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We Ags love to tell and hear a good story so I'm opening this up with a question! What was the strangest interview you've ever had, whether it was right out of school or more recent!

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If you have experience and/or interest in technical inside or outside sales, procurement, operations, logistics or estimating please reach out. I'd love to help you find a great place to stay and grow!

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This site is not for the masses it is a specific, tailored approach to hiring in our "little" underground world of B2B Industry. Think of it like a match.com for industry, with a lot less selfies!

Kellie (Hayman) Binkley '05
979-587-7865
kbinkley@idcareermatch.com
idCareerMatch

As a hiring manager, the candidates responses to open ended questions were all some variation of "oh yes I've done that" with nothing extra.

Q: what type of ERP softwares have you used?
A: Oh yeah all kinds.

Q: have you ever dealt with a difficult stakeholder? If so how did you handle it?
A: Yes I have.

Q: what's your experience with using excel?
A: oh yes I use excel all the time
Follow up Q: can you tell me what formulas or what kinds of activities you used excel?
A: I use all of the formulas
FQ: any in particular?
A: all of them

Interview lasted about 5 minutes after about 15 of those.

I interviewed at a privately held company for the Controller position. They had not had someone other than the owner and some offsite bookkeeper handle accounting. When I interviewed it seem to go ok, but I really was not that interested due to the systems and processes they had in place. About 1/2 way thru the interview the owner's Sister walked in and the owner introduced me. She would not look at me, she just started yelling at the owner in a very high-pitched Italian voice with hand gestures and all. "Joe, is he going to answer the door if someone knocks? Is he going to answer phones? What happens if we need someone to do XYZ, is he going to do it?" I completed the interview by affirming my ability to answer doors and speak to people who knocked. Left with a good chuckle and memory.

It is to this day the strangest interview and interaction I have ever had.

Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on excel. 1 being you seen it and 10 that you invented it.

7.

Ok, when would you use a vlookup versus x lookup versus indexing?

Ummm. I've never used those.

So I had an interview in a conference room named Copernicus. I wrote this down in the portfolio I had to take notes in. I wrote down the time. I was wearing a suit and tie, in summer. I made sure to go down to the cafe about 15 minutes prior to my meeting and get a bottle of water. Cold water.

I made my way outside of the conference room in preparation to my meeting at 10:15. It was 10:10. Perfect timing. No one was there.

Then 10:15 comes....and goes....


And 10:20 comes and goes.....


and 10:30 comes and goes....and I start to panic.

I race down the hall, up the stairs again to my cubicle, log in furiously to make sure I didnt have the wrong meeting room. Was it Copernicus or Capricorn? ***** Was it Capircorn? It cant be ****ING capricorn.

It was not capricorn. It was indeed Copernicus. I race back down the stairs, run through the hallway at full speed. As I reach Copernicus once again, my heart is racing, i am sweating profusely, and I am out of breath. Just then, the panel of 3 area sales leaders is coming my way and haphazardly apologized for their last interview running 15 minutes late.

I sit down in the conference room. I am again sweating profusely. I feel like I am so sweaty it looks like I just jumped in an out of a pool. The panel is alarmed and asking me if I had a medical emergency. Through the panting, I am able to choke out my situation, which sounds completely stupid. I take off my jacket and put it in the chair behind me. Sweat is literally dripping off of my face and body. I am using a paper towel that I had in my pocket "just in case" after buying the bottle of water to soak up the waterfall of sweat on my face.

The interview....did not go well. I did not get that offer.

I still cringe thinking about this, more than a decade later.

Happened just last week:
The zoom interview is supposed to be talking to 2 teams, 1 hour each. Our schedules couldn't match so I had to split into 2 days. 45 minutes into the interview, a notification popped up from the HR department of said company. Curious got the best of me so o click on the email to glance at it and it was a "Thanks but no thanks, we decided to go different direction" email for the job I was interviewing for.

