Interview hell

14th November 2003, 12:00am

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Interview hell

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/interview-hell
To cheer up those of you about to embark on applying for jobs, we asked TES internet forum visitors “What’s the worst feedback you’ve ever been given at an interview?” They make grim reading, but hopefully they’ll make you feel better about yours:

“One head told me that I was at the bottom of the list.”

“Months after an interview for a job I actually got, my head of department said I had a ‘Clint Eastwood sneer of distaste’ on my face throughout the interview, as if it pained me to condescend to take part at all.”

“My feedback from my uni lecturer on teaching practice was: ‘To be quite frank, you are not an excellent student, just a very good one. You will probably find that you will make a better teacher than someone who has been classed as an excellent student’.”

“One head didn’t give me a job because they didn’t like my shoes. They even phoned me up after the fact to let me know.”

“The worst interview experience was in the early 80s, when I was applying for my first teaching post. At the end of my interview, as I was about to go out of the door, the head asked me to take out a tray of dirty cups and put it on a table outside the room. It took a long time for the sting of that humiliation to wear off.”

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