Weirdest Job Interviews

[Locke]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

Damn. I just realized I've never had a job interview. It's pretty much been...yeah you look normal enough. Get to work.

Yeah, kind of what I had posted in a lot of the other 'Job' threads, I've rarely had an 'Interview' in the conventional sense.

Most of my jobs were similar to yours, but as I stated before I grew up in 'Boom Alberta' where most Job requirements consisted of:

"Do you have a pulse? Will you show up for work? Cool...get to it then!"

And then during University getting through Accounting I got jobs through connections and contacts and then I worked for a company for a while and then started my own.

Just a fair warning to all of you posting your experiences I am totally keeping a record of some of these questions for when I'm hiring people.

"Yes, you seem qualified but can you stand on one leg, hop up and down while rubbing your stomach and tapping your head?? You can't? Well perhaps you're just not Penske material!! Oh you understand Seinfeld references? Perhaps I'll have to reconsider then."

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Well, did you?

Don’t leave us hanging.

Maybe? They could have very well said "come in after school on Tuesday for your first shift" but I wouldn't have understood them. I never went in for a shift.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Silly me, when I interviewed I only asked questions relevant to the job.

It would be funny to turn the tables at the end of the interview when they ask the candidate if they have questions. Just ask the most bizarre and absurd questions.

[Buff]

I always helped my manager interview summer students for the summer positions. Part of the job was to sometimes travel to offsite locations so he would always ask "Do you have a valid drivers license?"

Fourteen years ago one guy replied "I have driven a tank!"

Our paths have recently crossed again and I see him quite regularly now. He thinks in a different way and it sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable because I don't always know how to respond to him.

[Nsd1]

“How would you describe the colour yellow to a blind person?” was the only unconventional question I’ve been asked so far.

[Voodooman]

I used to be an ops manager for one of the electronic chains. We were constantly hiring (shocking), so I used to have some of my team go through resumes and call in anyone who looked promising to be able to finish their parole without ending up back in jail.

I would be running the sales floor during the day, so I’d just have the interviews set in blocks (like 2-4PM, and interview on a first come basis, when I had a few free minutes). The applicants would be told this up front.

I likely interviewed 500 people in the course of a year, but this one stood out. The guy (looked like hardcore D&D player, ponytail, no intention of moving out of Mom’s basement ever, likely had never touched a girl) comes in, and promptly starts to berate me that he’s been waiting for 40 minutes, it was rude, blah, blah, blah.

I sit stunned for a moment, then promptly tell him to get the #### out of my office. He’s genuinely shocked, I guess he thought he’d get points for his moxie or whatever. He did not. I still remember it clearly to this day.

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

And when you look at the "corporate change" consultants in disbelief asking "are you eff...n' for real???", they look back at you disapprovingly, while making notes in their little notepads, probably identifying you as "change-averse"...

The weirdest interview I've ever had was in a Sheraton NE hotel room many years ago for a water quality engineering position in Qatar. The interviewer - a fat guy of Middle Eastern descent - started by offering me a Scotch and asking if I had ever been in Israel?..

This is probably because if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport, you can't enter Qatar.

[Dion]

I remember applying for a job with Canon Copiers back in the early 80's. I was greeted by a woman who looked at my resume and education. She seemed impressed with what I had and gave me every indication that she was going to give me the job.

Problem was some district manager ( chinese guy) was there checking on things and wanted to see me. I sat down and did the greetings and such and then out of the blue he threw a series of complex mathematical questions at me. He caught of guard and I was unable to give him the answers he wanted.

He asked me why I couldn't answer the math questions. I said I was caught off guard to start and that I have trouble doing those complex type of equations in my head. I also said I could do this if I had a calculator. He gave me this look of wtf and said you are on no use to me

I'm leaving the building when the same woman who interviewed me said it was bad luck that he was here today. Any other day she said and she would have hired me.

[You Need a Thneed]

Not so much stupid questions, but the worst job interview was for the car wash I worked at for 6 weeks.

It wasn’t so much a job interview as a “you showed up so we are putting you to work”.

[topfiverecords]

I had an interview once with a small time home design company. I had a pretty sweet gig already but this job would have paid a fair amount more so I explored it. After the first interview with the principal he made me come back the next day after 5 and do a test. I showed up and two of the techs needed to be there to set me up on a machine with CAD and they gave me a print of a complicated land survey to draw. No surprise it was full of holes and needed some trigonometric calculations to determine half the dimensions before even getting to the drafting part. Once I finished before the hour was up these two scrubs were choked as no one had ever completed it, and correctly in the hour. Obviously not them either.

I got offered the job but turned it down cause I got a view into what the two guys I’d have to work with were like.