I played it cool and went through the motion for the remainder of the.interview. After the zoom call, I emailed My Hr contact to see what was going on and if the second panel interview was cancelled. Another HR person responded saying " it was a glitch"

Had the second part of the interview the other day with different people than who the itinerary had. looked like they were interns…

Come to find out from my intel, the role was filled internally last Friday

I once had an interview (I was interviewee) with a guy who wanted to include his partners in the interview.

Okay, no big deal I thought.

In walks 6 more people - their entire senior staff.

That's such a joke

I interviewed with a family business and the dad and sons were in the interview.

I was coming from a family company in which I was specifically leaving because issues I had with the daughter being my manager. So I asked a question about how things were managed, responsibilities, etc. and they started arguing at the table across from me.

Might as well of just left the interview at that point.

I was one of two people interviewing a person for a contract (temp to permanent) position and was running about 5 mins late. As I was walking through the lobby to the other interviewers office I see a lady sitting in the lobby and think its the person were interviewing. Then I see a kid running through lobby and ask myself "wtf". I get to my coworkers office and the guy we're interviewing is in there already. Come to find out he brought his wife and kid with him to the interview. He was also wearing jeans, t-shirt and ball cap for a job interview for a higher level science job in a lab with a large company, not some warehouse job that one could probably get away with wearing that attire to an interview.

My beef with the entire thing was the gentleman was a new immigrant and the contract company couldn't even help the guy out with US interview etiquette.

I showed up to an interview in which the hiring manager had no idea we had an interview scheduled.

Caught him completely off guard. He had no clue who I was, had no questions prepped, didn't even have a copy of my resume.

That was awkward AF. Absolute waste of my time.

When we were in HS one of my good buddies interviewed for a summer job at Northern Tool.

We we all asked how it went he said...

Well they asked me why I thought I'd be a good fit and I told them I'm good with tools/equipment that they sell like welders, generators, compressors, etc. Then they asked 'Oh what do you know about welders?' to which I responded 'Oooh...Yeah not a lot'.

We still give him shlt today.

Ag_07 said:

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I showed up to an interview in which the hiring manager had no idea we had an interview scheduled.

Caught him completely off guard. He had no clue who I was, had no questions prepped, didn't even have a copy of my resume.

That was awkward AF. Absolute waste of my time.

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You should have turned the tables on his dumbarse. "I am looking for an organization with great leadership. You obviously aren't what I am looking for, so I am passing on this interview"

I interviewed a fresh grad. He was a high profile HS QB recruit but flamed out in the college ranks. Think he finally finished up at UTEP.

Anyhow, he comes in hair slicked back, one too many buttons undone with his aviator sunglasses resting in the V of said shirt. At the end of the interview he said "I just want to take a minute to thank all of you for not being intimidated by me."

"Are you ****ing serious?" Came out of my mouth before I could even control my emotions. I think he got his decision from us right then and there.

Interviewed with the VP of HR at one of the bigger community health organizations in Houston.
The guy paused to turn on gospel music as ambience.
During an interview question he asked if I've seen Hamilton, the musical. I responded "oh ok Disney +? Yeah i saw it once a few months ago." He responded Only once? One viewing does not do it justice.
He was pretty passive aggressive in his responses, and seemed like a cartoon supervillain the more the talked.
I nope my way out of an offer that came the next day.

nm

I drove 4 hours from Houston to Shreveport to interview with a metals company a couple years back. Got to the office and they took me straight to lunch (I guess for a casual get-to-know first) then asked me to pray and bless the meal while holding hands (I'm like what?!). Once we got back to the office, did the typical interview and never even told me the compensation and this was 2nd round mind you. Total waste of my time

bmac_aggie18 said:

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I drove 4 hours from Houston to Shreveport to interview with a metals company a couple years back. Got to the office and they took me straight to lunch (I guess for a casual get-to-know first) then asked me to pray and bless the meal while holding hands (I'm like what?!). Once we got back to the office, did the typical interview and never even told me the compensation and this was 2nd round mind you. Total waste of my time

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That was a "team fit" exercise and an excuse for a free lunch.

