Anyone ever interview for a job you didn't know you weren't qualified for?

This is why you fly to Houston from NO.

By the way, that sucks. Usually, its the other way around. I'm fibbing a little bit because most job descriptions are stupid so I'll add in some shite to match what they are asking for and I'll figure it out when I'm hired like any other capable human being.

You did the best you could. Don't take the above as criticism, I was just ranting about the other direction it goes. It sounds like they had a bad job description. That's not on you.

They didn't know you were coming from NOLA?? Is your NOLA address on your resume?

How big a company is this? Did HR set up the interview?

It seems to me like a couple of things happened.

1) The job description is not right / was never looked at by the hiring managers.

2) The hiring managers never looked at your resume.

Not sure this is a company I would want to work for.

Sucks about having to make the trip and I assume burn a vacation day or two. Hopefully you got to stop at Buc-ees in Baytown and got some good snacks for your troubles.

You never know what a company wants at all. Go into any interview ready to discuss anything including your hobbies. They might carry over.

I'm a financial analyst. They usually want someone with an accounting or finance degree and experience.

But you know what. I sold them that I learn quickly and they liked that I hadn't picked up bad accounting habits.

That's what I was told too. I'm sure not every company is like that you know a whole part of the game is being able to honestly pivot your current expirece against the potential value you can provide a company. Those who do it well get hired. It took many poor interviews by me to learn that.

Still working on my "pitch", it's been a couple of years since I interviewed so I'm still working at it.

I had a similar interview process where I realized early on that they were looking for something different than the job description. I wasn't really interested in what they were looking for.

The Interview was a total disaster and one of the most awkward things I've been apart of. One of the rotational interviews was with a blind guy and he started asking me questions about my resume, but it was obviously from someone else's resume. I politely told him he had the wrong resume, but he was all flustered and it nose dived from there. He couldn't find my resume in a format the he could read/hear, so I told him don't worry about it because I'm not really interested in the job anymore. Then he got all upset and thought he was the reason why I was leaving. Since he couldn't see, I was debating just running out of his office and hoping I could make it out of the building before he noticed I was gone.

I've been on both sides of this issue.


A bad job description has been due to the functional manager charged with getting together the job description having no idea what the job actually entails. When the people who actually do the work interview the candidate they're confused because questions don't match the posted description. Figured that out going to interviews and saw it again later in management with peer managers not knowing what their department actually did.(usually masked by some supervisor doing their job)

Or if dealing with recruiters they'll fudge resumes just to get people in to take an interview. Candidates come in and get creamed due to being unprepared. Figured that out by getting un-doctored versions of the resume from candidates smart enough to bring copies of their resume to interviews.

I do a deal of hiring and hate people having to go through bad interviews as well as wasting both our times. So I have team leads do 15-20 minute pre-screens before we have anyone come visit. If a candidate asked to do a phone interview or a Skype interview I wouldn't be opposed. Maybe you should ask for that next time you might have to travel?

Interviewed for a job once that I was qualified for, but they didn't ask me about anything relevant.
Asked me what cereal I am most like, what my hobbies are, what did I do on my Friday nights during college, etc.,
Definitely caught me off guard and I bombed on the questions.
Guess I wasn't as qualified as I thought. I hate those stupid questions that make no sense.
Anyways, good luck in your job search.

Yep. I was hired in ATL as a Financial Analyst straight out of school. About 2 weeks in I was assigned a project. When I asked for some help on the VBA portion they said I should have learned that when I was in grad school. I told them that I didn't have an MBA and that was my last day.

It wasn't on the job posting, nor my resume, nor ever brought up in the interview. They just assumed.