Coffee Break Pt 1 Finale – Part 2

O.K. So still I know this is a shameless, “check out my blog” marketing ploy, but, well I want people to come and join me. The winner of this gets a best answer on linked in, and number 2-5 get a good one. Just comment on this blog with the number you are voting for. Keep in mind there are two parts. So here is my second story and the rest of the listings:

I just quit a job running the operational side of a friends espresso machine repair business, and through odd circumstances I interviewed at a company called Teledynamics. I was dating a girl that worked there along with her housemate. They suggested I interview for a job selling toll free numbers for Pacific Bell. The 888’s had just come out and they were offering boutique numbers (888 fixteeth, and 888 carsales etc…).

I walked into the office with them one morning and was ushered up the stairs to a loft over the main sales floor. Sales floor meaning boiler room with an old fashion push button phone and hundreds of file cards with D&B information littered across the tops of twenty desks in a room that was made to two. I had to weave through the chairs to make it to the stairs and if anyone had backed up, I would have been clipped in the thigh.

When I got to the top of the staircase, a man I could only compare in resemblence to Lord Farquaad from Shrek was siiting behind a desk that swallowed him whole. He was sitting in a chair that raised him high in the air, and when I sat in the one he motioned too, I was now one foot his junior.

“So, —— tells me you want a job? Do you have any sales experience?”

I did not, so I was nervous. I leaned forward to answer and set my hand on his desk.

“Do not EVER TOUCH MY DESK!” He yelled at the top of his lungs. I jumped back startled, but the rest of the people in the upstairs office did not stop what they were doing. I should have taken this as a sign to flee. Instead I aplogized and started to respond to his question. He was breathing heavily and raised a finger for me to be silent. He reached down, nearly falling from his chair and opened his desk drawer. He pulled out a huge pill bottle and quickly opened it, downing a couple and then drinking from a bottle of water on his desk. Instantly he was calmer, long before the pills could have started to take effect.

“Oh, I am sorry. Do you take Prozac? Do you want one, they help me focus.”

I can not tell you anything else, but that I really needed a job, and the interview continued. I was offered and I took the job. I worked there for a year, ended up selling long distance, then went into a brokership with a carrier on my own. I was my bosses best producer after three weeks and he never screamed at me again.

31. David Brotman, FAIA
Two partners and I were being interviewed for an Architectural Commission to Design a Las Vegas Hotel & Casino on the Strip. As part of the presentation, I performed magic tricks and tied them into the story we were telling the client about what we were going to do. We made the point that that the venue was all about entertainment and the magic subliminally underscored that fact. PS. We got the job.

32. Charlene Thompson-Nagel
I was interviewing in retail at the time. The candidate came into my office, I greeted him, got ready to start the interview. He started to look around and asked to see God and he would only speak to God. I quickly rang for security. They escorted him out of the HR area, but he went up to the sales floor and proceeded to break many bottles in the fragrance dept. Needless to say, the police had to take him away.

33. Dave Soteros
Years ago when I was working in a IT staffing office a young man called in and asked me for a job stating his only attribute was that he had a photographic memory.
I paused and then suggested he may want to call CSIS. (Canadian equivalent to the CIA)
To this day I’ve not seen “photographic memory” as a qualification for any job and if someone knows of one I’d like to hear about it.

34. John Shulansky
I was invited for a third interview for a senior officer position at a major financial services firm. I arrived a few minutes early and parked in the private executive garage as instructed. The door into the building was locked and I had a hard time getting security to remotely open the door. As I was pulling and struggling, the door suddenly buzzed open and the door handle went directly into my suit pants pocket. Caught suddenly off balance, I nearly fell and tore my suit pants wide open from waist to mid-thigh. With all hope modesty completely lost, I decided to simply present myself at the CEOs office, explain my situation and see where it went. It was a very interesting and rigorous day, totally embarrassing, very disconcerting, and needless to say, I didn’t get the position.

35. Keith Maher
A friend of mine actually did this recently through a bout of nerves in a phonecall to a recruitment consultancy.

“Hello Can I speak to Diane Brown Please”?
“Will she know what it is regarding”?
“I’m a stalker”

Click…….