Mid 90s and I'm working for a large O&G company and part of a team actively recruiting college graduates from UofH, Rice, SWTSU(Now Texas State), tu, Baylor and A&M.

Brutal assignment. You'd get to campus and sit in these tiny rooms all day and get 15-20 minutes per kid. Some of these kids are so ill prepared that you know it's a No seconds into the interview and you'd have to fill the rest of the time in purgatory.

Maybe I had higher expectations, but back then I remember A&M had by a far margin the worst facilities and setup of all the campuses.

SWTSU had by far the best. …or was I remembering the candidates?

I love asking this question to candidates:

What brings you here today and tell me what you know about our company?

A lot of interviews end very quickly this way.

Not an interview, but I do recall a resume that came across my desk once from a person very high level in the US Communist Party.

AggieArchitect04 said:

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I once had an interview (I was interviewee) with a guy who wanted to include his partners in the interview.

Okay, no big deal I thought.

In walks 6 more people - their entire senior staff.

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I had a phone interview once, I was expecting to talk to a hiring manager like most telephone screening interviews, the emails said call with Joe, okay no problem. I get on the line and it was a panel of 6 people, including one of my former co-workers. It was a bit weird, but the job definitely was not a fit.

I was invited to an on-site last round interview.

It was for a senior technical role, requiring presentation and then 6x 30 minute 1on1s. This was after some technical phone screens that I passed before the on-site.

A couple days go by after I was told I was selected for an on-site. I hit up the recruiter to confirm a time. He says he'll get back to me. Hit him up again two days later, he says I should have received a email already to set up a time, he'll check with the team.

Okay, here is the good part…

I finally get word from the recruiter that there was a mix up with another candidate. They scheduled the wrong person for the on-site accidentally and said there was a ton of confusion since this person showed up to interview instead of me, they were in the hiring system for a different role at the company.

I can only imagine what it would have been like for the candidate that wasn't intended to be there. Or for the hiring team if they expected one thing and the candidate was there thinking the interview was supposed to be something else.

I had just received and accepted an offer from another company before they were able to figure it out, so I declined doing the on-site once they were ready to schedule it.

I replied to a posting from Texags for a sales role several years back. I did a phone interview with the person that posted it, and that went great. Did an in person interview with the VP, sales manager, and a senior member of the sales team, that went great. Came back to do a personality assessment test and that went well. The company then asks me to do a facetime interview with a 3rd party consultant they work with to wrap the process up.

Don't recall what day of the week it was but the interview was set for 2:00PM. I was still working full time during this with another employer that had me spending lots of time in the field in the middle of the summer. I get home for the interview around 12:30 and my phone rings at almost 1:00, the number is a Chicago area code, same area code as the consultant. Having just come in from the heat, I am dirty, sweaty, and wearing a baseball cap but I go ahead and answer. We proceed to have a normal conversation for about 45 mins and as we are wrapping up the consultant asks something along the line of "do you always wear baseball caps for interviews?" I respond that I was under the impression the interview wasn't until 2 but decided to go ahead and answer and that I thought it showed my ability to be flexible and put the needs of the customer first, yada yada.

2-3 days go by and I get a call from the VP and he has the consultant on the line with him. Tenor of the conversation is completely different than before. What had been casual feeling and fun conversations in the past were now much more formal. In an earlier interview the VP said that a successful sales person should be making 6 figures with the company easily but in this conversation that salary range was met with incredulity when I answered that I thought I could make that. Towards the end of the call the consultant brings up the baseball cap again. I again explain that his call was an hour earlier than scheduled but in the back of my mind I was already feeling like this guy was weirdly fixated on a freaking hat. Didn't get the job, thank goodness lol! I have seen that company post several times since then and even seen a post from an employee looking elsewhere and unhappy with the company. Never been happier to have a baseball cap derail a promising interview lol

I was interviewing a guy in Dallas, and before the interview really started, we were making football small talk. I asked him if he was a Dallas Cowboys fan. He proceeded to stand up, take his shirt off, and showed me the Cowboys star that he has tattooed over his heart. This was a button down shirt, and he didn't just undo a couple of buttons and pull it aside. Took the entire thing off. Super bizarre.

