In terms of chronology, this little series of incidents actually took place before the six-hour interview of death, but it's a little too trifling to really feel like a genuine fail in my mind.
At the aforementioned job fair, before encountering representative-that-is-apparently-terrified-of-job-fairs, I walked past a table with some really enthusiastic guys attempting to capture an audience, or whatever you call it when you're making a pitch to desperate college students about attempting to gain a position at your organization. I didn't really have much of an interest in their firm (medical software/IT), but as I stopped to briefly chat with one of the presenters, I could see him trying to peer at the resumes I was holding in my hand so I saved him the trouble of straining his eyes by handing him one. He looked over it. "Wow, Phi Beta Kappa as a junior!" he said before adding in a weirdly suggestive tone, "You know, I was Phi Beta Kappa as a senior." I didn't quite know how to respond. Did he expect me to invite him down the block for coffee because of this? I probably just stood there with a vaguely perturbed look on my face. I guess my resume made some kind of impression on him, because he started making a pitch to me in a frenzy. I gave him my email address so that he could set up a phone interview, and mercifully took my leave before his enthusiasm triggered some kind of chain reaction that would have killed him--or me.
As I walked away and amongst the other tables and booths at the job fair, I heard some kind of hubbub behind me. Like, someone running, or yelling a name, or something. Turns out it was Mr. Enthusiastic, running full speed after me, his suit jacket flapping behind him and making him look like some kind of creepily gung-ho superhero.
"Wait, wait! I forgot to ask you, are you legally allowed to work within the US?"
"Yes?"
"Oh. Okay. Good."
He walked back to his booth, his jacket no longer resembling a cape.
Maybe a week later, I got an email from said firm's HR department, telling me that they would be doing phone interviews over the next 4 days, and if I could send them a schedule of my availability between such and such hours. Given a time zone difference between their company headquarters and my location at the time, I sent them a very detailed message noting said time difference and telling them what times they were allowed to call both according to their local time zone, and mine. I figured this was foolproof. I also figured it was foolproof that I wrote explicitly in the email: "On these days, I have work starting at 2:30 (my local time). I do not know how long you expect the phone interview to take, but I would appreciate it if you scheduled my interview for far enough in advance so that I did not have to come in late for work." In fact, 2:30-4:00 was the only time I gave them for the day they ended up scheduling the interview for that I was not available.
A few days later, I get a confirmation email: "Your interview has been scheduled for 2:30 on Thursday." 2:30. Not 2:20, which would have proven to me that they could at least understand how numbers worked, even if they didn't possess the ability to read my helpful note about not wanting to miss work. 2:30. Classy.
Employer Fail #12: Not being able to understand numbers, or perhaps the words "these are the times when I am unavailable" to the extent that you end up scheduling interviews explicitly when I told you I couldn't do them.
If they didn't care about my availability, why even make me submit a schedule for their consideration in the first place? And furthermore, if they did care about my availability but making me miss the first half-hour of work was the only way they could square the scheduling circle, why not send a thoughtful note informing me that that was the case and apologizing for the inconvenience? At this point my indifference towards their organization became contempt--why would anyone want to work for a place where HR can't read or identify numbers properly (or both)?
Ah, but this wasn't it. Prior to my phone interview, they expected me to take a personality test of sorts. If I knew what I was getting into, I would have had the screen capture key ready, because the images would have been priceless to demonstrate my point. The personality test contained a lot of generic questions that you might find on a Myers-Briggs or something similar, but it also contained completely off the wall questions that made no sense. Here are a couple, reconstructed from memory rather accurately because of their ridiculousness:
Sun is to basketball as moon is to ____
A) Football
B) Tennis ball
C) Shuttlecock
D) Frisbee
What in the world could that even refer to? I mean, if golf ball or volleyball were possible choices, that would've been one thing. But as it is, this just seems like an attempt at pseudo-Freudian divination. "Oh, look, applicant #481516 selected 'tennis ball.' You know what that means. He's a secret communist, and communists never do well in this position!" Maybe the test concludes that if you select "frisbee," you're an alcoholic. Who knows. Moving on:
Tiger is to hunt as fish is to ___
A) Gar
B) Marlin
C) Tuna
D) Mackerel
Okay, so, let's see. First off, the analogy is presumably reversed. A tiger is a type of cat, and in this question it takes the primary position in the first formulation. Yet, all of the choices are types of fish, but they are in the latter place in the second formulation. Even if we consider it to mean "fish" the verb, so it can parallel "hunt," we end up with a series of bizarre questions. Are they referring to tigers hunting and want to know which of the fishes listed fishes for other fish? Are they saying that tigers get hunted and want to know which of the listed fishes are fished for? Are they making all of this up, branding some of us closeted crossdressers for selecting "gar" and then recommending that we get hired for the sake of promoting office diversity while laughing all the way to the bank? Curiouser and curiouser. However, none of it is as ridiculous as this existential trainwreck:
All is to some as some is to ___
A) None
B) Half
C) Some
D) A few
If you choose "none," you're hopelessly depressed and will only jeopardize office morale. If you choose "half," you're a psychotic perfectionist whose commitment to exactitude will irreparably drag down your productivity. If you choose "some," you don't make sense, since "some is to some" doesn't really work in an analogy, but they'll probably hire you anyway. If you choose "a few," you're a haphazard lout who can't be bothered to effectively quantify anything. Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this. Too little too late, though.
Employer Fail #13: Subjecting applicants to personality tests that are more obnoxious than the most poorly-composed quizzes on Quizilla.
Maybe they should've just linked me to a "Which Twilight character are you?" quiz on Facebook and gone from there.
Of course, what can you expect from a personality test website that features this guy as their front-and-center image? What kind of message does that send? "If you use our software, only men that sit leaning uncomfortably forward with creepy vaguely-pedophile smiles will be recommended for hiring!" Sounds like a winner to me. Or, as we can see by their banner image, "We're all different, except for our inability to wear anything but solid colors and look anything but immensely uncomfortable as we form a weird makeshift human centipede!" Lastly, if you go here you'll see one of the classiest sleight-of-hands for self-promotion I've ever encountered. Apparently, an in-house study of their own software revealed the employees selected by their arcane methods were more effective than other employees? Nah, there's no conflict of interest there. Furthermore, the chart they conveniently provide clearly lists "sales" on the Y-axis, yet the explanatory blurb writes that all average "productivity" is enhanced by virtue of hiring according to the software recommendations. But what if your firm doesn't do sales? Answer: Who cares, you probably selected "marlin" on question #23 of our personality assessment, you secret communist! We wouldn't sell to you anyway!
Aside from the aforementioned poor timing, there isn't really much to report about the phone interview. The man I talked to was incredibly humorless, which made for a pretty dreary experience. My lack of enthusiasm for their whole operation was almost certainly transparent, and I knew that I had lost the position just about as soon as he asked me if I was willing to permanently relocate to their company headquarters outside of Madison, WI and all I could muster was a "Well, if that's what the job requires..." I mean, there's not really any way that I'm getting excited about Madison, of all things, and the job is 80% travel, so it seems very harsh to require me to put down money for a lease in an area I don't really care for if I'm going to be away from the place I'm paying rent for 4 days a week.
Employer Fail #14: Requiring employees whose job consists mostly of traveling to live right by company headquarters, as opposed to living maybe a couple of hours out and commuting if, for whatever reason, they really need to come to the office.
Interestingly, 3 acquaintances of mine now work for this organization. I guess they answered "shuttlecock" when given the chance.
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