36. Vito Delre
We were interviewing a candidate for a support position and he made us a aware that he was out for over a year. So I asked him what he’s been doing to keep himself busy. Since this was a technical postion, I would expected and answer like “I’ve been playing with a variety of OS and applications trying to keep up with the technology”…or something to that affect. But instead he answered, “Oh, I’ve been riding my bike”. OOOKKKKKKK…so as we ended the interview and should hands, for some reason I looked at the ground. To my surprise, he was wearing white gym shoes with his suit…..and they were not clean.

37. Mary Stewart McGovern
I was called on by a contact to interview as an executive recruiter with her firm. Keep in mind, I hadn’t heard from her in over 10 months.

At the time she called, I:
* had 15 years experience as an accountant
* had ZERO years experience as a recruiter
* was 8 months pregnant

She insisted I would make an ideal recruiter for accountants and that none of this mattered. Too bad she didn’t really go over the “being pregnant” part with her manager. The look on his face was *priceless*! However, he agreed to conduct the interview and I guess I must have won him over. The next day, I was made an offer to start immediately.

And that, folks, is how I left accounting and became an executive recruiter specializing in placing accountants and finance executives!

(Of course, I ended up leaving and starting my own firm last August. And that’s a totally different story that I won’t bore you with today. )

38. Gene Russell
As the interviewer I like picking out the obvious “overstatements” on the resume and drilling down to what the actual job, accomplishment, or “strategic initiative” really boiled down to. These usually produce the funniest moments . . . . . .at least for me. The best candidates usually have a real answer peppered with humor. The worst candidates seem to be looking for the exit while attempting to move their lips as best they can. One candidate comes to mind a few years back when the Internet was …… well special. The resume stated some type of super fantastic strategic web intiative which drove X gazillion more dollars in sales and profits. An absolutely fantastic result soley based upon the intellect and capability of the candidate. After drilling down for a few minutes, it turns out the candidate had hired someone to do a web page. . . single page . . . . for his company. Moral of the story: Ask a lot of simple detailed questions in plain English and see what you get. – Regards!

40. Chad Sickels
Not hilarious by any means, but I did recently interview a guy that was EXACTLY like the Milton character in Office Space. I almost asked him if he ever lost a stapler.

Speech, appearance, mannerisms, EVERYTHING was like Milton.

41. and 42.Andrew Meyer
Two situations.

41) During the tech boom in the 90’s, we were interviewing programmers. This woman came in with a fantastic resume, it was too good to be true. So I started off asking her about her C++ experience.
“Oh yea,” she replied. “I do the C++”.
So then I asked her what other languages she codes in.
“Coding, what’s that?”

42) Interviewing a project manager in South Africa. We were doing a panel interview of this very polite and attractive young woman for a junior program manager position. So the one guy on the panel says:
“You need me to finish this one activity, but I’m lazy, lazy, lazy and I’m unmotivated. How are you going to get me to do this?”
Well she starts off with the usual babble “Well, I’d explain how important it is, blah blah blah.”
Well, he cuts her off, saying:
“No, you don’t understand, I’m laaaaa-zyyyy.”
She took one look at him and stated flatly:
“Then I’ll take you out back and kick your ass.”
She got the job!

43. Ethan OToole
My first real job interview, while I was attending college was for a pager alpha-text dispatch serivce. They act like the office for doctors and other businesses, by means of call forwarding.

There was a typing test and requirement of 40 WPM. I was very nervous, but a computer geek that had been using quite a bit of IRC, and old but stable messaging/chat system from the early days of the internet.

I had to use a real typewriter, which was a bit new. I had to type from a page, which also was new to me. The lady asked me if I had taken a test before, and all I could reference was a program on a computer once, that I think said around 45 WPM.

So I’m off. I’m pounding away, beating the physical ability of the machine to lay down the text. I was mostly in the buffer, correcting mistakes before it hit paper. One lady working near me kept cutting her eyes at me, and it made me a bit more uncomfortable. When I was done, she counted the words, and came back and said “You had 3 mistakes. That brings you down to… 82 words per minute. Did you ever take a typing class?” “No” “We employ a good number of people who are professional secretaries, and many of them cannot match that speed.” I didn’t know what to say. I got the job though. The skill still comes in handy, for instance, for this long post. But I’ve definitly slowed down a little over the years.

