HR Pros Recount Their Worst Interviews
By KEVIN FLOOD
Editor, HRnext

Ask HR professionals about their worst job interviews, and you'll get tales of applicants with everything from bad attitudes and repulsive personal habits to propensities for talking to walls or gleefully disclosing that they last worked as prostitutes.

That was what HRnext found last week, when it asked HR pros to post their nightmare job-interview stories in the site's Community section.

An accompanying poll offered four choices for "worst interview sin." With 585 people voting, 36 percent chose "arriving poorly dressed or groomed." But nearly as many (35 percent) voted for "arriving late."

"Being preoccupied with money" got 16 percent of the vote, while the remaining 13 percent said "knowing nothing about the company" is the worst interview sin.
For revelations, though, it was hard to top the war stories posted under the discussion question, "What's the worst job interview you've ever conducted?"

Many of the responses described applicants who apparently didn't care whether they got the job for which they were interviewing. One HR pro, identified only as JR, told of one candidate arriving "with a cigarette hanging from her mouth, flicking ashes all over." The candidate said she "wanted a job, any job would do, as long as the tips were good."
D.J. Horrigan, HR manager for the Iowa-based Garst Seed Co., said one candidate for a job in building maintenance communicated his attitude through his choice of apparel - which was almost no apparel. "The person came in without a shirt," Horrigan wrote. "No policy against it, so I interviewed."

But afterwards, he added, he felt compelled to put up a sign that read, "No Shirt, No Interview."

"Times are a'changin'," he remarked.

Other interview disasters involved applicants with extremely poor personal habits or hygiene.

Julie Bennett, HR manager for Wings for Children & Families, Inc., a nonprofit agency serving five counties in Maine, recalled that one applicant "had a very bad case of acne."
"It was obvious that he was very nervous during the interview," Bennett wrote, "because he kept popping his pimples. By the end of the interview, there were spots of blood all over his face. I didn't eat lunch that day!"

Jeanette Crosby, director of HR for New England Pottery in Foxboro, Mass., recalled that at the end of a long day of college recruiting, she was asked to see a last-minute applicant. "This young woman had the biggest hickey on her neck I had ever seen," Crosby wrote. "A scarf? A turtleneck? Surely there were ways to hide this! I just couldn't listen to a word she was saying."

Mark R. Horner, senior human resources generalist for Lake County in Illinois, was one of several with tales of the just plain bizarre. He wrote that one candidate he interviewed for the job of information desk attendant "would stand up, turn away from me, and face the wall while answering questions."

"Not sure what was going on there," he added.

Clair Eichelberg of QTI Professional Staffing in Madison, Wis., had an encounter that was not only strange but scary: "The candidate stopped the interview, and began to reach across the desk. As I backed up the candidate asked me if the necklace I was wearing was stapled to me or not."

Tami Anderson-Osgood, now a benefits specialist with ACS, a government contractor on Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee, had a brush with the supernatural while conducting an interview for a previous employer: "The female applicant was obviously suffering from a nasty head cold. She apologized for all her sniffling and told me that Satan had flown up her nose and decided to (temporarily) reside there!"

Dealing with applicants who chose to bring boyfriends, girlfriends, and children into the interview was another refrain in the postings.

One applicant managed to commit that sin as well as show up poorly dressed - "in a sleeveless denim shirt, blue jeans with ragged knees, and white pumps," according to a poster named Linda. "She then proceeded to describe the meaning of each of her tattoos. Her 'boyfriend' was waiting for her, and she took a cell-phone call from her husband while I was asking the obligatory questions!"

Two HR pros wrote of interviewing applicants who turned out to have experience in...well...personal services.

Ronald L. Wise, currently director of HR for CBIZ/McClain & Company Business Services Inc., recalled conducting an interview for a previous employer and asking the applicant to explain a gap in her work history. "She seemed pleased to explain that she was a prostitute during that period," he wrote. "I am certain that whatever I said after that made absolutely no sense."

"I was interviewing for a part-time receptionist," wrote the second poster, who identified herself only as Laura. The applicant arrived casually dressed, but not unacceptably so. "On the way to my office, she started to tell me that she was hoping to get her children back. The story further unfolded that her kids were taken away at knifepoint by her husband, and that he was hiring different folks (cab drivers, bus driver, etc.) to run her over! She later revealed she was a 'street walker,' and if she didn't get the job, someone would be 'in for it.'"

"Needless to say," Laura added, "she wasn't hired!"