15+ Job candidates whose mid-interview mistakes cost them the job: 'I could barely contain my laughter'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 2, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

There are bad job interviews, and then there are candidates who lie to their interviewer's faces, or cry 3 separate times in one meeting. All of us have flubbed a question or 3, or we've misread the room and turned the conversation into an awkward silence. But some people really go above and beyond when it comes to flunking their job interviews. They almost make it look impressive! 

These folks were kind enough to share what happened during their worst job interview sessions. As mentioned, one woman did cry 3 times during the interview. Why? Because she was very unhappy at her current job, and was hoping to leave ASAP. I understand her emotions… when you desperately want to leave a bad job, you'll cling to any job that comes your way. Still, no matter how upset you are, you've got to at least try and contain your tears until you've completed the interview. Even when you put your best foot forward, it still may not be enough. Crying at your interview just highlights that you won't do well under pressure or that you're not able to separate your work life from your personal life. Even the best candidate in the world won't get a callback after behavior like that. And this woman isn't even the worst interviewee here! Check out the other candidates who messed up badly by scrolling below. 

Next, read about some employees who made huge mistakes, but still kept their jobs: "He stole over $10,000... but was never fired."

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  • 01
    [deleted] I once had a candidate for an intermediate level analyst brag during an interview that he used to work other jobs and play poker - while working his primary (office) job. For example: for about 2 weeks (before he was caught and got fired from both jobs), he would take long lunches. No one knew
    via u/[deleted]
  • 02
    where he went between 10:30 and 1:30. Turns out he had gotten a job making pizzas at the next door pizza restaurant and worked the lunch rush. He also bragged about playing poker at work constantly. This was in the late 2000s, while online poker was still in its boom.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 03
    He bragged these things to me as if I, a relatively young professional at the time, would think he was cool. Or maybe he thought it demonstrated his ability to multitask and still get his job. done. I have no idea. Either way, we did not extend him an offer.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 04
    squirrel_exceptions Me: I see you managed a vegetarian restaurant. Interviewee: What? M: It says here you managed a vegetarian restaurant. I: Oh, I guess I did write that. Not really though. My girlfriend had an art exhibition, and I organized the sandwiches for the opening. They were
    via u/squirrel_exceptions
  • 05
    vegetarian. This was a candidate that was otherwise pretty impressive seeming, and had been among the favorites for a quite sought after position, the interview had even gone quite well up until this point. Met him later at a party, he had no memory of me.
    via u/squirrel_exceptions
  • 06
    tactics14 This kid, probably 18-20, started picking his nose, like nuckle deep and digging for gold in the middle of his food service job interview. Wrapped that up real quick and didn't hire him.
    via u/tactics14
  • 07
    mattweb94 I interviewed a gal once and while we were talking, I was looking over her resume'. (Please note that English IS her first language or else this wouldn't have humored me so much) Her "mission statement" on her resume' was as follows: "Along with my detail oriented and organizational skills, I will bring encourage
    via u/tactics14
  • 08
    team to work cooperatively and creativity to provide an understanding the visual aspects of our work." This was for an admin position at a law firm. Not sure what "the visual aspects of our work" entailed in this position,
    via u/tactics14
  • 09
    honestly. I read it over about 5 or 6 times, worried that I was having a stroke so I didn't really hear much of anything she said during the interview. I haven't been able to make sense of it no matter how many times I read it. I actually cut it out of her resume' and have it sitting on my desk some 15 years later.
    via u/tactics14
  • 10
    [deleted] tl;dr She was a lazy liar. Hiring a business intelligence analyst. There are a variety of ways to get into this profession. I'm open to many of them. Frankly, if you have a good head on your shoulders and know even basic SQL, I can probably work with you though lately I've had to get more picky as our projects
    via u/[deleted]
  • 11
    have become more complex. This woman is mid-40's, boisterous personality and seems like she'd be a good organizational fit. The problem is she keeps lying but only half way. "Do you know SQL?" "Oh yes, I have years of experience with it."
