Bad interview stories

60,355 Views | 334 Replies | Last: 10 days ago by Cromagnum
Cromagnum
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AG
More to the topic. Eli Lilly had the gall to send me an email today to ask if I could refer them to anyone in my network for a role they turned me down for without ever speaking to me. Effffffffffff that.
500,000ags
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LeftyAg89
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AG
You serious Cro??? Wow that's messed up!!!
TxAggieBand85
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AG
Deleted ... just refreshed on application history.
Cromagnum
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AG
LeftyAg89 said:

You serious Cro??? Wow that's messed up!!!

Yep. They rejected me at first, then it was the one where they turned around and asked me to fill out this 20 something question assessment which took a few hours, then rejected me again. Then a month later ask me if I have anyone I could refer for that role. ****...that.
Langley
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Cromagnum said:

LeftyAg89 said:

You serious Cro??? Wow that's messed up!!!

Yep. They rejected me at first, then it was the one where they turned around and asked me to fill out this 20 something question assessment which took a few hours, then rejected me again. Then a month later ask me if I have anyone I could refer for that role. ****...that.


Missed opportunity…should've recommended yourself
Cromagnum
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AG
A good interview story to offset anyways. Took a panel call with the Department of Chemical Engineering at A&M today for a senior lab manager role and it went well. Less than 10 minutes after the call I got invited to come for a campus visit to continue the discussion. We'll see where this leads.
500,000ags
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AG
Ugh, wouldn't that be sick?
Cromagnum
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500,000ags said:

Ugh, wouldn't that be sick?


The actual job role sounds pretty cool. They basically need someone with lab managerial experience that can deal with chemical and lab safety, change management, decommission and recommission of labs, and able to deal with students and faculty both.

I do worry that academic compensation is going to be a shellshock versus industry though, especially considering we would have to relocate again. Maybe I'll be surprised.
howdydamnit04
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AG
pretty sure you can look up compensation on texas tribune website and at least get a decent idea of what they've paid people in the past.
Cromagnum
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AG
Well, this is a position that has never existed before and the salary only said "commensurate" so who knows.
howdydamnit04
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gotcha. I tried digging something up and struck out. Good luck!
infinity ag
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Cromagnum said:

More to the topic. Eli Lilly had the gall to send me an email today to ask if I could refer them to anyone in my network for a role they turned me down for without ever speaking to me. Effffffffffff that.


WTF man that is just so tone-deaf.

I've gotten rejected from interviews where I was a great fit and the interviews also went well. Then BOOM a reject for no reason and they don't give me feedback. But they cheekily send me an email a week later asking for "feedback so we can improve". I don't waste my time unless I am getting paid in some way. Find other ways to improve.
But what they did to you was even worse.
Exposing Hypocrisy - one CEO at a time
infinity ag
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Cromagnum said:

500,000ags said:

Ugh, wouldn't that be sick?


The actual job role sounds pretty cool. They basically need someone with lab managerial experience that can deal with chemical and lab safety, change management, decommission and recommission of labs, and able to deal with students and faculty both.

I do worry that academic compensation is going to be a shellshock versus industry though, especially considering we would have to relocate again. Maybe I'll be surprised.


Salaries are down everywhere, even in industry. So be prepared.
Exposing Hypocrisy - one CEO at a time
zooguy96
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I had what I felt was a good interview a week ago. Nothing so far. Our dept is having budget issues, so exploring my options.
I know a lot about a little, and a little about a lot.
infinity ag
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I had applied to a position on Apr 30 and just got an email back today. It is a real email and I verified by logging into the company's career page. The person emailing me exists on LinkedIn and I have 2 common connections with her.

Company Recruiter's email
Quote:

Hi there,

Thank you for applying to {company name}. I've reviewed your resume and believe you could be a strong fit for this role.
Before moving forward, I want to ensure we're aligned on salary. To be respectful of your time, I want to note that we typically consider candidates at or below the midpoint of the posted range. Could you share your target salary?

If it works, I'd be happy to schedule a 2030 minute phone conversation to learn more about you and provide additional details about the position.

Looking forward to connecting!

It is a Director level job. The job description says the salary range is 115k - 210k. So the midpoint is around $162k.

Questions:
  • If I say my expectation is $180k, would I get auto-rejected even though I am in their posted range and my skills match?
  • Why do they even have the range there if they actually only consider at or below 162k?
  • Is it ever possible for anyone to get an offer for $205k (top end of posted) with this company if he/she is a genius?
  • Let's extrapolate. Why not put a range of 100k to 500k and then email that we only consider candidates who are over a max of 10% from the lower limit ($110k).
These companies have made a mockery out of recruiting.
Exposing Hypocrisy - one CEO at a time
Cromagnum
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AG
Fortunately I have the on-site interview with the local analyzer company tomorrow, the new A&M thing in a couple weeks, and a pending consulting gig with Ecolab teed up. Surely one of these will land.
Cromagnum
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AG
Yep, I hate that game.

- Posts role with salary range.
- Asks candidate for desired salary.
- You answer and are told "you're wrong."
infinity ag
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Cromagnum said:

Yep, I hate that game.

- Posts role with salary range.
- Asks candidate for desired salary.
- You answer and are told "you're wrong."


Salaries are way down now. If you lose your job and then find one, you will be shocked to see what you can get. Companies have re-calibrated lower. If/when the market turns, they are going to be shocked when there is a lot of turnover and the sob stories on Linkedin will start again about how fussy/difficult candidates are.

I am thinking of just telling her I am fine with the range (without giving her a number) so I can get to interview. I am employed right now so I am not under any pressure but I want to get to a certain job title before I call it a day for good and this may help me. On the flip side, I love my current team, non-toxic workplace (people are mainly white, mostly 40+ and mostly women) but I am not happy with my title or salary. I am done with noxious environments where everyone is trying to pull everyone else down.