A job I did get I wasn’t even supposed to be the one getting interviewed. I received an email from one of Calgary’s top interior designers about working on a project. I had seen a show on HGTV where he was interviewed about and toured one of the homes he did in Mount Royal, plus had seen his work in tons of magazines so I had sent the office a quick email to see if they were looking to hire anyone. I didn’t hear back, until months later I got this email. So we arranged a meeting but shortly after I showed up I could tell they thought I was someone else and I didn’t know the person that supposedly had referred “me”. There was some miscommunication and someone in the office gave him my email instead of the other guy’s by mistake. I told him I had emailed a few months back to see if they were looking to hire anyone full time and wasn’t the guy referred to them to do renderings. Luck had it though that I could do the rendering work too, and since I was already there he interviewed me and gave me the project. Then we discussed a full time job and I just had to come in a couple days later to meet with his assistant for final sign off.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

This is probably because if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport, you can't enter Qatar.

First thing I thought of too. Yes...that is a very relevant employment question.

[Buff]

The first time I ever helped my manager interview was for a permanent full-time position on the help desk. I can't remember how it was worded but one of the questions was about honesty. One candidate said he is brutally honest and gave an example. He pointed at me and said "You have an ugly growth on your chin and I find it disturbing and unprofessional to not take care of it and have it removed. I'm going to have nightmares if I have to come in each day and see that growth so I'm going to ask you to improve your gross appearance and if you don't take that well, then I would go to the manager and ask him to deal with you." It was quite clear that he was referring to my goatee...

[djsFlames]

It's usually your energy, not your answers. So when the questions get weird you just have to pretend like you're asked that #### every day and not get phased, cause you're expected to be phased.

You can give equally absurd answers but if you do so slyly and confidently you'll gain approval.

The best way to impress is to turn the tables and start interviewing the interviewer while giving the indication that you have a few options on the table (even if you don't) and you want to know why that company is the best choice for you, and what sets them apart. Doing that should also tell you a lot about the people there and how they feel about the company, can save you from wasted time. Really that seems like the best mindset to approach everything with though.. high value.

Fun topic though, interesting questions.

[JohnnyB]

I haven't had many weird interviews. My weirdest were with Apple, but even they weren't that strange. I probably went through five or seven rounds, and at the end of every round they would coach me on how to improve for the next round. That was honestly the best interview feedback I've ever had, but a lot of it was around really drinking the Apple koolaid and making yourself into a fanboy. They never really asked me anything that was specifically relevant to the position. The only time it got relevant to the position was when I finally interviewed with the hiring manager. The role would have put me in charge of a major Apple store that had something more than $1B HKD in annual revenue, and I had zero retail background. Finally having someone to talk to about the specifics of the role, it sounded awful to me. I really didn't even know why I was there. I had just gone for the initial interview for the sake of getting some practice during my MBA. The job sounded like something I would hate when I actually learned what it was, and I wasn't drinking the Apple koolaid, so that was that. Actually the demand of being a rabid Apple fanboy really put me off. I sincerely appreciated the quality of the rest of the feedback they gave though.

[FireGilbert]

By far my strangest interview experience was applying for an oilfield services company right out of university. This was a complicated process involving an initial interview, an overnight tour of their Southern Alberta facilities, then 2 more interviews.

The first interview was pretty standard although had a few irrelevant questions. I think this was just to see if the candidates weren't too crazy. Then I had the site tour. This involved hopping on a bus with like 15 other candidates, touring the facilities, then ending up Medicine Hat to spend the night. Dinner and drinks that night was especially awkward as it was tough to make friends with completing candidates and it felt like every conversation was being judged as part of the interview. I also wasn't sure how much I should be drinking as it seemed like we were expected to have a few and socialize but I didn't want to get too rowdy.

The next day we headed back to Calgary and took turns being interviewed in the back of the bus. The purpose of this 2nd interview was to get feedback on our site visits and determine which department head we would do our final interview with. This turned into the most awkward interview of my life. After a few questions about why I wanted the job the interviewer then got really serious and said we needed to talk about the elephant in the room. I was very confused. He then went on a long rant about how he didn't like hiring engineers from Calgary as supposedly they would all get sick of field work after 2 years and use that experience to find a better job back home. He then basically accused me of wanting to do the same thing and asked for assurances I wouldn't leave after 2 years. This completely knocked me off guard and I had no clue how to respond. Eventually I put something together like I couldn't predict the future but if I was working for a company that gave me training and opportunity I would have loyalty towards them. He accepted the answer but I was officially frazzled.

The final interview was back in Calgary with the head of the department I was trying to get into. This was also awkward because I got the impression the interviewer just couldn't be bothered. He only asked me one question before wrapping up the interview after 5 minutes. At the time I rationalised this as because I had already spent a day in tours and interviews so there wasn't much left to know, but in hindsight I wondered if I left a bad first impressed because I was in a poor state of mind from the previous interview. In any case I will never know exactly what went wrong as I didn't get the job and they didn't provide any feedback.