    via u/[deleted]
  • 12
    "Great, so take a look at this code, this is the sort of thing we do." "What's this?" For some reason, though, the most egregious lie that stands out in my head with her was when she commented, when I suggested she not take a particular route to the train
    via u/[deleted]
  • 13
    station because it was dark and potentially unsafe (also, I was headed to the same station and did not wish to commute with her) that she had a blackbelt and had practiced martial arts for years. "Oh, cool, what discipline?" "I don't remember." FFS
    via u/[deleted]
  • 14
    periphrazein We had a short-listed candidate come for a campus interview. This usually includes meeting with the dean, a long interview with the full hiring committee, a formal meeting with the department chair, dinner with the hiring committee, a formal "job talk" (1 hour academic lecture), teaching a sample undergrad course, and
    via u/periphrazein
  • 15
    meeting some students, as well as a campus tour. During the job talk, he kept flashing the pink satin liner of his suit jacket in the direction of one of our openly-gay grad students. Everyone noticed. Later, he proceeded to get trashed during the meet/greet with the students at a local bar and confided all of the dirt about
    via u/periphrazein
  • 16
    his current department and overshared the status of his rocky relationship with a grad student back at his home university (a big no- no, even though it happens sometimes). The next morning sealed the big fat no. A grad student usually volunteers (and is compensated) to drive the candidate back to the airport. This person kept trying to persuade the
    via u/periphrazein
  • 17
    openly-gay grad student to drive him instead, even though another student (female) already had the task assigned to her. He didn't get an offer.
    via u/periphrazein
  • 18
    lovelanguage_sarc... When she listed all of her ex boyfriends that currently worked there, and said she couldn't wait to see the look on their faces when she showed up to work. This was in the first 3 minutes of the interview so I wasn't even close to offering the job yet. I cut the interview right there and sent her on her way.
    via u/lovelanguage_sarcasm
  • 19
    xan... I was performing a video interview with a candidate. They were clearly in a large room/bedroom, with most of it visible in the background, but it was clean so I didn't mind. In the back right corner was a closed door. About 7 minutes into the interview I see the door open slightly and some dude poke his head in, see that his roommate/girlfriend was
    via u/xantyrn
  • 20
    in an interview then close the door. Not a big deal, it happens. I ask my next question and let the candidate respond. But then, about 30 seconds later I see the door slowly open again, only this time the dude comes crawling out the bottom. He continues to crawl across the floor making his way to the opposite side of the room. I assume he thought he was out of the cameras FOV, but
    via u/xantyrn
  • 21
    he was clearly visible. He gets to the far end of the room and turns to fiddle with something a in the air facing the camera. Finally, he finishes up with whatever he was doing and makes is way back and out the door.
    via u/xantyrn
  • 22
    I know I should have stopped the candidate and had her deal with the dude, but it was so funny to watch I had to let it play out. I could barely contain my laughter and after the interview finished I lost it. She got the job though, and from what I remember was a great employee.
    via u/xantyrn
  • 23
    MrsTurnip Hiring for a customer support role. Explained to candidate on pre-interview email how she would need to sign-in at our reception kiosk and register herself, get name tag sorted, then the hiring manager (me) would be informed and would come out to the lobby to get her.
    via u/MrsTurnip
  • 24
    Fifteen minutes before interview time, I hear a god almighty jangly noise and see a woman repeatedly trying to open the locked door, and at one point, uses her hands to beat the door and wave at people inside. I open the office door, ask her how we can help, find out she's the candidate we're meant to interview and she never read instructions.
    via u/MrsTurnip
  • 25
    She lost out on the role there and then but we still met with her for about 10minutes. We interviewed. three other people that day and none had problems with interview etiquette.
    via u/MrsTurnip
  • 26
    [deleted] The strangest ever was a man telling us all about his mom's Alzheimer's, talking cr p about our company, and getting upset we didn't offer him the position on the spot. It was a wild ride beginning to end.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 27
    Cheezburger Image 10524117248
    via Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 28
    soup452 I had someone show up in daisy dukes and cowboy boots for an office job at a 4 star hotel.
