Job Hunter Hell

A few years ago a hilarious discussion with a friend of mine about job interviews turned up the notion that interviews are a Darwinian process – survival of the fittest – if you look at it from the job seeker point of view. (The job ‘giver’ would like to also fancy that the ‘fittest’ survived the process and took the ultimate reward, but that’s not our point of interest for this discussion, and is seemingly an unlikely outcome anyway given their processes!)

Between us, my friend and I had quite a list of stories about the interview-from-hell where, for example, window washers fell from the sky behind the interviewer’s back while we were trying to formulate just the right answer to a question. Or where the interviewer couldn’t talk and see at the same time so we were left facing a person with eyes tightly shut. There were multiple times where the questions seemed to be out of some joke book and we were supposed to provide the punchline (i.e. Why do you think manhole covers are round?). My friend even had one where she was on Darvon following oral surgery and the interview couldn’t be put off (who knows what happened in THAT one?) Have we all had interviews where none of the questions asked seemed to have anything to do with job performance but everything to do with the interviewer trying to ascertain on which side of an office dispute the new applicant would be likely to land? Well, I have.

That's only the start of it. I once had to go through a job screening process that covered a 4 month period of time and included a written test, an interview in which candidates were asked to prepare and present a 15 minute 'class' on a subject related to the job, followed by a personal interview with 5 'team' members and a series of prepared questions. I was finally offered the job, but turned it down. Frankly, I'd lost interest by that time.

You get the idea. Job Hunter Hell. It’s only funny after the fact. But then it is VERY funny. So – I’d like to collect those stories and am hoping that anyone reading this will provide me with one from their own experience.

Who knows? Maybe we can write a book together.

Maybe we can cheer up Mark, who is in his own Job Hunter Hell.