People Share Unfortunate Interviews That Didn’t Land Them The Job

Job interviews can be awkward and nerve-wracking. Unfortunately, most of us know how it feels to have a bad interview. When you really want the job, the nerves can get the best of you.

We have probably all had the unfortunate experience of saying something stupid that we wish we hadn’t let slip. Sometimes our mouths work faster than our brains and then we just want to bury our heads in embarrassment.

In terms of resume boosters, happiness and pixie dust are not usually the skills employers look for. While we love the positive energy, we can’t imagine these were the things that the employer wanted to hear.

This is a great example of how to not get the job. Insulting your direct superior during the interview is a brave choice for someone who is trying to get a job.

This person had a very interesting experience while interviewing a candidate for an engineering internship. Internships are a way for employers to train young engineers and grow their skills. Someone with anger issues is probably not the kind of candidate they’re looking for.

Here we have an example of a job that tried to bamboozle a candidate rather than an interviewee causing problems. At least the candidate realized that the pay was not what they had advertised early on.

Typically, “zoning out” is not a quality employers look for in their candidates. And calling the work boring and repetitive doesn’t seem like the best way to describe the job you’re trying to get.

We feel like we shouldn’t have to say this but lying on your resume is never a good idea! The truth always comes out in the end. In this case, it came out in the very first interview.

Teaching is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. After all, they’re shaping the youth of tomorrow! This person had a shocking response when they scolded a child for cheating.

“What’s your greatest strength and weakness” is one of those common interview questions most of us dread. This candidate didn’t hesitate to take the question very literally. His greatest strength is free lifts, apparently.

Most of us can probably relate to interview jitters. When you’re really eager to get a job it can be very intimidating to interview. Sometimes the interviewer only makes you more nervous if you can’t tell if they like you as a candidate or not.

Group interviews can be difficult to navigate. You’re looking your competition in the eye while you all fight for the same position! Apparently, one guy in the interview was fairly unbothered because he had his phone out the whole time.

Doing some research before a job interview is a great way to set yourself up for success. But, make sure you do the research for the right company!

Having a smile that lights up a room will probably get you pretty far in life. They say smiling is the same in every language. But talking about how fantastic your smile is is probably not what your interviewers want to hear about. 

Sometimes it’s the interviewer who is the problem more than the interviewee. That certainly seems to be the case in this instance. It can be frustrating to come prepared for an interview to be met with an employer who seems uninterested in your answers.

This might be the shortest interview of all time. Rule number one of interviewing is to never say “I don’t know”. You always want to answer the questions to the best of your availability so this interviewee might have ruined his chances right from the start.

It’s a good thing that this candidate recognized this was a pyramid scheme before they started  a position at the company. But, as it turns out, they probably wouldn’t have gotten the position even if they wanted it.

It’s rare that an interview ends before it even begins. Usually, you can work your way through the kinks and make it out alright, but this person had one of those moments that are hard to come back from.

In a long list of things you should never ever do during an interview is ask your interviewer to wait while you answer a phone call. We can hardly believe that someone would actually do this!

Shockingly, companies do not want to hire toddlers who throw tantrums (shocking, we know). So, it is no wonder that this applicant did not get the job when he threw a fit in front of the interviewer.

When interviewing anywhere, you probably don’t want to discuss things like hacking software. It is likely to throw off your interviewer and make them wonder about your character (naturally).

It is not uncommon for retail stores to request that their employees on the floor wear their clothing. It makes everyone look like they belong in the store and it also makes retail workers walking mannequins.

Honesty is (usually) the best policy but there is such a thing as too much honesty. For example, in this situation, the person didn’t need to reveal that they’d rather work at Mcdonald’s than at KFC. 

The easiest question of any interview is most likely going to be “What is your name?”. This is true for almost any job ever! But if you struggle with that one, it doesn’t bode well for the remainder of the session.

We can’t blame the interviewee for this one because they couldn’t have known that they were accidentally “outing” one of the people on the interview panel. Revealing that their resume was on Facebook was probably more embarrassing for the interviewer than it was for the interviewee.

What job assks their candidates to pay an “administrative fee”? We don’t even know what that could possibly mean. Isn’t the employer supposed to pay the employee and not the other way around?

There are some things we should all just keep t ourselves. This is particularly true in a work environment. Not every thought that crosses your mind should be voiced out loud!

This is another example of the interviewer being as inappropriate as the interviewee can be. Telling someone that you will cut off their hair is not only a completely unhinged threat to make, but is also weirdly specific.

While it would be awfully nice to be able to be able to set our own salary, this is not typically the case. Otherwise we’d all be billionaires by now! This person was right to see this little comment as a major red flag.

As we’ve learned, lying on the resume is likely to come out once you’re in the interview process. It’s hard to lie about your skills and experience when they start asking you real questions about those jobs.