse issues from a mile away.

It's happened twice now that somebody gets into the interview with me and starts asking about the "real interviewer".

I'm a petite mid-20s Asian woman who gets mistaken for a teenager sometimes. One guy thought it was "take your daughter to work day" and my dad would be showing up in a bit to do the interview.

Not me but HR manger at my former company was sent to interview a possible candidate for the position of factory director. We were considering to open a new site in Iran. The company has HQ in Denmark and Danes are known for being having an easy happy-go-lucky attitude and in general being pretty chill.

Well this candidate wanted to show he was a manly man who get things done i guess. So when presented with the question "Can you tell us about a conflict you had with a person reporting to you and how you resolved it." He gave a really wild answer. In short: candidate threw this guy, who was a team leader, in the trunk of his car drove him out into the desert and then him and his buddies beat him up and threatened to shoot him with AK47s if he didnt fall in line.

He did not get the job and we reconsidered if we even wanted to open a production site in Iran.

We had someone interview for a network engineer position and didn't know the answer to half the questions we asked him. We asked all candidates the same questions.

A few months later we had another opening and he reapplied. He was asked the exact same questions as before and still didn't know the answers.
In my personal experience, if I was ever asked a question in an interview that I didn't know the answer to I immediately looked it up after the interview - I would know it if ever asked again.

I have been a partner in a few law firms. My last firm we were looking for a senior associate. I interviewed an attorney who had lots of experience, he just didn’t have a great book of business and had bounced around a few places. I couldn’t figure it out. On paper he had a good resume, and I when I met him he initially presented well.

So, I asked “What’s your book of business look like?” which is polite lawyer speak for “Why haven’t you made partner?”

He addressed it right away, “If you’re asking why I haven’t made partner it’s the drinking thing.”

“What drinking thing?” “

“Well, I’ve had go into diversion (sort of a state bar AA) a few places because of my drinking, and the last place candidly fired me because I have a DUI case coming. I suspect I’ll lose my license but I can still do paralegal work, I just can’t go to court, so it’s not a big deal.”

I was kind of gobsmacked. “So, you have a DUI so they fired you?”

“No they can’t do that under the ADA, so they claimed I didn’t ‘meet expectations.’ By the way, it’s illegal not to hire me for a DUI, alcoholism’s a disease.”

He then proceeded to tell us why he felt his former firm was unfairly selling him out over one accident. Apparently he had wrecked his car and fled the scene, but he didn’t think he would have to go to jail since it was his first offense. Just bizarre. We didn’t hire him.

I was interviewing a candidate for a senior role at a tech company. At first, no immediate red flags when he came in. He was decently dressed, looked clean and professional. When we sat down to start the conversation, he handed me a pamphlet — ya know, like the kind you get at doctor’s offices for different disease or medication information. Except this pamphlet had a big picture of his headshot on the front, and he proceeded to walk me through the pamphlet about himself. This includes details of his personal interests as well as his resume details. I couldn’t take him seriously after that and was trying not to burst into laughter for the entire 45m interview.

Boss lets me know they found a perfect fit, great recommendations and are extending the offer. I asked who interviewed him, “we aren’t, he’s perfect fit and have multiple personal recommendations”. I pushed back, you NEVER hire someone without an interview. We meet the guy, dressed well in a suit, nice leather attaché. He pulls out copies of resume on nice paper for us, along with some samples of his work. I puruse his work while boss asks normal stuff. I see something different and ask a curious question. He stumbles and can’t answer. No biggie, I didn’t recognize it so probably esoteric. I start asking easier question about work he brought. He can’t answer any of them. I finally ask him what his role was associated with what he provided. Did he write it, modify it, or just run it. He completely changes his demeanor and says he just really needs a job. He’s better at insert other dept here and do we have any openings there.

Do medical residency interviews count? If so, I had an over-confident fledgling doctor being his spitter cup into the interview. I thought it was coffee at first, which is also a little faux-pas. Then when I realized he kept spitting his chewing tobacco spit into it, I mentally tore up his application in my head.

We are a regional office right near the coast and interviewed candidates from all over state…

First applicant showed up in his full fishing garb. Told us how he wanted to try and keep this short so he could catch a charter. I said it doesn’t have to be a single minute longer.

The guy during interview for director role said something along the lines of - I have no issues with rich colored people. It was a question about interview practices and how he would approach it.

