In the last post, we had one of our readers share one of their job interview experiences. Today we will look at two more of his experiences, and conclude with our own closing thoughts.

Second Job: Hat Store

Working at the grocery store was part time. The rest of the time I was free to do whatever I pleased. So I spent most of that time hanging out in this sporting goods/hat store in the mall, where this one really attractive friend of mine worked. She was 7 years older than me, but hey – you can’t fight puppy love.

The store was the size of my apartment, and there were at most two employees at any given time. Because the manager was a tremendous pervert, he always scheduled himself to work with my hot friend. I’d hang out with him while my friend was busy with a customer, and I’d humor him as he tried to talk football since quite frankly I find football irritating.

One day I’m standing there, ogling my friend and he goes “Do you want a job?”

That was my interview. I started the next day.

Third Job: Tech Company

I consider the interview at the tech company to be my first real interview. I applied for the job as I was finishing up college. I sent in my resume and the owner of the company told me I was going to get a phone interview. She told me I had to have the interview on a landline since cell phones were unpredictable. I didn’t have a landline so I had to do the interview at my parent’s house.

She called, I picked up. We had a brief conversation for about 5 minutes when the phone died because the battery inside the phone couldn’t handle long term conversations.

Anyway, she called back and we continued to chat and it appeared she still liked me. I went to an in person interview where I had to meet with three different interviewers. One was the lead researcher, one was the president of the sales department, and one was the owner. The lead researcher seemed to love me, probably because I had worked with other researchers that she knew personally, and we had a chance to joke about their idiosyncrasies. The president of sales also loved me, probably because I learned how to completely fake friendliness while working at a grocery store and he was a stereotypical salesperson. He was an awesome guy though.

The owner that interviewed me on the phone was not as friendly in person. She would give long, awkward pauses after every one of my answers as though I wasn’t done, when I was clearly done, and she asked me if I had any questions after she said anything about the company.

I’d like to tell you how I won her over, but I honestly have no idea. Once the interview was over, though, she seemed to be the biggest supporter of hiring me. The only lesson I learned from that is not to assume I know how the interview went, because I thought I blew it. I’m glad I didn’t give up. Well, maybe not since that job sucked, but whatever.

Please feel free and send in your own job interview stories, and if we like them we’ll share them on our site.

Take Away Interview Tips

• You never know when you are experiencing a job interview.
• You never know how an interview actually went until it is over.

Additional Links

• Blog post on stress interviews

Related posts:

1. True Job Interview Experiences of a College Graduate, Part 1
2. Interview With Recent College Graduate Ellen on Her Experiences at a Non-Profit Job Interview
3. College Graduate Interview Question: How Did You Do in School?

At Everyday Interview Tips, we like to provide you with in depth tips and strategies for acing your job interview. We write up hundreds of thousands of words and over a thousand pages of what you need to know in order to land a job. Yet every job interview is unique, and sometimes you can find a job or ace a job interview in some of the strangest ways. Below are real job interview stories from a young graduate that held several jobs and experienced several job interviews before he started his career.

First Job: Grocery Store

One of my first jobs during college was working in a grocery store. It was part of an enormous chain of grocery stores. They didn’t have resumes. Instead, they had basic applications, and then you called the number on a card and scheduled your own interview for the job. I applied for a job as a Courtesy Clerk, which is essentially a cart pusher. It’s a job designed for young people.

When I arrived, there were 5 other people applying to the same position. All of them were at least 40, 2 of them spoke no English and one was probably past retirement age. The job paid 7.50 per hour. We had to watch a video on how to help customers, and then take what may have been the easiest test of my entire life.

Q: Which of the following should you do if the door alarm goes off as a customer is leaving?

a) Beat them in the face with a gourd until they can’t breathe.

b) Call the police and drop tackle them to the ground.

c) Smile and politely ask if you can check to see if any alarms have yet to be disabled.

d) Rip off your clothes and dance the Macarena.

After the test was over, we were going to be called one at a time to an individual job interview with the PIC. I was second, and asked a series of easy questions, which I responded to confidently. I consider myself a fairly intelligent guy, and this was a grocery store, so it didn’t seem hard to impress the interviewer.

I sat back down in the room with the other applicants while they called the 3^rd applicant for an interview. Before she came back, another PIC came in and asked if they could talk to me for a moment. We walked out of the room and she said to me “Do you want the job?” I said “Sure, but don’t you need to interview the other applicants?” She smiled, looked into the room, looked back at me, gave a short snort, and said “I’ll get the paperwork going.”

Tomorrow we’ll hear story number two about this college graduates interview experiences.

Related posts:

1. True Job Interview Experiences of a College Graduate, Part 2
2. Interview With Recent College Graduate Ellen on Her Experiences at a Non-Profit Job Interview
3. College Graduate Interview Question: How Did You Do in School?