From having your purse rummaged through, to someone shouting FIRE!
It’s fair to say everyone has had an uncomfortable job interview, but these ones take the cake. In piece from Slate titled How the weird power dynamics of job interviews can brainwash you into putting up with outrageous behavior (it truly is a fantastic read), readers shared their most outrageous job interview stories.
There’s the classic power trip:
My interviewer asked me what my salary range was, so I researched and sent an email back. He replied stating that it was too high, so I sent him an email back just asking what an acceptable range would be. At that point, he sent back three paragraphs bashing me, stating that I was high maintenance and full of myself.
This interviewer who felt the best way to get to know someone is to get extra personal:
…the interviewer who demanded to look inside a candidate’s purse– presumably because he’d be able to draw deep conclusions about her from the detritus in her handbag; he explained that he found this “to be the best indicator of how organized a woman is,” then “fingered through it, muttered something,” and handed the purse back. She didn’t get the job.
This one seems more like a middle school prank
In what I later learned was a test for the job, the lead person on the interview panel suddenly yelled “FIRE!” and the entire panel got up and started running around the room like crazy people! I promptly got my phone out and dialed 911. They stopped dead in their tracks when I was on the phone to 911 and got upset because it wasn’t a real fire. They were just trying to see what my reaction was to emergency situations (which was not part of the job by any stretch of the imagination).
This one is just bizarre…
They made the 20 final candidates cook dinner for and entertain the senior staff at the executive director’s house. We were given two and a half hours to plan, shop, and cook for 40. … It wasn’t clear if it was supposed to be an evaluation of our skills, but the senior staff spent the majority of the night drinking and dancing.
What is your worst job interview experience?