"Bad" Interviews That Resulted In A Contract: Your Experiences

[BolshieBastard]

I tend to find the crap interviews end up with the job turning to be crap. Had an interview with a utilities company once, person who should have done the interview couldnt be arsed to turn up and sent two guys along who didnt have the first clue about an interview or really what the job was!

They literally said 'you have the job, do you have any questions?' I said yes, lots. Turns out the one who should have interviewed me couldnt time manage (which is bad for a manager), didnt have any work for me for 3 weeks and got pissed off when I said I needed to be doing some work.

[Contreras]

Alarm bells! Alarm bells!

Why would anyone be so desperate to hire someone (a first time contractor) that they would do it without even seeing them first? Could it be that they are afraid that you will see them?

Well that and/or the OP hasn't had a chance to gauge their market worth yet and the client is getting a bargain.

[sbakoola]

Also beware of interviews that seem to easy, they're HIDING SOMETHING !!!

[ThomserveBAS]

Monday morning, and my third and final client has come back with an offer - months of planning, interviewing and quite frankly panicking and I get 3 out of 3!!

[norrahe]

I tend to find the crap interviews end up with the job turning to be crap. Had an interview with a utilities company once, person who should have done the interview couldnt be arsed to turn up and sent two guys along who didnt have the first clue about an interview or really what the job was!

They literally said 'you have the job, do you have any questions?' I said yes, lots. Turns out the one who should have interviewed me couldnt time manage (which is bad for a manager), didnt have any work for me for 3 weeks and got pissed off when I said I needed to be doing some work.

I don't know who many gigs I ended up in where I had to ask people for work to do.

One gig I ended up bring in my laptop and using my hotmail account for e-mailing as 2 months into a 3 month contract, they still hadn't sorted me out with equipment. Also very embarrassing for them as I was dealing with external clients a lot.

[Gentile]

I tend to find the crap interviews end up with the job turning to be crap. Had an interview with a utilities company once, person who should have done the interview couldnt be arsed to turn up and sent two guys along who didnt have the first clue about an interview or really what the job was!

They literally said 'you have the job, do you have any questions?' I said yes, lots. Turns out the one who should have interviewed me couldnt time manage (which is bad for a manager), didnt have any work for me for 3 weeks and got pissed off when I said I needed to be doing some work.

Call me cynical, but the only gigs I consider to be crap are ones where you don't get paid. There are limits, of course, but I try not to let "artistic reasons" get in the way of my earning a living. If a client is disorganised, or their ideas for their business are never going to work, that's not my concern; I'm not there to be their business guru and I'm not there to inflict my personal taste upon their requirement. I draw the line only at environments where I literally can't get any work done because the client's anti-pattern idea of security gets in the way (i.e., banks that don't let you use USB drives or the internet, but somehow still expect you to get technical work done to a reasonable quality and within a reasonable timescale). By contrast, I can tolerate having nothing meaningful to do for a few months; if they want to pay me to brush up my technical skills and drink coffee that's their business. Fortunately, most people that are paying a premium for a contractor don't want to work that way and actually do have a clear idea of the result they want; they just need my technical skills and experience to realise their business goals.

[psychocandy]

I don't know who many gigs I ended up in where I had to ask people for work to do.

One gig I ended up bring in my laptop and using my hotmail account for e-mailing as 2 months into a 3 month contract, they still hadn't sorted me out with equipment. Also very embarrassing for them as I was dealing with external clients a lot.

Happened to me loads of times. Never ceases to amaze me how many clients say something is urgent then cant even be arsed to sort out things like desk/ PC / network access and you end up sitting there for two weeks.