44. Carolyn Nguyen
My interview wasn’t “funny” so to speak….

I went in for an interview in San Francisco and I had to use the restroom upon arrival. I looked in the toilet and not only was the toilet seat up, but there were $— stains all over (even on the opposite side of the lid). It was disgusting. To make matters even scarier, I went to the sink to wash my hands and saw a men’s travel toiletry bag next to me that was open. There was a sexual product that was used as a lubricant (Almost like KY Jelly but with a nice marketing name!). I went in for my interview and afterwards, I found out that the studio was actually one of the co-founder’s home (he lived up stairs and the studio was downstairs).

I couldn’t bear thinking of working there because all I could think of was “$— stains and $ex” every time I would have to interact with him.

45. Edwin MH 玟成 Ding 陈
This is not an actual interview, but it about funny job interview which I read it from somewhere. It goes like this:

Reaching the end of a job interview, the Human Resources Person asked a young Engineer fresh out of MIT, “And what starting salary were you looking for?”

The Engineer said, “In the neighborhood of $125,000 a year, depending on the benefits package.”

The interviewer said, “Well, what would you say to a package of 5 weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, a company matching retirement fund for 50% of your salary, and a company car leased every 2 years — say, a red Corvette?”

The Engineer sat up straight and said, “Wow! Are you kidding?”

And the interviewer replied, “Yeah, but you started it.”

46. Alexandra Watkins
One of my very first job interviews 20+ years ago was for a position writing copy for the slick men’s fashion catalog, International Male. They decided to test me right there on the spot and had a team of male models clad in skimpy underwear parade in the room, where they proceeded to tell me about the various features and benefits of “The Contour Italian Cutaway Bikini Brief” and “Micro-fiber Low-rise Thong.” The other highlight of the interview was when the interviewer asked me to show him what work I had done – which wasn’t much. However, as luck would have it, the one clever direct mail package I had ever written in my short career was actually sitting on his in box right in front of me, having arrive in that day’s mail! I just picked it up and handed it to him. I didn’t get the job or actually even want it after I discovered I had absolutely no talent for writing about clothing and to this day it’s the one thing I can not write about. Semi-conductors, yes. Tighty whitey thongs, no.

47. Nicola Dyer
Many years ago I was working as a recruiter in an agency and fairly new to the job. One day a lady came and asked if I would consider interviewing her daughter with a view to temporary assignments in the area. I was curious as to why she hadn’t come in herself, but apparently she was too shy to visit with an enquiry but would be okay to attend a pre-arranged interview.

The interview started fairly well and she seemed like quite a nice young lady until after a few minutes I noticed she was rocking back and forth very slightly. I decided to ignore this thinking it was probably just interview nerves and moved on to why she had left her previous job. At this point the rocking became more pronounced as she explained “they had it in for me, they all hated me, I was sacked”. It was at the point she fixed me with a stare and stated “and the fire wasn’t even my fault!” I decided ..well..maybe not.

On another occasion when I was being interviewed – the interviewer said to me “Tell me the one thing about yourself you wouldn’t want me to know”. I was hardly likely to tell him so just made something up.

48. Mary Beth Colucci
I was the Interviewer.The candidate was interviewing for an entry level position in product management for a company that sold classic TV shows on vide.I noticed the candidate could recite lines verbatum from old TV shows. I asked if she knew the words to theme songs and she went through a repetoire of TV show tunes from the 1950s, 60’s and 70’s. I proceeded to grab co-workers in to enjoy the show. Needless to say – she got the job.

49. Katherine O’Hara
I was interviewing in lower Manhattan. Minutes before leaving work to rush to the meeting, I was asked for a last minute rush need. Being several minutes behind schedule – I ran to the subway – then ran a few blocks to the interview. I was lead to an office where the owner came in and asked me to please give her a brief overview of my background. Within seconds, it was clear that I was in the midst of an asthma attack. Hacking. Wheezing. Tearing. A staff member ran in with a glass of juice. Took about 5 minutes for me to get it under control. In an attempt to ease the tension, I turned to the interviewer, and with a raspy asthma induced voice I said “so, how are your medical benefits?”. She stared at me with a blank face. Interview ended about 10 seconds later.

50. Peter Bassill, CISSP
Hi Karl

I was interviewing cadidates for an IT security analyst in a face paced oil and gas industry. My boss at the time reviewed all the CV’s and selected 6 candidates for me to meet with. All went well till the last one. The very large Gentleman turned up in biker leathers and proceeded to tell me how he could subdue up to 4 people at a time and no one broke in on his watch. Very handy as he didnt know anything about computers. In his words “But security is security”.

