The Strangest Interviews: A Tale of Two Odd Jobs

[TheStatutoryApe]

They made a rather interesting topic of this on the radio the other day.

What is the strangest/most interesting job interview you have ever been on.

Or who was the strangest person you have ever interviewed for a job.



I can't think of any off hand except that strange guy I trained that I made a thread about.
Update on that... He wound up getting fired after residents made concerned reports regarding him talking to himself all the time and complaints that he had yelled at random people for no apparent reason what so ever.

 

[humanino]

Obviously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a7C2EtErYQ

 

[Phrak]

Have you been hired, only to find you are now working with the totally insane, kool-aide drinking mentally handycaped? ---then wondered what they found in you?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Have you been hired, only to find you are now working with the totally insane, kool-aide drinking mentally handycaped? ---then wondered what they found in you?

Wait what? What's wrong with kool-aide?

 

[Phrak]

Wait what? What's wrong with kool-aide?

Kool-aide? Who said anything about kool-aide. The fortifieres make all the difference.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I was a software engineer with experience in graphics and animation software. On the advice of a friend, I went to visit the showroom of a large industrial concern, a machine tool maker. I saw band cutters, laser cutters, punch presses, press brakes and the like. These are very large machines with numerical control boxes. There I met a man who took me around the showroom floor and explained the various machines. Afterward, we sat down and discussed the numerical control boxes. He asked me a few questions concerning what I knew about realtime operating systems, numerical control, machine tools, and robotics. However, I didn't know anything about any of these things and said so. Then we parted. Two weeks later, my friend informed me that I had been offered a job at the company. That conversation had been a job interview and even though I told him that I knew nothing in any category that he was interested in, I passed it.

And that was not the wierdest interview I have been on. One guy told me that he hated his job and since I was searching for one, could I please let him in on some prospects so he could find a new one. I didn't get an offer at that company.

 

[rootX]

http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/50000/7000/000/57004/57004.strip.sunday.gif

http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/50000/7000/000/57004/57004.strip.sunday.gif

 

[Topher925]

Haha, I love dilbert.

I've had two unusual interviews. The first was one I had a Cessna a few months before I graduated with my BS. The company put my on a plane, flew me out to Wichita, put me in a Hilton for the night and gave me a rental car. The next day was the interview which consisted of myself and 3 other candidates. They split is us up with engineers that worked there that took us on tours of their entire design and manufacturing facilities. After that, they took us all out to lunch at a nice restaurant (with a LOT of cute girls) where we all just sat around and BSed for a few hours. It was awesome. Then they put me on a plane and sent me home the next day, ALL expenses paid. I promptly received a very attractive job offer which nearly gave me a heart attack when I turned them down. I've had a lot of job interviews and this one was by far the very best and really left a great impression about how great of a company Cessna is.

The other one that stands out was an interview as a entry level engineer for a venture capital project I worked on between my undergard and grad schooling. The interview basically consisted of my boss at the time, drilling me with technical questions for 2.5 hours strait. Basically testing me to figure out all my strengths and weaknesses in all fields of engineering. The interview was kind of fun yet kind of nerve racking at the same time but a good experience none-the-less.

 

[turbo]

My flukiest job interview was at a pulp mill. I had applied for an outside job in the woodyard, but someone in HR saw that I had started studying in Engineering with a concentration in chemistry, and he called me and scheduled me for a job interview as a process chemist. I got passed from engineer to engineer, none of whom showed much interest, especially since I didn't have a degree. Finally, they passed me off to the head of the technical department, and we had a short Q&A that didn't seem to be going anywhere, when the chief environmental engineer broke in, all worried because the pulping department had to take an unexpected shutdown, and they intended to acid-wash the Kamyr digester. He was concerned because they had been having troubles with the solids balance of the aeration basins, and the sharp drop in pH resulting from the acid-wash would kill the "good" bugs and further unbalance the treatment plant. I asked the manager if I could chime in, and he said "OK", so I suggested to the engineer that he pump as much active sludge as possible into the two sludge holding-ponds, and valve the two aeration basins in series instead of parallel, to give a longer retention-time for the pH to come to equilibrium, and when the pH stabilized, pump the sludge from the sludge ponds back into the aeration basins to repopulate the bugs and help buffer the acid further. His eyes opened a bit as he considered that and the manager asked how I knew they had the capability to do that (they had not done that trick before) and I told him that I was a soils scientist during the construction of that plant, and when I had slack-time I would read the blue-prints and piping diagrams. They thanked me for coming in, and I went home. When I got there 20 minutes later, my wife told me that I had the job and had to show up at HR Monday morning. Later, I found out that I had beat out a freshly-graduated BS in Chemistry, who ended up being the next chemist they hired a few months later. Good thing I like blueprints, diagrams, and maps!

 

[skeptic2]

This wasn't so much a weird interview so much a weird hiring process.
In 1982 a recruiter called me up and offered me a job offering $27,000, I was making $21,500 at the time. Sometime after the interview they offered me the job and said I had beat out 15 other candidates. Then they told me my salary would be $25,000. I called the recruiter and told her that either she had been inflating the salary or the company was playing games. She told me she had inflated the salary but was able to get the company to hire me at $27,000 anyway. I suspected she was falsely taking the blame so I would take the job.

Immediately when I started, the HR manager asked me to bring in my college transcripts from 10 years earlier. I suspected he was looking for a reason to lower my salary so I procrastinated bringing them in. Before he asked for them again, he was fired. Later I found out a co-worker who did nearly the same job as I did, was hired about the same time at $25,000. Six months later, I got a call from a different recruiter offering me the same job I already had for $27,000. A year and a half later when I was laid off due to the recession, I got a call from the same HR manager, who now had his own recruiting firm and now wanted to look for jobs on my behalf.