    via u/soup452
  • 29
    [de... We were looking for a sous chef that would be able to work and train for a few months and then eventually fill my shoes as CDC, as I was leaving in about six months time. We were a big, very successful restaurant in a super competitive city, and had a ton of applications and interviews. Most interviews for a chef position include a pretty
    via u/[deleted]
  • 30
    informal chat with a hiring chef, the owner and the general manager and a cooking/ tasting portion, where the interviewee plans a menu of five or six dishes and serves them to the interviewers. One guy came in and k lled the interview, and served incredible dish after incredible dish, but the owner didn't like him because the guy
    via u/[deleted]
  • 31
    interviewing was tattooless and 50+ years old, and he felt that this guy's age wasn't conducive to our hip, late night vibe. Whatever, you do you Jeff, you insufferable The owner calls me a few days later and tells me that he found a guy that he wanted to poach from a small bistro just outside of town. This guy comes in and is super cool: fresh jacket,
    via u/[deleted]
  • 32
    oozing confidence and a ton of cooking tattoos- the owner is in love and I'm hoping that this guy is into overweight guys with chef jackets that are 2 sizes too small. Before the interview all candidates had to send over an ingredient list so that we could order any ingredients that they may need for the cooking portion of the interview, and this guy had requested some fois gras for a dish he said had
    via u/[deleted]
  • 33
    been awarded time and again- a fois and lobster crepe. Didn't sound very good to me, but I was willing to give it a shot and see how it went. After the meeting, the guy went into our kitchen and started cooking. After about ten minutes we all hear the guy screaming at one of our prep cooks to slice him some chives. A few minutes after that he brings out the
    via u/[deleted]
  • 34
    app, which he says is his take on shrimp and grits, something that is already on our menu, and that he says. is better than ours. I point out a few things: the shrimp is overcooked, the grits are gluey, and that the chives he was so stressed out about weren't even on the plate. He tells me that the problem was that our prep cook didn't speak English and that when he was chef, he would make sure the entire
    via u/[deleted]
  • 35
    BOH staff was fluent. Holy s - warning bell #1. S After two more dismal dishes, he tells us that he is going to make his famous crepes- I am pumped because I know that it is going to be an absolute s show. The dude is in the kitchen for at least 45 minutes, screaming, cursing and throwing s around. I go back into the kitchen to see what the guy
    via u/[deleted]
  • 36
    is doing, and he is fiddling with the Vitamix, which looks like its full of caulk. I ask him what's going on and he tells me that he's just blending the crepe batter. I point out that crepe batter usually doesn't have the consistency of modeling clay, and he pretty much tells me to f off, and that this dish has won awards. I look over at his phone which is out on the table and see
    via u/[deleted]
  • 37
    that there is a recipe from allrecipes.com for crepes pulled up on it. So, not only does this guy not know how to make his "signature dish", but he can't even follow a simple recipe. He brings his dish out, and it's a mess. Burned fois, rubbery lobster, broken bearnaise etc... The concept sucked, but the execution was somehow even worse. The crepe itself though, was
    via u/[deleted]
  • 38
    a culinary abortion. It was as if someone had given a lump of grey play-dough a pap smear. I straight up told him that it was one of the worst things I'd seen produced in a kitchen, and he pushed back saying that it would have been great if my staff had given him the support he needed. Despite my protests, we hired him. The owner thought that he was cool
    via u/[deleted]
  • 39
    and projected the kind of image we needed. He lasted about a month before I threw his a out of my kitchen- which the owner never forgave me for. I called the old guy that k lled the interview and offered him the job and he essentially told me to get bent, because he knew he deserved the job in the first place, and he was right.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 40
    ejsandstrom We have a very simple "pre- employment" test. If you have been in our industry for more than a year you should get 100%. Some times we even give it as an "at home" test. We had one guy that took his test home had it for over a week. He brought it to the formal interview and got 90% of the questions
    via u/ejsandstrom
  • 41
    wrong. Even though according to his resume he was an all star and knew everything. He had an excuse for every wrong answer to even the most widely known questions in our industry.
