Tiara Allen turned up on time for a retail interview, but the person who was supposed to meet her did not. She waited roughly 40 minutes in a shopping centre while a colleague tried repeatedly to reach the interviewer. When the interviewer finally appeared, Tiara was told the meeting had not been in the schedule. She needed work, so she accepted the job when it was offered, but looking back she would make a different choice. A delay that long, she now believes, would be enough to walk away — and she saw the treatment as a clue to how the company treated its staff.
Tiara is one of several people who described their worst job interview experiences after an earlier discussion about an uncomfortable interview question. The accounts range from absurd to unlawful, and together they show how much an interview can reveal about a workplace — and how candidates can respond when something feels off.
A question about crying
Chas Edwards was interviewing for an assistant role at a New York book publisher when the interviewer asked whether he was a crier. He assumed it was a joke and said no. Only later did he learn that the answer had won him the job: the interviewer’s previous assistant had cried often, and she wanted someone who would not. The exchange was serious, even though Chas had taken it as humour. The job turned out to be miserable, with a boss he describes in harsh terms. He lasted 13 months — far longer than anyone before him, who had never managed three months. Even so, he says the experience has made every later job seem easier by comparison.
Ended before it began
Corinne Card was floored when the first question at an administrative interview was whether she liked working with people. She said yes. The interviewer then told her the job would not suit her and ended the meeting. Corinne still wonders whether the question was a deliberate trap, since few candidates would say they dislike working with people.
Corinne Mills, joint managing director of Personal Career Management, suggests that candidates can ask an interviewer to clarify a strange question, for example by repeating it back. But if the questioning is deeply off-putting, she says, that can also signal what working there would be like. Interviews, she notes, are a two-way assessment: candidates are judging the company too.
When questions cross a legal line
Some interview questions are not merely irritating — they are illegal. Discrimination against a protected characteristic is against the law, which means an employer cannot treat a candidate less favourably because of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage, pregnancy, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation.
Employment lawyer Roy Magara says women being asked whether they intend to have children is a fairly common form of bias. He has also seen an older candidate rejected after an interview because he did not fit the “vibe” of a younger team. If a candidate suspects such bias, Roy says they can send the company a subject access request to find out how their application was discussed internally.
Power imbalance and perspective
Such worst-case scenarios can make interviews feel daunting, particularly given the control employers hold over candidates. Euan Cameron, co-founder of hiring software Willo, says that despite this imbalance, candidates should avoid overthinking what an interview is. In his view, it is simply a conversation between two people. And as Tiara’s experience shows, it helps when both of those people actually turn up.
