'He...Doesn't Work Here Anymore' And Other Tales Of Woe

From the mediabistro.com forums come more tales of misbehaving interviews and dodged bullets. Our favorite is the one kicking off this post, wherein an interviewee paid his own way to New York City only to find that the hiring manager whom he'd been corresponding with... quit the week before. "He...doesn't work here anymore," the receptionist said. The company found two random execs to interview the candidate, but since they hadn't seen the candidate's resume or qualifications, he didn't get the job. "Then, just last week, I had a round of very successful interviews with another place. I met with several upper-level people who were very excited about my resume. the day after my final interview, I got an email from the man who brought me in. They had suddenly realized that it just wasn't possible to fit a new hire in with the budget. Nothing drastic had changed, and I hadn't demanded a ridiculous salary -- we hadn't even started talking numbers. It was more of a 'whoops' moment on their part, and I was sent along my way." Good lord. Then there was the HR person who called a candidate at her current job and tried to do a phone interview. "I asked if I could call her back from a conference room (my current boss was within earshot). She warned me that she was almost impossible to reach, my intention to call her back 'literally in one minute' notwithstanding. Sure enough, when I called her 30 seconds later, I got her voice mail." Another commenter wrote back to say, though, that sometimes it works out for the best: "As soon as I introduced myself to the editor interviewing me at an SF Bay Area paper, she let me know the score: She had already picked someone already on staff for the job, and I was there because the company required one of the final three candidates to be a minority. For this, it flew me to the Bay Area for two days of interviews, rented me a car, fed me and put me up in a hotel for two nights. Basically, I spent two vacation days practicing interview skills to get a better-paying job at a bigger paper in the same area." Open thread, guys what horrors have you experienced lately on the job hunt?

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'He...Doesn't Work Here Anymore' And Other Tales Of Woe

Rachel Kaufman

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Rachel Kaufman