re: What's the strangest job interview you've ever had?

I went to work for a company that had me take and excel, word test, and a surveying skills test after the second face to face.

It was different but I understand why they did it. I had to do some basic costing formulas ,write a mock letter to a customer addressing a certain issue, shoot some grades for a building pad and figure out the slope of a drive.

I had to come back for a third interview with the president of the company.

frick those interviews where they try to do shite to "test the candidates". I've been on a few like that, nothing like your experience, but I was told I would be interviewing with the person I been in contact with.. Got there, she comes in, sits down, ask me a few questions then tells me someone else will be coming in to interview me.

It seemed like they were trying to "throw me off" or something by making me expect one thing then changing it up

The interviews I have gone on in which I got the job were casual AF. I am not going to go into an interview pretending to be something I am not just because "that's what you are supposed to do or say in interviews".

I like straight forward. And that's how the 4 successful interviews I have gone on went.

They are looking for someone who can do something. They see on my resume I can do what they need. Went into the interview, 3 of the 4 were casual, as in I was coming from work or something to I had what I wore to work on.

They ask me if I can do, this that and whatever, talk with me for a few mins.. To get a read I guess.

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I had a similar experience at Microsoft HQ, of all places. Walked up to the reception desk and told the lady there my name and exactly who I was there to see. She said something like, "it's so nice dealing with white people, you always know where you're headed."

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I had a friend that 25 years ago worked for Microsoft on their main campus in Redmond, WA.

He said there were almost no Blacks there. Bill Gates hired Asians to fill the minority quotas.

Liberals like Gates have two standards. Their own and one for everyone else.

This is long, but a good account of a unique interview I had.

I was asked to fly from Dallas to Burbank for an interview with Sanyo Electronics for a position as their director of sales engineering for defense and aerospace. I suggested flying in the day before, stay overnight and be fresh the next day and able to spend as much time as necessary discussing my background, accounts and a 90 day action plan I would put together.

Nope. Fly in / fly out. Okay, I'm a big boy and I do that from time to time for business meetings.

Fast forward. My flight is delayed by several hours out of DFW. I finally get there, late, rent a car, drive an hour to their HQ. After a wait of about 30 minutes, a fat woman from HR comes out and hands me an eight page Employment application. She tells me that I need to fill this out (emphasizing COMPLETELY). I said, "Wait.. I'm here for an interview, not to fill out a form." She proceeded to correct me, and told me if I didn't fill it out COMPLETELY that I couldn't be interviewed.

So I was pissed off. Almost walked out then, but just chalked it up to her being fat and probably just a generally miserable person. But I did it. Took me an hour to fill that thing out. Finally completed it and handed it off to the receptionist. 15 minutes later, the fat woman comes out, leads me in and through a maze of hallways to a conference room with a projector. I wait there for 30 minutes before an entourage of VPs, engineers, and managers come in and introduce themselves and in walks the company president, a short Korean man. He says hi, doesn't shake my hand, and tells one of the others to start the projector. It didn't work. So they went and got one from another room and came back in a minute, with a guy and a ladder taking down the first and installing the second one, connecting the cables. I'm just sitting there, watching time melt away before I will need to leave for the airport. I suggested that my flight be rescheduled for later. "No, we'll be fine." the president replies.

Steam starts to rise from me.

So the company president spends 30 minutes or so presenting a PowerPoint slide presentation on the company, the culture, the products, their markets, their worldwide footprint, etc..

At the end, all his lackeys applauded him on a great presentation. I had not been asked a single question. My background (which is extensive and successful in my field) has not been discussed. Nothing.

So, by this time, my window of time that I had in order to leave and make it back to Burbank in time to make my flight was about 15 minutes. It was at this time that the company president looks at me and says, "So. Tell me who you are. What is it about you that is so special and unique that we should hire you?" This really pissed me off. I was ready to explode, but... I'm a professional at hiding my true feelings from others.

So I put my pen in my suit pocket, closed my portfolio, stood up, and buttoned my jacket. I looked across the room, smiled broadly and said very sincerely, "Well, I'm actually really great at remembering to bring lube to a circle jerk." And I just stood there and smiled.