I had two interviews with a recruiter, then a panel interview, then a VP interview, then a personality assessment, then a review of my personality assessment with a consultant, then a re-interview with VP since so much time had passed while I was in the process. Then all went silent again. The VP texted me random questions over the next few months until I saw on LinkedIn that the recruiter was released and not long after, the VP had a new job too. Glad that didn't work out.

Another story: I was referred by a VP. Showed up to a panel interview 30 minutes in length and had an offer following day. Showed up day 1 and asked where my office would be. I was given verbal instructions to drive to a remote location and pick a spot in the temporary office trailer. Keep in mind I left the 29th floor in downtown Fort Worth for this. So I find the remote location, find the office trailer, actually 3 of them connected together, and was told which spot was mine. No chair so I had to walk the building to find a spare chair. I left 9 months later to return to downtown Fort Worth but this time on the 39th floor. The office trailer people try to bring me back every other year. Their offer in '22 was double the salary from 2015. I still said no.

I was interviewing a candidate as a tech recruiter in September 2011. Candidate said he didn't want to go to Verizon because of all the towel heads. He then took his shirt off and showed me his scars from the first gulf war.

Graduated "top 3" Masters, so Dean got me an INTERVIEW in Corpus as architect, a bit o drive from Aggieland, changed in a gas station bathroom, then up elevator into a glassed drafting room, view of hotels, ships on the ocean, beach , paradise.
Met the whole young crew, nicest guys outside of swimmers ever.
Ideal learning enviroment with all being equal and the partners took terns "in the barrel", i.e. this month Specifications (ugh), next Owner's Job Interviews, etc.

So they decide to combine the salaries of their two openings into one offered to me.
Then the paid day off to seach for a rental house and failing that could bunk with one of the guys.
Off I go to see an ad North, then one South, then decide best to phone 1st wife as to preferences & break the good news that we'll finally have more than school teacher money.

"I'm not moving!?!?!"

These nice guys offered to pay me for a day where I did nothing for them, save waste time. No, thanks.
Back to a very small town in those days where most didn't even know how to spell architect, much less what they did nor useful to hire.

What?

I was hiring developers one year, in my role as a development manager. We had one lady apply for every posting we put out. Corporate HR would schedule almost anyone with a pulse. This lady would come in very well dressed, and then proceed to give a canned, memorized answer, to every question asked. It was odd, but after 2 different ones of us had interviewed her unknowingly in about 6 weeks, we were comparing notes at lunch one day. We both laughed at how well she had these pat answers down and neither of us were led to believe that she had any actual real world work experience or ability to do anything.

I guess she should have gone into acting.

My newest hire is scheduled to start 5/1. In the interview, he said "my wife will kiss you on the lips" and we still hired him!

He is leaving a 24/7 industry to join us in insurance. I encourage my people to enable do not disturb settings on the company phone for family hours. That's when he said "my wife will kiss you on the lips" if he can do that.

I recruit A&M somewhat regularly for entry level new hires. It amazes me the number of candidates showing up who haven't even read the Wikipedia page of the company to know what the company they're interviewing for does. This is a relatively large downstream company.

HSEAG13 said:

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I recruit A&M somewhat regularly for entry level new hires. It amazes me the number of candidates showing up who haven't even read the Wikipedia page of the company to know what the company they're interviewing for does. This is a relatively large downstream company.

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Has a parent ever come up to you with their kids' resume in their hands???

No but we have had them call to follow up/find out where their kid is in the hiring process and get upset when you tell them you can't talk about it with them. Keep in mind these are not high school kids, but grown 20+ year olds with degrees.

cslifer said:

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No but we have had them call to follow up/find out where their kid is in the hiring process and get upset when you tell them you can't talk about it with them. Keep in mind these are not high school kids, but grown 20+ year olds with degrees.

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I just hate adults begging for their kids. Kids have no fire anymore

This guy has to be a bot