There is a time and place for everything. Believe it or not, a lot of employers don’t understand that asking way too personal questions during a job interview decreases the chances of that candidate accepting their offer. And let’s be honest here, it’s just rude, cringy, and unprofessional.
Here are some of the most inappropriate questions that have been asked during the interview process.
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
I was once asked if I would be willing to change my name because the owner of the company had the same name and “we absolutely have to know who it is when she calls.”
I suggested a nickname and was told I couldn’t use that either – the department head had that name.
I got out of there.
potatoisafruit
I was told once that I looked about birthing age and asked when I was going to start having children. I just got up, said “thank you for your time” and walked out.
funsizedsamurai
I literally got asked,”Are you a homosexual?”
Of course, being the movie buff I am, I seized the opportunity.
“No, I am not a homosexual, but I am willing to learn.”
The look I got from the interviewer is best described by this priceless look.
I started the job two months later.
thatguyfromnewyork
I was being interviewed for a job at a small law firm. I was being interviewed by the office manager and the associate attorney was sitting in. After all the skill questions they office manager goes, “so are you married? Do you have kids? We are very family oriented.” The attorney jumped in, “You can’t ask those types of questions!!!” After a few more get to know you questions she said, “So are you a Christian?” Attorney jumped in again, “YOU CAN’T ASK THAT EITHER!”
I did get the job. It was a fun place to work at.
tang81
So once I had a job interview at a frozen yogurt place in 2011, conveniently scheduled about 2 days after I got my wisdom teeth pulled. I was in a lot of pain, so I ended up showing up to the interview high on painkillers. All I really remember is him asking me the question “if I shrunk you down to 2 inches tall and put you inside a blender, how would you escape?” and I believe my answer was something along the lines of “What kind of question was that?” and the weirdest part is I ended up getting a second interview.
Zamus514
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Interviewer said I looked very youthful, then asked how I expected to keep a class in line if I looked almost as young as the students. He, word-for word, asked, “What if they rebel?”
This was for a biochemistry teaching position at a college…
whoduhhelru
Another one from the big Boss, he said to our female HR manager who was working for us at the time about another female employee who was applying for a management job… He said…. I won’t want her as a manager cause she will probably get pregnant and will be a problem… 3 weeks later HR manager resigned, and announced she was pregnant… Got a job at a real nice company who treated her like a human being.
HanSoloz
“You didn’t list your religion on your resume.”
“That’s personal. Perhaps we will become acquaintances in time and we can discuss it.”
“If you don’t wanna talk about it, you must be in a cult or something.”
“No, it’s not like that. I just don’t see religion as this big banner to wave. It does not define me or my work ethic.”
“You’re not gonna answer me are ya, boy?”
“Yeah, I’m done here. Thanks for your time.
Nevermind04
Interviewing for a bar-tending position, I’m a guy and the manager interviewing me was a girl.
“You’re not a virgin, right? Also, have you had more than one girlfriend in your life?”
Pretty inappropriate but I didn’t care, I have a sense of humour. I asked why she posed these questions (I got the job on the spot) and she said “I don’t want any weirdos working here that can’t talk to girls or guys”.
Completely fair.
Perm_Coupon
I was interviewing for a federal government spot. Prior to the interview, we were chatting in the entry way and the interviewer notices my wedding band, it’s black titanium. He asked what it was and I told him.
The interview was being recorded. The 8th question he asked was “since you’re married, are you and your wife planning to have kids in the next 2-3 years?”
I just stared at him and the HR guy in there reached over, clicked off the recorder stood up and took the guy out of the room. I sat in there for about 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do.
The HR guy came back in with a new person. They restarted the recorder and started the interview again.
excusemefu
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I had a job interview where I listed that I can speak a fair amount of Spanish on my resume, as well as my past experience working on various farms doing manual labor. The dude interviewing me (who was one of many, as they took me around to various managers), noted the Spanish speaking part (I am white), kind of chuckled and was like “I bet you picked that up doing all that farm work.” I just kind of smiled and said I took Spanish for 6 years in school.
