My Worst Interview Experience Ever
I'm a fully recovered lawyer but before I made the tough decision to leave law, I interviewed for a summer associate position with a law firm back in 1990. Two interviewers and me in one of those awful on-campus interview room with air that smelled like it was imported every decade from the Soviet Union.
One of the interviewers greets me like a cold fish and tells me that she's the human resources manager. She definitely knew how to take the human out of human resources. But it gets better. The other takes over and explains that she's the staff psychologist (really) and wants to ask me a series of questions for 25 minutes and then I'll have five minutes to ask questions of them. Gee. How generous.
She started by saying they have a very stressful environment and they need to make sure the people they hire can deal with the stress. First question is what do I do if I'm driving along a two lane country road with deep ditches on either side, a semi truck coming toward me in the oncoming lane and a turtle in my lane? I thought for a moment, stood, shook their hands, thanked them for their time, and told them that I wasn't a good fit for their firm. They just about lost it. They couldn't believe that anyone wouldn't want to work for their firm.... Read More
I walked out feeling pretty darned good and saw my best friend walk out of the interview room next to mine. He asked if I had just experienced a weird interview as he was interviewing with the same firm. I told him my experience. He burst out laughing. He also walked out the same way that I did.
Two years later, my friend and I were both in the business world so we could enjoy our lives and the law firm was bankrupt.
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