Strangest person you have interviewed ?

Strangest person you have interviewed ?

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Discussion

Nurton

9 posts

46 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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When interviewing for graduate engineers a few years ago in New Zealand, I had one guy who was an international student from China who had just graduated from Auckland university with reasonable grades. He was pretty bad in the interview, giving mostly yes/no answers and no really grasping any of the technical concepts we asked him about. At the end we ran through some of the standard questions HR gave us:

Me: "Describe yourself in 3 words"
Him:.... thinks for about 2 minutes.... then just says "Great"
Me: Thinks for about 10 seconds.... "ahhh, OK. And 2 more words...."
Him:..... thinks for another minute..... "No, that is the only word I can think of."
Me: Righty-oh!


Me: "Where do you see yourself/your career in 5 years from now."
Him: "I want to be the engineer"
Me: (taking into account his grammar wasn't very good), "no sorry, I don't think you understand, we are interviewing you to be an engineer now, not in 5 years time. What role would you like to be doing in 5 years time?"
Him: "yes, I understand but in 5 years I hope to be the engineer."
Me: "Sorry can you explain, what you mean."
Him: "My uncle in china is "THE engineer" in the big factory where he works. Everybody else has to do what he says. That is what I want."

We didn't offer him the job.

KAgantua

3,848 posts

130 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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Sounds more like a language barrier to me. He thinks he is great and in 5 years time wants to be in charge, whats not to like biggrin

anonymous-user

53 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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We had someone run away part way through an interview - he'd been set a short written technical test and left alone for a while to complete it - the interviewer came back after 20 minutes to see how he was doing and he was nowhere to be seen, he'd just taken his stuff and gone.

Doofus

25,732 posts

172 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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I've been reminded this morning of a recruitment consultant, many years ago, who came to see us with the CVs of a few suitable candidates.

I'm not sure what happened, but it seemed he thought he was talking to us about a different role and he thought he'd brought the wrong CVs with him.

Watching him tie himself in knots trying to make up reasons why each candidate was suitable for a completely different job (which didn't exist in our organisation), while we read the CVs upside-down on the desk to decide whether any were what we wanted was quite good fun.

Nightmare

5,182 posts

283 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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I’ve had a few over the years, tho nothing too dramatic

Dude who turned up to an interview a week early was good. He’d gone from Glasgow to Hertford for it too. We still interviewed him and he got the job

Very experienced and professional lady who came in, sat down, saw my monitor screensaver of a big cat and then cried for 10 minutes because her cat had died that week. Proper full on makeup running blubbery mess. Felt so sorry for her.

A young guy for a dev job. Came in with a stack of dot matrix printer paper literally a foot thick, put it on the desk and said ‘I think you’ll find this will answer any questions you might have’. It was a full print out of his Uni project - maybe fourtran or cobol or something. I think he expected me to read it there and then. he then referrred to it as an answer to literally every question

By far my favourite, however, was a phone interview a few weeks back for a junior front-end dev. Cheery confident guy answers...Intro chat then start asking him some standard questions, which he answers in the third person. Really good answers but it’s just a bit weird.....then on a question about ‘what interests him about dev’ type thing he says ‘yeah he thinks it’s because he likes computer games but I reckon it’s because he’s obsessed with order’. Pause while my brain catches up and he then admits I’m actually speaking to his brother and not him! The actual interviewee is ill in bed but apparently his mum said if he postponed that would be it, and convinced him to do it for him!! ‘I told her it wouldn’t work’ he said. I couldn’t stop laughing and said it was fine to rearrange but was he interested in a job?! ‘Thank you very much but I’m 14’ was the reply. I so wish I’d recorded it. He has been the best by a mile so far as well which is depressing!

98elise

26,376 posts

160 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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doesthiswork said:
We had someone run away part way through an interview - he'd been set a short written technical test and left alone for a while to complete it - the interviewer came back after 20 minutes to see how he was doing and he was nowhere to be seen, he'd just taken his stuff and gone.
On my last job we were looking for contract Business Analysts to do requirements gathering and process modeling. Part of the interview was written test for both. Thats bread and butter stuff for a BA yet one candidate scored zero.

Some people just lie their way into an interview.

0a

23,879 posts

193 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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We had an interview for a web developer. Good CV, the right skills, and a really promising cover paragraph relating why he’d love to work for us.

An Italian chap turned up and absolutely stank the place out with cigarette stink - I have never known anything like it. 6 hours later the room still stank despite leaving the windows open. I don’t care about smokers (indeed I have been known to sneak one myself); but this was off the scale pungent!

He also could barely speak in English - to the point where he could not even comprehend the most basic interview questions. It was a short interview.

Mezzanine

9,148 posts

218 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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bad company said:
I interviewed a candidate who turned up with his dog. No it wasn’t a service dog or anything, he just thought he’d bring the dog along.
hehe

I would give him the job instantly if he promised to bring the dog in everyday!

Pit Pony

8,265 posts

120 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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Mezzanine said:
bad company said:
I interviewed a candidate who turned up with his dog. No it wasn’t a service dog or anything, he just thought he’d bring the dog along.
hehe

I would give him the job instantly if he promised to bring the dog in everyday!
I promise if I ever employ anyone, I'll make it a requirement of the job.

Plus we will have a works cat.

wiggy001

6,542 posts

270 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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I Googled a prospective developer prior to his interview and came across his blog/work diary which read like the BOFH. I was just showing my manager the site when the guy walked passed my desk! He had slipped through the security gates at reception, come up to the first floor, followed someone through the security doors and proceeded to wander the department randomly asking people where I sat!

