19 Employers Share The Worst Answers They’ve Ever Heard While Conducting A Job Interview

These answers were found on Ask Reddit.

1.

“I worked at a company that did one thing: we made a very specialized kind of device. For the sake of anonymity, I’ll call these devices ‘Widgets.’
One time we were interviewing a guy, and I asked him ‘what do you think of Widgets?’
Him: ‘Oh, those are a fad. They’re actually pretty useless.’
Me: ‘Okay, so…I think we’re done here.'” – lorddimwit

2.

“HR: How would you handle a difficult coworker.
Candidate: thoughtful pause Well, I’d take out my gun and shoot them.
Everyone: jaws hit floor” – where_is_the_cheese

3.

“I asked a teenager what some of his weaknesses were. I swear to god, he replied, ‘Fire.'” – TheBatman6877

4.

“Ahhh I just cracked up remembering this. I interviewed this lady once for a customer service specialist type position. She referred to herself in the third person through the entire interview. It was excruciating. Example: Tell me about a potentially volatile interaction where you needed to remain calm and professional, walk me through how you handled the situation. ‘Well at XYZ doctor’s office, this lady came in and she was upset about her bill, so Mary don’t play people telling, so after she yelled some Mary just told her to calm down and that Mry would help her figure it out.'” – mtw816

5.

“I was conducting interviews for a photographer position. I asked the interviewee about her experience with cameras, she told me that everyone in her generation were experienced with cameras/photographers because of their phones.” – tinitrinity

6.

“Teaching position, biology, middle school.
Me: And can you give an example of the last time you applied your lab skills outside of your classroom?
Applicant: I have many opportunities to do dissections.
Me: That’s great, is that over at the university?
Applicant: No, I live by some woods and animals are always wandering into my yard. If you have a scalpel I can show you.
opens backpack revealing about half a dozen lizards and frogs, and one completely dead rodent, suffocating in sandwich bags.” – ligamentary

7.

“Not in an actual interview, but her resume listed her skills. I kid you not, her first ‘skill’ listed was: Pretty.” – tornwings

8.

“I ran an interview for my Valet job in college when the boss was away for 2 weeks on vacation, and essentially had a questionnaire prompt that I was reading off of.
Me: ‘Do you smoke?’
Him: ‘Smoke what?’
Me: ‘Cigarettes?’ (upward inflection)
Him: ‘Oh, no. Not cigarettes.'” – Lilgherkin

9.

“It wasn’t so much what she said as how she said it… I went to a job fair to hire interns, and this young lady came up to my table to ask about the program. I looked down to glance at her resume, and when I looked back up, she had her thumb in her mouth. I asked about her work history and skills, and she answered all my questions while she sucked her thumb.
Sad thing was, other than her unprofessional little habit, she was the most qualified person I saw that whole day.” – captainmagictrousers

10.

“someone else in an interview asked ‘what excites you?.’ she said ‘men.’
had a kid(early twenties) come in for an interview bc someone he knew worked here. asked him to talk to us about his past work history, as he said he had been working at a few relevant places. he replies ‘uh…its on the application and my resume right?,’ and just sat there staring at us. sorry kiddo, don’t call us we will call you.” – shawngee03

11.

“For a software technical support role.
Me – ‘I see you have expert level experience with one of our products listed on your resume, can you tell me about the product and what you’ve done with it?’
Interviewee got the name of the product wrong, couldn’t describe what it did, and finally admitted that his exposure to the product was that it had been mentioned once in a seminar at a conference he was at 3 years before.” – SmellySchmupper

12.

“Q: What is your greatest weakness?
A: Uh, good question… (pause) PASS!
This from an experienced candidate with a MBA degree.” – malachi410

13.

“Interviewed a guy for a delivery driving job. An employee walks in and they realize they know each other from a previous job, and the interviewee immediately forgets I’m even in the room. He then proceeds to recount a time at their previous job where he recklessly drove a dump truck as fast as he could to do a jump over some railroad tracks.
He did not get the job.” – JimPeebles

14.

“Way back when, I was a district manager for a record store chain and I was helping the manager interview people for the new store. Asked this one girl (who was currently working at another store in the mall) if there was anything she didn’t like about her current job.
‘Customers'” – stupidchange

15.

“I’m not an employer, but I was recent asked how my grammar was in an interview. I got nervous for some reason at that moment and replied ‘My grammar is well.'” – Red_lumberjack

16.

“We asked him how he managed stress, and he said, ‘I don’t believe in stress.’ Then he went on a philosophical tangent on what stress really was, and how people shouldn’t be ‘stressed.’ We asked how he managed competing priorities, and he said, ‘I hate when people ask this question’ and then he went on to say he ‘just gets things done.'” – just_another_classic

17.

“I interviewed a girl today that said ‘shit’ twice and even dropped ‘fucking’ into a sentence about her current employer” – Jano606

18.

“I was auditioning a tenor for a paid singer’s position in the church choir – an excellent group of singers, mostly professional.
His singing in the audition piece he chose was flat (often under the true pitch). When I asked if he could correct the pitch problem if hired for the job, he said, ‘It’s good enough for church. Who cares if it’s accurate?'” – Back2Bach

19.

“Phoner, interviewing for a mid-level analyst. Candidate looked really interesting on paper and was referred by a highly-regarded employee at the company.
I asked 6 or 8 job-related questions and every answer was a one-sentence ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’d have to get back to you on that.’ There was really nowhere to go after that, so I ended the interview early.” – white_rabbit_object