51. Elizabeth Ball
The worst and funniest interview experience I’ve ever had was when I was straight out of uni. In those days I didn’t yet own a mobile phone and discovered I was going to be late, thanks to a crash on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It got worse when I couldn’t find a car spot close to the office building, and had to park it several streets away.
I am no athlete, but began to ran and quickly noticed that I was very unsteady on my feet. Worried that I’d break my ankle or something, I stopped running. And still felt unsteady.
Then I looked down at my shoes and I was wearing one black suede high heel and one black leather low court shoe.
When I got finally got into the interview room, I spent more time desperately trying to curl my feet under the chair so she wouldn’t see the mis-matching shoes than concentrating calmly on the questions and the best answers to give in return.
So when she asked me: “What are you like under pressure?” I answered honestly, “I get pretty flustered!” which was not what she wanted to hear.

52. Kris Guimond
The most amusing interview I had was when I went to interview with this company that had just put in these automated lights that would turn off when noone was in the room and back one when someone entered. Well…apparently they didn’t have all the bugs worked out of the system yet and during the entire interview, the lights would keep going off and the interviewer would have to get up and walk around to make them go on again. He must have apologized a dozen times for the lights causing so many problems! Needless to say I was quite amused by the whole thing and I ended up getting the job.

53. Kevin Jackson
I interviewed with a company, and was asked to meet at their facility. When I was called into the room, there was an obvious odor of liquor. I said to the interviewer, “I guess I am not getting the job, since you have obviously celebrated with the preceding candidate!” We had a good laugh, and I eventually got the job.

I found out later that the preceding candidate, though highly qualified, had lost his wife and child in an automobile accident earlier that year, and he was still finding relief from his pain, in alcohol. Tragic story.

54. Joshua Kleeberger
yeah my name is Josh Kleeberger. Keep that in mind it comes in to play later. I introduce myself to the interviewr who was one of 14 kids from a small iowa radio station. he came to the school i was about to graduate from. after introducing my self he looks at the resume and looks up at me and goes you didn’t change your name for this job at KLEE.

I said no of course

55. Andrey Dorokhov
I used to a lot of different questions during interviews and usually expect a standard ones:
Name three (four, five) your best qualities
Name three (four, five) your not strong qualities

Bust here, interviewer surprised me saying: “if you would call your wife now, and ask her about you, to name your best qualities from her point of view, what do you think her answers would be?”

56. Elliot Geno
I was asked by an interviewer “how many soccer balls existed in the U.S.?”
I don’t play soccer and the position I was interviewing for was a Flash Programmer.
I said that I didn’t know, and he asked “how would you find out?” I said I would probably contact the soccer ball manufacturers to see if they had some data. He asked “what if they didn’t have that data?” I told him that I would set up a survey that questioned a good sample of the U.S. and ask how many soccer balls do you currently own and how many have you thrown away in the past 10 years. That way you would know roughly how many soccer balls existed in landfills, which he didn’t specify.

That same topic went on for at least 20 minutes.

I got the job. But as funny as it was it taught me a really important lesson. Don’t be thrown by even the craziest questions in an interview. I learned later on that I was the only one that actually answered the question. He liked the fact that I would keep persisting and find clever ways of finding an answer if I didn’t know. Since then, I have had to help with several interviews, and sometimes I ask the same question. Only I preface it with that story, because I think some get annoyed with a question like that.
-Elliot

57. Martin Czebotar
Having the prespective employer call your previous company “the evil empire”.

58. William Gunn
I was about 60 days away from graduating from college before I had my first interview. I was interviewing for a position as a pharmaceutical sales rep with one of the largest drug companies in the world at that time. And I was desperately trying to hide my nervousness.

The interviewer was a short, quiet, but pleasant man. Everything was progressing right along just like in Interviews-401. Right up to the point where the man stopped talking and his head slumped slightly to his chest.

Total silence. My nervousness has now been replaced by fear. “What is going on?” ran through my mind.

In about 90 seconds (which seemed more like 90 minutes), the man sat up with a start, a gasp, and an apology. It seems he had been struggling with narcolepsy for several months and his medication was not balanced yet.

No, I did not get a second interview.