Why Did I Leave My Last Job Because I Beat Up My Boss
May 20th, 2008, 1:00 am Hobbies News
You are being interviewd for your dream job. To the best of your judgement, things are going well. Then the interviewer asks why you left your previous position. Deciding honesty is the best policy you explain you were fired for beating up your boss. Stunned silence ensues.
Other fumbles include the case of a man who paused to sniff his armpits while taking his seat in the interview room, a woman who asked the interviewer to leave his office mid-interview so that she could take a ‘personal’ mobile phone call and the candidate who explained he didn’t think he would stay in the job very long as he expected to inherit his rich uncle’s fortune (he elaborated that said uncle wasn’t “looking too good”).
Are they are buckling under pressure? Could it be they simply aren’t taking the process as seriously as they should? Or is it the case that some of us can’t resist parading our shocking lack of guile before the world?
Before you write these cases off as stereotypical examples of American nuttiness, it’s worth noting that Irish interviewees are no slouches when it comes to dropping a mid-interview clanger. If the business people we’ve canvassed offer any clue, we might just give the Americans a run for their dollar in the stupidity stakes.
“I remember interviewing a fella for an entry level position and under hobbies he had put down ‘enjoys film’,” says one senior figure at a large Irish institution. “So I asked him what was the last film he saw. He gazed into space and after about 30 seconds he said he couldn’t think of one. Another time, an individual had put down that he enjoyed reading. I asked him if he’d read anything good lately. He looked at me as if I was speaking Swahili. I actually don’t think he had opened a book since school.”
Then there is the case of an interviewee who had mistakenly submitted part of a generic sample CV with his job application. “It said that his hobbies were gardening, which seemed a bit unlikely because he was a guy in his early 20s — not really the gardening type,” recalls the woman who conducted the interview.
“I asked him if he found gardening relaxing. He said he didn’t quite understand the question. I asked him again and he said he didn’t know anything about gardening. We let it pass. It was only afterwards that we realised the second page of his CV had been the generic sample provided by Microsoft Word.”
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