* Readers share some wacky but true interview blunders
CareerBuilder.com recently released results from a survey about the biggest blunders candidates have made during job interviews. (See https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/itlead/2004/0126itlead2.html). In response, many of you offered up your own gems. Some sound too wacky to be believable, but are entertaining nonetheless:
* When Terry Gardner, IS manager for Furniture Marketing Group, asked a candidate for a copy of his resume, he asked to be excused for a minute. “He took his spiral notebook out of his pocket, borrowed a pencil from my secretary, jotted down a couple of previous job descriptions, tore it out of the notebook, came back in my office and handed it to me,” Gardner says.
* “I actually had a candidate blow his nose in his hand and then offer to shake my hand,” Karen Womack reports.
* George Frangos asks candidates why they want to work for his agency, and these three individuals’ responses didn’t exactly win him over: 1. Candidate was relocating to this area to be near his girlfriend. 2. Although this agency was beneath the candidate’s esteem, it was a useful stepping stone to better things. 3. Although not really the candidate’s preference, it would give him something to do for the next year or so until his career objectives crystallized.
* “I had one woman come to an interview for a professional position in her McDonald’s uniform,” Lisa Dilg says.
* A woman got a page during the interview and she fished around in her bra (through the neckline of her blouse), laughing and giggling, until she finally came up with the pager, says a reader who wished to share her story but not her name.
* George Medina, IT director for TBG Financial, says a network administrator arrived for the interview adorned with a large pair of headphones around his neck and the cord tucked in his suit pocket. He expected the candidate to realize his mistake during the course of the interview, but no dice.
* One reader who asked not to be identified interviewed a candidate who said he had been terminated, but did not say why. The next day, this reader saw the candidate’s picture on the front page of the newspaper. The person has just been convicted of collecting and distributing child pornography at a previous job. “We wondered exactly when we would have found this out had we offered the candidate a position,” the manager says.
* “I once had a prospective employee ask when I was moving on – and if I was ‘well-liked’ by the company- because he, in fact, wanted my job rather than the one he had applied for,” Molly Cashman says.
