Maybe you went the entire interview with spinach stuck in between your two front teeth. Maybe you showed up 20 minutes late after getting stuck in traffic. Or maybe you just really didn’t mesh well with your hiring manager.
No matter what happened, I can promise you that a subpar job interview isn’t the end of the world. It’s also probably not as bad as you’re imagining. In case you need a little reassurance that some people had it way worse, check out these seven roundups of job interview horror stories from around the web—64 cringe-inducing moments in total.
- Lifehacker put out a call for awful stories, and its readers totally delivered. We’ve got an awkward post-bathroom run-in, a bumbling QA department, and a guy who just needs you to do him a solid. (Lifehacker)
- What do you even do when your interviewer receives a call that her husband has died? (JobMob)
- Here’s how one guy handled a situation in which an employer violated the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission handbook three times within one conversation. (New York Post)
- In one case, a candidate accidentally insulted the interviewer’s wife. Whoops. (Simply Hired)
- One recruiter recalls a day when, in the middle of an interview, the candidate pulled out her phone and called her therapist. Needless to say, she didn’t get the job. (SkilledUp)
- On the flip side of things, these meetings can go south for the recruiter, too. What do you do if the person you’re speaking with asks you out? (Workopolis)
- How do you handle a situation in which you’re trying to tell a potential employer that you can hardly contain your excitement and it accidentally autocorrects to “excrement?” (The Daily Muse)