Now I enjoy some politically incorrect / racial humor a lot, but that type of thing during a job interview, with a complete stranger? Wow.
LonrSpankster
Theres a series of “new” interview standards the company I work for has put out, that are good interview questions, but inappropriate for the jobs they’re asking them in.
Some of the questions are like “Who do you follow on LinkedIn?” – which is a good question…however…if you’re applying to be a bar tender or a housekeeper…You think they really care about LinkedIn?
I wish I had the template in front of me…the questions really don’t fit the roles.
It’d be like asking a 15 year old McDonalds candidate what he thinks of the current state of the economy and what his action plan would be in the role to accommodate the changing environment.
n0remack
The staff had to wear company polos every shift and in the interview I was asked what size shirt I’d wear. I was told by the interviewer that they wanted to make sure the new employee would fit into the previous employee’s polo shirts so they wouldn’t have to buy 3 new polos.
TuckerWilliams
Interview was going great. Superb in fact. We’d been discussing stuff for an hour.
“What would you do if I took this pen and jabbed it in your eye?”
“I…what?”
“What would you do?”
“Excuse me?”
He literally sat there repeating himself until I gave the answer that I would have to play it by ear because I was unsure of my motor functions after such an event. I said my plan would be to prevent it and to ask why he’d do it but he was insistent the pen was in my eye so it would be how I’d go from there.
I just said I’d probably wipe him around the room if I wasn’t losing too much blood before calling an ambulance/the police.
He hired me. We are friends to this day… 8 years later. We’re in different jobs now though.
Shinjetsu01
I had a candidate I was interviewing ask me whether I smoked weed. He was telling the interview panel that he did, and that this showed he would fit in well with the office social scene. This was for a job at a Government department in London, and it was really not that kind of place!
Goat_Proteins
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When I was interviewing for my first major game development job, I got lobbed the question “What’s the biggest animal you’ve ever killed?” Evidently it was a pretty common interview question there, I guess it was intended to throw you off guard maybe.
I answered honestly, and told them that I worked at an animal shelter and held a dog while my superior administered a lethal injection. My friend had the best response, though – He told them that while he was in the womb, he had a twin that he absorbed. So in a way, he killed his own brother.
I don’t know if they still ask that question, but man was it weird.
JoystickMonkey
So, I was applying to a Footlocker for a job. I had a friend who worked there and she told me to come in one day after school. When I go to drop off my resume the manager is there so he decided to ask me some questions right there. I was new to all this so I was quite nervous. Now the manager was a man with a very thick accent.
He’s asking me some questions when he asks me, “What is your disability?” I’m horrified at this thinking I had done something so appalling that he thinks I am mentally challenged.
Shocked, I tell him, “I have none.” He looks at me and again asks, “What is your disability?!” I didn’t know what to do at this point so I excused myself and told him I had to go and sorry for taking up his time. The next day I see my friend at school and she comes up to me. She asked me what I was doing. I told her what had happened and she just stared at me. He was asking what my availability was…
I didn’t get the job.
CODILICIOUS
When interviewing with a well-known tech company in CA, I was asked about a gap in my work history and said, “I retired from my last position to start a family but that didn’t go quite as planned – so I moved to California and I’m looking for a new opportunity now.”
He followed up by asking, “How does that not go as planned?”
After a moment of initial shock, I looked him straight in the eye and said, “I got pregnant, miscarried and then my husband left me for another woman.”
I know I didn’t have to provide that much detail but that was the last one in a series of bad/unprofessional interviewers and I already knew I wasn’t going to take the job.
calystra
This was for my first summer law clerk interview in law school. One of the first questions I was asked was whether I consider myself to be assertive or aggressive. The next question was “Have you ever worked for anyone who every now and then blows up for what seems like no reason?”
Needless to say, I didn’t take that job.
drainbead78
I literally had an interview last week and the interviewer was this young pregnant 18-year old girl. (Should have saw that as a red flag already). She began asking me a slew of inappropriate questions:
- Are you single?
- Do you have kids? —No. Why don’t you have kids at your age yet?
- Are you happy with your life?
