Interviews and how they can go wrong - a few amusing tales from a lifetime of work :

One of the most stressful events that you can put someone through is the job interview. People’s stress levels soar in advance of this process and it is very difficult to know how to advise them in terms of preparation. You can do all the pre-interview techniques and recommendations you like and still have a disastrous session. Hence the very high stress levels that will always seemingly be part of the interview process. Having been through many interviews myself, I always appreciated when the interviewer tried to make me feel relaxed and I continued that practice when I had to interview prospective employees myself. When trying to make a decision or a judgment on a candidate, I would always try to factor in how nervous they had been and make the appropriate adjustment. By contrast, many people who came for interview and appeared totally cool and relaxed didn’t necessarily get the job for various reasons.

The classic interview.

However, I have now retired so I can chill and recall some of the more amusing incidents I encountered over the years on interview panels. There will be absolutely no names mentioned in this article for obvious reasons, but I doubt that the interviewees would mind me retelling what I’m sure in retrospect were amusing to them also.

1. A guy came for interview and was called in. As was customary, the HR Manager got up to greet him and shake hands. However, as the candidate was walking from the door to the desk, he let off a thunderous fart. The guy was obviously very nervous but he then compounded the issue, presumably trying cover up his faux pas by saying to the HR manager: ‘get up ya boy ya.’ I think it was extraordinarily difficult to keep straight faces but the interview got done and when the candidate eventually left the room, the entire panel descended into uncontrollable fits of laughter. I’ve often wondered why is it that a simple bodily function can cause such hilarity, particularly with children, but also with adults. Perhaps it was due to the fact that it was inappropriate in the situation.

2. A young woman who came for interview was obviously hugely stressed and nervous, to the point where she never once made eye contact with any of the interview panel. Although she answered all the questions competently, she, presumably absent-mindedly, spent the entire time squeezing blackheads on her legs and thighs.

3. In my earlier days working for the South Eastern Health Board, because of space constraints in the head office, I spent about a month working from a remote office which was in the local mental hospital building. Nowadays it would be called a psychiatric hospital, but in those days, the word used was mental. I wasn’t present at the interview myself but the HR Manger who was told me he interviewed a number of women for the position of a seamstress. Each candidate was asked the same questions, the final one of which was: ‘This is a closed facility but the patients are allowed to roam freely within the hospital and the hospital grounds. Would this bother you in any way?’ One woman reacted in a panic stricken way. ‘Oh Holy Mother of God sir, sure I couldn’t stand that; oh Holy Mother, the poor craturs, sure I’d be scared of me life if any of them came near me.’ She then fled from the interview room. Needless to say, she didn’t get the job.

4. A ‘gentleman’ came for an interview for a clerk’s job. I use the word gentleman advisedly. Now, this man had quite obviously never done a day’s work in his life. His background was, to use an Irish expression – ‘landed gentry.’ In other words, his family had probably been part of the British establishment which had ruled Ireland until 1921 and had survived the intervening decades, although in some cases, part of their lands may have been confiscated. But our man seemed to have lived the high life. In an answer to the question, ‘why do you want this job in particular, he set about describing his ‘estate,’ where, amongst other things, he kept horses. He told us that, ‘the old estate doesn’t produce what it once did and with expenses mounting and the cost of keeping the horses escalating, I decided that getting a job might be a good idea.’ So, fair enough, he was willing to work. To the next question, as to why he wanted to work as a clerk, he was a little vaguer. He answered, ‘well, I’ve never been employed before you see and I thought, well, there can’t be a lot involved here and one should pick it up fairly easily.’ To be fair to him, he probably wasn’t wrong as anyone with reasonable intelligence would have been capable of doing the work. However, the fact that he was 35, had never worked, had no concept of what the job entailed and had done no research to find out, told against him ultimately. I often wondered if anyone ever did employ him or if he had to downsize his ‘estate’ like many others.

5. Up to now, I’ve only described incidents involving prospective employees. But of course the employers aren’t immune to making gaffes and many an interview panel member that I sat with did just that. The first one involved an older, quite senior manager, who had a reputation for not suffering fools. Unfortunately, the candidate whom we were interviewing was doing his best to appear to be just that and was irritating our older man. He continuously tut tutted as the young interviewee described his current work and how wonderful he was at it and how great his workplace was. I knew the poor guy was on a loser here and the more he tried, the bigger a hole he dug for himself. Eventually the old guy couldn’t stand it anymore; he hadn’t said a word before this but now he exploded and roared at the interviewee: ‘young man, in this place that you currently say you work, do you get paid?’ The young interviewee, somewhat taken aback, answered: ‘yes of course I get paid.’ To which our man responded, ‘well would you mind telling us what on earth you get paid for? Because you’re the biggest waste of space I’ve ever come across.’ Shocked, the young man tried to keep it together but he was on a hiding to nothing and the interview finished shortly after. Now this was in the days before PC and before people sued for everything. We were lucky the young man didn’t take a legal action. We did ensure though that our older man never sat on an interview panel again.

6. Moving on to a case where we were sued: I can’t reveal what the position was that we were interviewing for except to say that it was very senior. It was to be a replacement for (another) older guy who had been a legend in his day and was still highly respected. He had, shall we say, some old fashioned ideas and had no truck with modern thinking or PC culture. Yet he was allowed sit on the interview panel which would appoint his successor. To be fair, the position was specialized and he did have a huge amount of knowledge that the rest of the panel would not have had. As far as I can recall, there were about half a dozen candidates and we were interviewing the last one for the day. It was a warm Friday afternoon in July and while our interviewee was dressed in a suit, he had rolled up his shirt sleeves underneath his jacket. The man was English, called Mark, and had travelled to Dublin especially for the interview. It was going fairly well when, at one point, the candidate sat back and shrugged his shoulders revealing his lower arms underneath his jacket. It was immediately obvious that he had tattoos. Immediately, our old guy engaged him in conversation: ‘Mark,’ says he, ‘did you fly over from London especially for this interview?’ ‘I did indeed sir,’ Mark replied. ‘Well I can tell you now son that you wasted your time and ours, sure we don’t take people with tattoos in this company.’ Immediately, all hell broke loose and everyone seemed to start shouting at once. Mark was highly aggrieved and offended. The HR manager was trying to admonish our manager and he was shouting at him. There was general mayhem. However, it ended fairly quickly and Mark thanked us and withdrew. There was a sequel to the story though. Early the following week, we were all served with a notice of a civil action by the largest firm of solicitors in the country. It was settled quietly by the legal department. So, while Mark may not have got the job, his visit to Dublin was well worthwhile.

Nowadays, it is unlikely that any of the above incidents would happen. Recruitment has become very sophisticated and professionalized. Nonetheless it still remains stressful for the candidates so if you are involved in the interviewing process, go easy and spare a thought for the poor interviewees, particularly if they are young and inexperienced.