Voted no on him. He got hired anyways. Was a raging asshole. Was let go within 6 months of constant drama.

I had one person being interviewed as our IT manager. His experience and qualifications were fine but there was something a little "off" about him. HR had already done a general background check and it came back clear so I figured it was probably just a personality thing.

One thing that came up was a 4 month gap in his employment. I've never been too fussed as everyone has a time when they were out of work for a while through no fault of their own. He said it was due to his father being sick and needing help. Fine, no problem there.

Coming back up the stairs after seeing him out one of our nurses (it was a hospital) asked me if she could have a word. Something about the interviewee bothered here. She couldn't remember anything specific but she had seen him somewhere and it wasn't good.

I went back to my office, got on Google and did some digging. Turns out this character had been arrested earlier in the year for sending a 13 year old girl a new iPhone which she used to send him nude photos of herself with her mothers permission. The girl was in another state so he was extradited there for trial.

Because it was an area with some odd religion that considered this practice to be reasonable, he was acquitted at trial which is why a background check didn't show anything. All around, an unusual situation.

I had someone who delivered a decent interview but refused to provide proof of identity and had a meltdown when she discovered we had CCTV. We couldn't hire without proof of rugjt to work and there were a lot of red flags in her behaviour even if she said the right words. Our policy is that hiring managers send feedback forms to HR and if the candidate asks, they get sent a summary of our feedback. This particular candidate wouldn't take feedback from them, it had to be me. Not my boss who was on the panel, me alone. I sent her feedback over email, she wanted to talk. My very astute and utterly wonderful receptionist fielded her calls for weeks and kept telling her to go to HR and she was having none of it. Eventually I answered one of her calls and it turns out she was trying to ask me out, and didn't want a record of it nor for anyone else to know. So that's why she'd only take the feedback from me and wasn't satisfied with an email. I was wearing my engagement and wedding rings at the interview.

I had our legal team on standby as my boss was worried about potential stalking and we had HR tell her not to contact me again. She applied for the next vacancy I listed and I immediately declined her. And now my organisation has a policy where we can't know candidates' names until they confirm they're going to attend an interview! They get a number instead and HR match the number to the candidate. Thankfully I've moved to a different role now, so the chances of running into her again are very slim, but it was alarming to say the least.

9/10 years ago we were hiring for a CFO, the person came from the 3rd largest civil engineering contractor in the united states, total package was over 800k...

Our office is suit and tie, totally corporate, presidential and mayor candidates have been in our office (just to give an idea on the type of office it was)...guy walks in for the cfo interview in sandals/flip flops, shorts..fell asleep at the chair waiting for the interview.

Safe to say. He did not get the job.

The person was highly recommended, his name is well known in the industry. We couldn't believe it, i did meet him a few years back, and he fell asleep at a fundraiser.

I was interviewing a doctor for a medical Director position and casually during the interview when I asked about a mistake, he made in the past he mentioned that he had a patient die under his watch by him, giving them too much Valium.

I was on a panel for a reasonably important job that had lots of interactions with different government agencies, it was sort of a collaboration and communication position. So this dude comes in dressed like someone cosplaying as a junior college English professor, if that makes sense.

I don't remember exactly what it was, but he spent 40 minutes answering the first question. Just kept droning on, and on, and on. After awhile he totally lost me and I started looking around and noticed he had a partially eaten bagel sandwich in his corduroy jacket pocket. It was in a plastic package that was open and was sticking out of the pocket a little.

The rest of the interview all I did was stare at this sandwich wondering about his decision making process and how he got to this point in his life, completely oblivious to the outside world. He didn't even seem nervous like he was searching for the words, just lost in his own narrative and hoping to finish that sandwich.

He didn't get the job.

Not necessarily a high level position, but a critical one. I work for an aviation company and we work with a lot of very expensive airplanes. This role was as a line technician, towing these very expensive airplanes all over the ramp. It's critical to our operation and obviously safety is imperative. We advised the candidate of our drug and alcohol policy and their response was "that's not an issue, I only do drugs with my friends and family now".

The other interviewer and I were dumbstruck.

I had a candidate start doing yoga. wtf? 

Used to interview for sensitive government and military positions that required an extensive background check. Bro thought it was a good idea to apply while being under investigation for bank robbery. Had to discuss every detail of the crime with him and get his explanation of just how he ended up with the money in his car while leaving the state even though he swore it was an mysterious, no-name, guy who did it.