I think I will just give it a shot and see. If I get it, I make a decision at that time.
Exposing Hypocrisy - one CEO at a time
Cromagnum
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AG
Had a good on-site interview today with that analyzer company. They are still scoping the role, but I think I have them convinced to make me a partner in creating the job description rather than taking their best crack at it and putting it in front of me. We'll see how next steps go.
500,000ags
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Cromagnum said:

I think I have them convinced to make me a partner in creating the job description rather than taking their best crack at at and putting it in front of me.

TheRatt87
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Lots of folks on this board are pulling for you. All the best closing the deal, and keep us posted.
Cromagnum
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Welp...

A&M messaged me this morning that they are canceling the role I was about to do an on-site interview for, so that one is out. Said they don't have budget approval now.

Ecolab got back with me and changed their messaging to "now they have to seek approval for contract work at a leadership meeting next month" as opposed to having up to 20 hours of work for me. This one may not happen at all.

Small local analyzer company is the only one in play, but I have to wait for folks to return from travel and actually make a decision on what they want to do.
TxAggieBand85
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AG
Ugh!
48jeep
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My first interview out of college was for a nengineering position at a chemical plant. The interviewer told me the only reason I got the interview was because the person they interviewed first and offered a job declined. Awfully kind of him to tell me I was second string.

Two years later I was so successful there, they made me responsible for the entire plant fuel supply, almost a million dollars a day.
CC09LawAg
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Yeah but had they hired the other guy it would've been $2 million
howdydamnit04
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Waiting is the worst. I feel like I'm just sitting here staring at the phone all day hoping for it to ring.
Z3phyr
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Had an interview for an engineering role my senior year that I met at the career fair. They said since I haven't interned there before I would have to apply to be an intern when I graduated and they would move me to full time at the end of the summer. That was fine with me, had 2 or 3 zoom interviews and got told they actually wanted me to apply to a different full time position. Had a full day in person interview and met lots of top leadership but didn't get the full time position. They wanted something with more experience and didn't get the internship because they already filles the spots.
Cepe
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After weeks of waiting and interviewing I've broken through and will start a new role June 1.

I seriously didn't think I'd ever work a corporate job again and was planning various ways to stack work. Thankfully a great company hired me and it's been great so far.

For those still working on it keep pushing forward.
Cromagnum
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Congrats !

The full time job of jobseeking sucks. Even if you get unemployment, the pay sucks, and there are no benefits. The stress is also really bad.

Hoping everyone looking lands something good.
infinity ag
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Cepe said:

After weeks of waiting and interviewing I've broken through and will start a new role June 1.

I seriously didn't think I'd ever work a corporate job again and was planning various ways to stack work. Thankfully a great company hired me and it's been great so far.

For those still working on it keep pushing forward.


Good work, congratulations!!
Exposing Hypocrisy - one CEO at a time
48jeep
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They would have gone bankrupt. Gosh gas was expensive at the time.

If you would like to know the best part....

Natural gas was still traded/bought on AOL instant messenger. This was circa 2013. I tought my replacement that you can automaticall save conversations in text format, because she was manually copy-pasting them into word documents....
Cepe
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Cromagnum said:

Congrats !

The full time job of jobseeking sucks. Even if you get unemployment, the pay sucks, and there are no benefits. The stress is also really bad.

Hoping everyone looking lands something good.


It's truly amazing. My full time job was educating myself on how to find a job. I researched and learned new skills in resume writing for ATS, how to optimize my LinkedIn profile for the new LinkedIn Brew360 algorithm they launched this year, used AI to research company interview programs and practiced verbally going through mock interviews with ChatGPT, keeping Indeed as an active searcher by changing and saving something in my profile ever 2-3 days, and many other skills.

And then - everything I learned wasn't needed any more and will probably become obsolete in a few weeks.

But if anyone needs advice at the moment I can help out in these areas.
Roger350
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Prayers and good luck for everyone going through extended periods of unemployment. I experienced a layoff in 4/24 but luckily had a comparable full-time job by 8/24. But the emotional roller coaster of it all and the feelings of failure were rough. I still feel embarrassed when I speak with old colleagues like I am a failure for being laid off.

I'm going to try and lighten the mood a bit with a story from the other side. I am now a hiring manager looking at mostly new college graduates in aerospace engineering. I interviewed a kid from Missouri S&T the other day. His resume wasn't great, a lot of white space and not a single part-time job or lawn mowing business. But we have not had many applicants so he got an interview and I was hoping he just had left off a job at Walmart or something like that he thought had no relevance for an engineering gig. It's a Skype interview, and he showed up in a T-shirt and his background was his disorganized dorm room that he didn't even bother to blur out using the built in blur function. And he wasn't leaving anything off his resume, mommy and daddy never made him get a part time job, so he had never worked a day in his life. He had a good GPA from a good school but he was totally clueless when it came to interviewing and marketing himself. At the end when we opened it up to him for questions all he wanted to know about were our benefits. I couldn't write my rejection evaluation for HR quick enough. I reached out to some S&T grads that worked for me previously to kind of rub it in their faces how unprepared this kid was and they all told me that their school does just like A&M with helping kids with mock interviews, resume writing, and even loaning business attire out to them. This kid was just oblivious to it all I guess.

Good luck to everyone in your searches!
TxAggieBand85
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AG
Missouri S&T is a fine Engineering school, I would rank equal or better than A&M.

I've been observing that many of our youth now has zero work experience or how to find a job or present their-selves.

But still need to be better dressed, presentable camera presence and know general follow up questions.
 
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