Business1 min read

'I was asked if I was a crier': Your worst job interviews revealed

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

Unprofessional hiring practices offer applicants critical early warnings about a company's internal working culture and underlying ethics. Candidates frequently encounter severe delays, deeply intrusive personal inquiries, and potentially unlawful discrimination regarding family planning and age. Career and legal specialists stress that these recruitment red flags should guide prospective hires on whether to walk away from a toxic workplace. Specifically, applicants reported interviewers arriving 40 minutes late or probing whether they liked working with people.

Key points

  • Recruitment interviews serve as a crucial two-way evaluation for applicants to assess a p…: Recruitment interviews serve as a crucial two-way evaluation for applicants to assess a potential employer's culture.
  • Repeating an off-putting question back to an interviewer allows candidates to seek clarif…: Repeating an off-putting question back to an interviewer allows candidates to seek clarification and gauge underlying issues.
  • Legally questionable questions during the hiring process can signal an unsupportive or di…: Legally questionable questions during the hiring process can signal an unsupportive or discriminatory overall working environment.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

- Published

Tiara Allen arrived on time to interview for a retail job. Her interviewer didn't.

She waited for around 40 minutes in a shopping centre while the interviewer's co-worker called them "two or three times".

When they finally showed up, Tiara says she was told it was because the meeting wasn't in the schedule.

She needed work at the time, so took the job when she was offered it, but says she would handle the situation differently now.

"I would not take a job if they took that long," she says, adding that she believed her treatment during the interview was a sign of how the firm tended to treat staff.

Tiara is far from alone. She is one of many people who spoke to the BBC about their worst job interview experiences after we wrote about the one interview question that leaves you feeling uncomfortable.

While those situations can be hard to deal with in the moment, they can also teach us a lot about the world of work.

'Are you a crier?'

During an interview for an…

Business