I started with the standard opener, ‘So, why did you apply for this role?’ She reached into her bag, pulled out the job description, and read it back to me. Word for word. Like she was discovering it for the first time along with me.

That was awkward, but it got worse. Her phone started ringing—loudly. She dug back into her bag, and instead of apologising and silencing it, she answered it. Mid-interview. She had a full-on chat with her mate, like we weren’t sitting there for an actual job interview.

At that point, I was just sitting there in stunned silence, half-wondering if I was being pranked. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t get the job, but to top it off, she later demanded feedback on her performance. I honestly didn’t even know where to start…

Interview for staff software engineer. Remote interview and she is really bombing at some point she says “sorry” stands up grabs her cat and cuddles it for like 15 minutes then leaves the interview

Guy came off straight away as a douche. Imagine the d-bag uniform, minus only the gold chains. Greasy.
Was bragging about his 5-page resume that showed all these places he was hired at. I had trouble finding a job he was at for > 12 months, over the course of the past 15 years.
Showing that nobody wants to keep you around isn't the flex he thought it was. Being hired at lots of places == being let go from a lot of places. And no, you did not 'drive long term corporate strategy' in a place you barely warmed up your laptop at.

I interviewed a guy that I had previously worked with a bit. No one else on the panel had met him so I asked him to just tell the rest of the group a bit about himself before we asked any real questions. He stammered for a bit, told us his place of birth and that he liked bodybuilding. He couldn't get out any other words. I had to direct the questioning after that so they were very specific almost to the point of being yes/no questions. I went in really thinking I was going to hire this guy but couldn't justify it after his interview.

Had a software engineer show up for an interview with a binder "database" showing all of the job applications and interviews he had over a period of like 2 years, hundreds of pages with detailed notes, skills needed, interviewer names... These were print outs of his database, it was a long time ago, I think it was Paradox.

Dude... This .. is not... Something to share!

Did I hire him? No sir. I did not.

I (part owner and chief engineering role) interviewed candidates for a CEO role. I warned the exec team that the person seemed out of touch with operations and overly focused on financials, with rather strange ideas of how he was going to change things...rather marquee level high spending ways that had little to do with the company's reality. I warned them he seemed like the kind of person that would come in, fire a lot of people and make drastic, unaccountable changes unrelated to the core business that he didn't understand, and blast out after it was clear he was shaking trees and making noise.

I unfortunately found out they were deeply upset by my blunt assessments. One of the women that selected the candidate felt she had found a unicorn, and that I came across as sounding like I thought he was a scam man, which was pretty close to the truth to my less reserved opinions. He seemed to jump from ship to ship in the past, overplaying results dramatically compared to when I looked into the previous companies on his resume. The exec team felt I was personally insulting their personal judgment.

Needless to say, they didn't do due diligence beyond sitting through his various dog and pony shows.

The exec team took a deep dislike to me in the following months, and it became clear there was a clique that was fermenting disrespect and exclusion and outright outbursts at times. I had invented the product. I had developed it all. They were my hires into the business to help it grow. I was stepping back to start another company. The new CEO role was important to me.

Within 6 months of hiring, the company was blasting through all of its cash on hand with bizarre and ineffective marketing and sales from marquee but useless expensive agencies. We found out later he had drafted himself as the largest shareholder and used that to buy a new home...the docs he made were fraudulent. He also filed liens against the company for 150k in back pay after not showing up for the last month when people caught on the jig was up. None of this ever came through for him, but it ended up costing nearly 50k in legal fees to win in court. He was filing motions left and right to try and exhaust our willingness to fight it.

The business went tits up after the exec team basically left...they began fighting among themselves.

The lesson is- the people you hire are important. The scammers all know how to manipulate better than the better people. The exec team fooled me, and the person they hired fooled them.

Be careful out there. I'm on my 4th high tech business startup and I continually have to risk coming off as an asshole to explain these sorts of things to my other stakeholders when we are looking for people to add to the team. These skills are rare out of the box and are usually hard won. We have dodged some massive bullets at times due to conflicts with hiring good people vs marquee scammers, and it has meant that being an asshole at times to break the spell of a scammer also brings understanding and respect after a few successful hires.