If you could choose the one time when saying the right thing is the most important, many of us would say that it is during a job interview. One wrong move (a bad joke, a comment about the managers facial expression, even eating the wrong thing for breakfast) and your chance of landing the job goes right out the window. Of course, everybody makes mistakes, which makes those experiences learning tools for the rest of us!
So, we took a look over on Reddit where hiring managers took a look back on some of the worst interview mistakes they have ever seen from a hopeful employee. We would like to present three of the most…teachable moments, so that these never happen to anyone else.
“I had this candidate seemed pretty impressive. He was overqualified academically – had a masters from a good university and had even published a couple of rather intellectual essays so he wasn’t lacking in cognitive capacity. He had been among the favorites for a quite sought-after position. The interview had even gone quite well up until this point:
ME: ‘I see you managed a vegetarian restaurant.’
HIM: ‘What?’
ME: ‘It says here you managed a vegetarian restaurant.’
HIM: ‘Oh, I guess I did write that. Not really though. My girlfriend had an art exhibition and I organized the sandwiches for the opening. They were vegetarian.’
If you are going to lie on a resume, you have to keep to the lie.
Lying shamelessly on the paperwork and casually admitting it in the interview isn’t going to work.”
Pro-tip from Visium. Just don’t lie on your resume! It protects you from messing up like this poor candidate, and also, you will be found out. That’s what employment history checks are for.
“I set up an interview for an acquaintance’s nephew with a company looking to hire 30 college students for summer work. The nephew’s major and the line of work this company performed seemed to mesh perfectly. I knew the hiring manager personally, so it seemed like a great fit. A couple weeks later the acquaintance emails asking about the job. So, I hit up my hiring manager friend and the conversation went something like this:
ME: ‘Hey how’d the round of hiring go?’
HR: ‘Great. Needed to fill 30 spaces and only had to do 31 interviews to fill them.’
ME: ‘Oh cool!
So was Paul one of them?’
HR: ‘Oh, him. Yeah, well…Uhh… He had no clothes on during the interview, so we declined.’
ME: ‘What?!?!
Are you serious? I find it hard to believe he would show up to an interview like.’
HR: ‘Well, it was a Skype interview, and when we brought up his video feed he was laying in bed completely disrobed.’
ME: ‘Oh, well maybe he thought you couldn’t see him. Maybe he thought it was just an audio meeting.’
HR: ‘We told him we could see him and he said, “Sorry,” then covered up with a sheet.
We asked if he wanted to reschedule and he said, no, he was good. So, yeah, we decided to pass.’ Sorry Paul.
I didn’t rat the kid out to his uncle. I just said he didn’t interview well and should maybe work on making a better positive first impression.
I’m sure the kid knows how and why he messed up though.”
Make sure you are dressed to impress at the interview! Or at least dressed! Video interview or in-person, both demand the same amount of respect and preparation.
“I interviewed a gal once and, while we were talking, I was looking over her resume. Her ‘mission statement’ on her resume I read over about 5 or 6 times, worried I was having a stroke.I didn’t really hear much of anything she said during the interview.
The mission statement read as follows (please note English IS her first language or else this wouldn’t have humored me so much): ‘Along with my detail oriented and organizational skills, I will bring encourage team to work cooperatively and creativity to provide an understanding the visual aspects of our work.’
This was for an admin position at a law firm. Not sure what ‘the visual aspects of our work’ entailed in this position, honestly. After the interview, the gal who set up the interview admitted she hadn’t even noticed the ‘mission statement’ when she looked over the resume. I actually cut it out of her resume and have it sitting on my desk some 15 years later. I haven’t been able to make sense of it no matter how many times I read it.”
Make sure to check your resume for any typos, or like in this case completely made up sentences, BEFORE the interview. Having the hiring manager trying to decipher what you mean in a resume instead of listening to you is never a good thing for your chances of employment.
There are three of the most “interesting” interview stories, that we can all learn from. Have you ever had a bad experience at an interview?
If you want to avoid embarrassing interview snafus, consider working with Visium Resources. We make sure every candidate is prepared for a professional interview before sending them to meet the client.
Every Visium candidate will have a first interview with us either in person at our office or through a live video chat. This is to ensure both a great cultural fit as well as good practice for our candidates to make sure they have confidence going into the client interview. For more information on our hiring practices or to apply for a job, visit our website at www.visiumresources.com or give us a call at 321-397-1016.