We proceeded with the interview but it quickly became clear that he had never worked in a office with real people before so was never going to get a customer-facing analyst programmer role with us.

h0b0

7,558 posts

195 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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I was involved with the interview process of a person that was successful in getting the job. A couple of years later, while still employed a dead stripper/prostitute was found in his bed. She had died while he was at work.

The following is an inventory of items found in his house. I think some of the items being included on the list are a little odd considering "Machine gun in violin case" was left off.

Six packets of suspected heroin with green lettering
Four empty white paper wrappers with green lettering
Marijuana-related drug paraphernalia
9-millimeter Beretta handgun
Starter pistol
Two laptops and an iPad
A hard drive, zip drive and flash drive
Two cellphones
Camera and memory card
Metal ring with jewels
Brown, red and black-and-brown purses
Three $20 bills
A handwritten note and a second handwritten note with crayon on it
The book “World’s Most Evil Psychopath”
Orange gym bag
Woman's clothing
Starburst candies

It should be noted, no charges were made against the employee. (it is legal to own guns where he lived).

garythesign

2,056 posts

87 months

Wednesday 8th July 2020
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Pit Pony said:
Mezzanine said:
bad company said:
I interviewed a candidate who turned up with his dog. No it wasn’t a service dog or anything, he just thought he’d bring the dog along.
hehe

I would give him the job instantly if he promised to bring the dog in everyday!
I promise if I ever employ anyone, I'll make it a requirement of the job.

Plus we will have a works cat.
I had a small business and for over 20 years had either one, two or three dogs.

When interviewing, the dogs were far better than me at the process.

They were also good at sniffing out bad customers.

BlackG7R

679 posts

180 months

Thursday 9th July 2020
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Unfortunately not got my own story to add, but this is the most entertaining thread I've read in a while !!

miniman

24,827 posts

261 months

Thursday 9th July 2020
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98elise said:
Some people just lie their way into an interview.
I resemble that remark.

scottyp123

3,881 posts

55 months

Friday 10th July 2020
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This thread reminds me of when I was very young, about 20 I would imagine and me and my mate decided to set up a second hand car pitch selling bangers, I was completely useless at it but my mate who is slightly older than me had previous experience doing something similar working for someone else.

The job centre was more or less right next door from where we set up and we quickly realised we could get free labour from them for washing the cars etc. some sort of YTS scheme or something. Neither of us had any idea of how to interview someone so as it happened a local car trader from the next town was visiting us when they started to show up so he took it upon himself to carry out the interviews.

One of the prerequisites was to stand on this very bench,

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.550027,-2.395086...

Drop their trousers and sing Mammy as loud as they could. If they did it they got the job, We ended up with a lad who was fresh out of the army and a complete psycho who ended up smashing his ex-girlfriends car up right outside the car pitch with a strong arm.

Don't suppose you would get away with things like that anymore, I think it was the best 12 months or so of my career so far.






OzzyR1

5,694 posts

231 months

Saturday 11th July 2020
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Not a direct experience, but in a previous job one of the senior partners was on his 4th marriage in his late 50's.

All of the previous spouses, including the current one had been his secretary at the firm at one time or another.

Remember the 4th (current) wife coming into the office as she had heard he was interviewing for a new PA. She vetoed anyone under 50 and/or remotely good-looking before they even got into the interview room.

Fair play to her, think they're still married now hehe

rxe

6,700 posts

102 months

Monday 13th July 2020
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My most amusing experience was an interviewee. It was a big investment bank back in the day and I'd been headhunted for an opportunity. I'd spoken to them already, and made it clear that whatever they had needed to be spectacular to pry me out of my current job. I was slightly surprised to be in some sort of interview hopper when I got there, but I just assumed these were common HR interview processes.

I sat down with some callow youth in a small office, and he started off with his killer question "why do you want to work at XYZ bank". My reply was loosely "I have no idea, I'm here to explore an interesting opportunity". The colour draining from his face was amusing - he'd been expecting a graduate style interview, and he was actually interviewing a 40 year old that they were keen to hire for a specific role. He managed to hold it together for about 5 minutes, then bailed and went to get his boss. I got taken out for a very nice lunch by way of apology, didn't take the job.

My strangest interviewee decided to answer his phone during an interview for a casual chat with one of his mates. Shortest interview ever, he seemed genuinely surprised that I binned it early.

ClaphamGT3

11,269 posts

242 months

Monday 13th July 2020
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Mrs Clapham used to work in Corporate HR for M&S. Like all M&S grads, she had to start off working in the retail business - albeit doing HR.

She has some truly amazing anecdotes but the weirdest/saddest was the poor woman who keeled over and died during an interview

Doofus

25,732 posts

172 months

Monday 13th July 2020
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ClaphamGT3 said:
She has some truly amazing anecdotes but the weirdest/saddest was the poor woman who keeled over and died during an interview
And your wife knew she was poor because she only had £2.38 in her purse?



illmonkey

18,112 posts

197 months

Monday 13th July 2020
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I went for a entry level web developer, looking for people interested in starting a job in that industry, no previous experience required etc. After a few questions, he handed me a pencil and some paper and asked me to write a website out by hand. Whilst I had done several basic sites in dreamweaver I was no way able to write from scratch! I can't imagine many professionals could do so either.

In an interview at a solicitors, asked a question and I answered along the lines of "Whilst you are soliciting...", got the job, not all bad!