    via u/ejsandstrom
  • 42
    It would be the equivalent of saying you have been laying sod for 20 years, and then put the green side down. He didn't get the job.
    via u/ejsandstrom
  • 43
    DefinitelyYoda To start the interview, I asked him to tell us (3 people) a little bit about himself. 35 minutes later, he stopped talking. Usually people answer this question in 1-5 minutes. It was incredibly awkward and I was tempted to interrupt him but then truly wanted to see how long he would go.
    via u/DefinitelyYoda
  • 44
    t... I did a phone interview with a guy and he seemed really excited and very friendly. He seemed to be relatively new to the field, but we were willing to give him a chance. I invited him to come in for an in-person interview. My manager and I were doing this second interview, and when I called him in, he gave me a huge hug and proceeded to talk to me like
    via u/DefinitelyYoda
  • 45
    I was his best friend. As a 27 year old woman, I was incredibly uncomfortable and froze up. At the end of the interview, we told him we would reach out to him within the next couple of weeks to let him know the outcome. After the interview, my manager asked if I knew him, and I said I definitely did not. His interview was not great either, and he was
    via u/DefinitelyYoda
  • 46
    not a good fit for the job. My manager was the one who had to call him to let him know he didn't get the job. However, he proceeded to call my phone every day that week and left me long voice mails. Most of the times he'd ask about his interview, but sometimes he'd say things like "Hey girl! How are things going? I was
    via u/DefinitelyYoda
  • 47
    thinking, if I get hired we should hang out!". It freaked me out, and I had my manager call him early to give him the news that he did not get the job. The calls did not stop, and I just kept deleting his voice mails without listening. My manager and I were so disturbed by his persistence that we went to HR for help, and they must have done something because the calls stopped after that.
    via u/DefinitelyYoda
  • 48
    piercet_3dPrint I have Two stories! The first is back in College days, we were interviewing for a new college newspaper reporter. The question was "This position requires an energetic, inquisitive and outgoing person who can chase a story and get the facts, with that in mind how would you describe yourself?" The answer was
    via u/piercet_3dPrint
  • 49
    "Uh, Fun?"... Care to elaborate on that? "No." They did not get the position. The second one was for an IT position in my later career. An individual that had been fired from one branch of a government agency decided to apply for another branch a few years later, but his resume read very much differently than
    via u/piercet_3dPrint
  • 50
    the reality. Instead of him being fired for essentially not knowing how to do his primary job function, he was now "let go when the project closed" 3 years after he was fired. Also all his resume achievements listed for that time were things either myself or one of my co workers had accomplished, things that he didn't even have any involvement with. I
    via u/piercet_3dPrint
  • 51
    guess he didn't realize we were on the hiring panel because we had merged with another region. I honestly don't fathom how he thought that was going to work out because it was the same agency and its not like we wouldn't have noticed.
    via u/piercet_3dPrint
  • 52
    acc... She cried three times during the interview about how much she hated her current job. My coworker had to get up and grab a box of tissues for her. When she finally calmed down, she informed us that she'll need a special desk chair due to an injury she sustained at her current job, and yes, she did have a workers compensation court case against said job and
    via u/accidentalhorse
  • 53
    she hoped to "win big". No one had said anything about hiring her, she just made an assumption that she got the job I guess. The icing on the cake was that she was interviewing for a workers compensation job, at a firm where we only represent employers, never injured people. While that doesn't influence hiring decisions, talking at length about her current case
    via u/accidentalhorse
  • 54
    against her boss was just a weird thing to bring up. That and crying... Edit - I'm pretty well acquainted with employment and comp law. She didn't get turned down because she had a comp case crying three times, - believe it or not, did the trick
    via u/accidentalhorse
  • 55
    for taking her off the call back list. I felt really bad for her but dude, you can't do that in an interview.
    via u/accidentalhorse

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