The company president stood up, leaned into the front of the conference table with both hands, and he looked straight at me and said, "What did you say?" So I replied, "Generally speaking, I usually buy someone dinner before I frick them in the arse. It's just good manners."

Nobody spoke. They were in shock. I moved towards the door and turned back to face them and said, "Thanks for having me out. This has been..... really special. Don't worry. I know my way out."

I left, walked out, and laughed as I got in my car to leave. The next day, a friend who worked at Sanyo on the East Coast called me and said what I'd done had been shared by some of the others who were in the conference room with me and it had spread through the company like wildfire. He said everyone hated the company president and that what I did made me legendary inside Sanyo because I thoroughly dressed him down and embarrassed him in front of his management team. In fact, the company I did end up working for, a competitor of Sanyo's, they all knew about it and basically hired me just because of my reputation for doing that.

That made it all worthwhile for me. I'm smiling now thinking about it.

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HubbaBubba

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That was well worth the long read

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Companies suck. Interviewing now is awful, corporations have no loyalty—modern society blows

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I went into a job interview at Wal Mart when I was a junior in college. Now keep in mind that before that, my only jobs were working as a bus boy/dish washer for my second cousin's restaurant and a workstudy job at the campus writing center.

It was my first foray into the world of behavioral interview questions. Needless to say, I don't know how anyone is supposed to answer those questions without at least a little bit of research in advance. I didn't get the job

The company I'm with now I've been with since I graduated college six years ago. It was a very easy going, conversational interview with virtually zero canned interview questions beyond "tell me a little about yourself." I really appreciated that.

First interview I ever had out of college was just as you described. I was unqualified, yet they called me in after speaking with me on the phone.

I was absolutely terrified, they knew it, and they seemed to enjoy the humiliation of asking me things that they knew there was no way that I knew the answers.

We concluded around lunch time. They stood up, smiled and asked if I wanted to go grab lunch with them. I did not go to lunch.

That was in 92, about three years ago I was called by a company that I could have stepped in and been the best guy they had in the southern US at what I do. Went to a board room for the meeting and there were 5 people sitting in front of me. The interview began and I started getting questions and it began turning to that same damn interview I had in 92. I just smiled at them, thanked them for their time and told them I was no longer interested in pursuing the job.

The President of the company called me a few days later, he had been the one that had told them to contact me. He asked why I disengaged, I told him that he had a bunch of jackasses working for him.

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Happy to learn about the place and learn that it's not for me

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Happy to hear you left with this impression - the whole time I was reading the post, I was thinking, “Then why would you want to work for/with them?”

Company a friend of a friend worked for had an opening. It was an industry magazine whose readership was mostly plants and whatnot. Easy enough for me - degree in English + worked for college of Electrical and Computer Engineering at LSU where I wrote all their media releases and was published in a few engineering publications.

Get there and I hear them offer the position to the woman before me through the door. But they call me in next so I go. The elderly, senile BATSHIT founder talked for 3 solid hours about the most random of shite. Basically, the company was run by all the staff and the founder was no longer interested in the magazine. They basically let him do whatever he wanted with his own money to keep him out of their hair, and at the time, that something was wanting to find ~investors~ to fund low level Christian films. Dude wanted people from straight-to-video films to pay him a finder's fee for finding investors.. which by the way he never found

After a few months, I finally weaseled my way into a position at the actual industry magazine and they hired someone in my old position.

That is - until the president of the company (son-in-law of the founder) stole my personal cell phone from my purse and read through all of my text messages looking for messages between me and an employee that had left recently. When I caught him, they decided to blackmail me. Spent the whole night that night writing up a falsified journal of all the times I "did something wrong" (I'm a great employee - It was laughable made up shite like.. rolled your eyes at XYZ).

Ended up being strong armed into signing some Word doc that said I wouldn't tell anyone what happened "or else!" and they paid me out for a week or two.

Their magazine is currently delivered to the mixed building where my office lease is and I love sitting down and reading the letter from the editor each month. What a self righteous faux-Christian load of shite.