I had to pause the “interrogation” at one point and ask “How is this relevant to the job?” I told her I’ve never been asked such personal questions in any interview before.
Needless to say I got the job, but it turned out to be a scam company. I left the second I found out it was rubbish.
MuyGalan
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“What happened to your face?”
I have a facial deformity on the side of my head. Strangers always find ways to approach me and nose in my business. Completely threw me off being in an interview…
I had the job in the bag. It was the last interview and I was told it was a formality but that was just unprofessional and rude so I went through this long explanation and followed with, “Since you just asked me an extremely personal question that some of my closest friends don’t have an answer for, may I ask you one?”
She says “SURE!”
What happened to your waistline? You’re letting yourself go!
I didn’t get the job.
Hillbillyjacob
I was interviewing for a EE design job at a video company. After the private meeting with the hiring manager, we were touring the (small) lab where the 10 or so engineers and techs were working. On the walls were a number of photos of crop circles. Like a fool, I asked the manager, “what’s the deal with the crop circle pictures?”
All activity in the room stopped, and everyone stared at me. The manager asked, “It’s a running debate within the team. What do you think about crop circles?”
“Uh, I think there might be a lot of bored farmers.”
Wrong answer, I think, as I got no offer.
grumbleboy
I was asked “So, you’re American?” (in the UK). I told her that I was indeed American. She kinda tilted her head and sighed like she was in pain. She then, this all being 30 minutes into the interview, tells me that I wouldn’t know how to work in this place because of being American. I explain to her that I’d worked in retail since I was 16 and that this being retail, it couldn’t be that different.
She went on to tell me that she went to New York for a week and saw that retail is very different in the US, so I wouldn’t know what I was doing. End of interview.
This was my first interview for a job in the UK.
Iateyoursnack
He asked if I knew how sliced bread came into existence. I did not. He yelled at me for a solid five minutes about my lack of sliced bread knowledge.
Then he said I was mispronouncing my last name (it’s French) and yelled at me for that too.
I got the job. Weird dude, he was.
dinken_flicka84
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I went to some blank interview once – the company had a blind ad and the interview took place in a conference room at a local hotel. When I got there, I discovered it was me and a roomful of middle-aged men (I was a girl in my late twenties), all of us with a background in sales. Finally, we got some weird dog and pony show about the company (who still didn’t give us a name) and how they sold a wide variety of products and services across multiple industries. They wanted us to come up front one at a time, give our name, our age, where we went to college, tell whether we were married, how many kids we had, and what our long-term goals were.
I was the only one who asked why my age, marital status or number of children was required (mainly because I had a background in HR and knew they couldn’t legally ask that shit). After that portion was over, they told us they’d be calling within the next 2 hours to invite some of us back for round 2, and in round 2 we had to bring our spouses with us, so they could talk to them, too. They called me back and I didn’t even bother answering the phone. I still have no idea who the hell they were.
karmacorn
Completely serious. Not an exaggeration. Interviewer was asking some personal but not invasive questions in a kind of pre-interview, we-haven’t-really-gotten-to-the-job-questions kind of way.
“So, do you live at home?”
“Are you in school?”
…and what not.
Then it takes a sharp turn:
“You have a girlfriend?”
“Yes”
“How’d you meet?”
“I met her through a friend who I go out to this bar with for trivia. She showed up one night and we started talking and we really hit it off. Not a really exciting story, I’m afraid.”
“You hit it off, huh? Did you–” (he makes a weird motion with his hands)
“Did we—-?”
“Did you two (air quotes) ‘hit it off’ when you first met?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t really understand-“
“Did you two go home together when you first met?”
“Uh, I think you’re asking me if I got physical with my SO on our first encounter? That’s doesn’t feel really appropri-“
“(Scoffs and says under his breath) Some people are so fucking uptight. Okay, so work questions…”
I completed the interview and got the job but turned it down.
TheConfirmist
I’m about to get out of the Army and I’ve done some interviews over Skype for potential jobs in the town I’ll be going to college in. The very first interview I had, I mentioned to the interviewer that I’m transitioning from the Army, and the guy said “Oh the Army! How many people have you killed?”
TradocTanker
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