r/InterviewsHell

is this normal or did i dodge a bullet?

they already rejected me last week and then changed their mind this week, so i’m thinking the company was a mess to begin with..

On Wednesday afternoon, I got an email from a HM asking for a quick video chat this week. Unfortunately I didn’t see the email until Thursday afternoon so I replied with times available as she’d requested. I’ve not heard back. Could a 24 hour delay in responding really end my candidacy? I’m not sure whether to just assume it’s done or try to reach back out. Since I’m unemployed I’m typically refreshing email constantly but I just happened to miss Wednesday afternoon (seriously getting complacent with all the silence after applying🙄).

i’ve been running a small woodworking/vintage tool shop for about six years.

it used to be pretty straightforward. sell something, cover the materials, make a little for the time. lately the platform fees and shipping costs have made that a lot harder

so i applied for a part-time warehouse job to take some pressure off the business

the interviewer asked why i wanted the job

i said, honestly, that my main business had gotten squeezed by platform fees and i needed some more reliable income.

the room got *really* quiet.

apparently “i need a second income because the economics of my small business changed” was not the answer they were looking for

i guess i was supposed to say i’ve always dreamed of packing boxes for eight hours a day

the funny part is that i wasn’t complaining about the job. i was explaining why i was applying for it.

has anyone else answered the “why do you want this job?” question honestly and immediately realized they should have made something up?

I completed my Microsoft loop. It's been 7 days. I haven't recieved any communication from them. How much will I wait. I had another loop in January before where they kept me waiting for 2 months with no reply then got generic rejection email.

I am having the same feeling of getting ghosted again

I had probably one of the strangest job interview experiences today and I’m still kind of confused by it.
I applied on Indeed for a sales position at a small, family-owned logistics company near me. The position honestly seemed like something I could be really good at because I have experience in both areas. I worked for another logistics company right out of high school, which actually hired me after I completed a high school program I was in. I eventually left that job and went to Verizon, where I worked as a Sales Specialist.
I’m currently in college studying in the health field. My current graduation timeline is around 2028-2029, and I’m actually pretty open about the fact that I may continue my education after that. I’m also going into Health Information Technology, so it’s not like I’m going into something completely unrelated to computers or business.
Today, an HR woman from this company called me. She told me she was training someone and had that person sitting in on the call, which was fine. But almost immediately, the interview started getting really weird.
She asked why I left my previous logistics job. I explained that I originally started there through a high school program, they hired me after the program ended, and eventually I moved and had the opportunity to work at Verizon, which was closer to where I was living at the time and was a better opportunity for me.
She then told me she had looked it up on Google Maps and that Verizon was only about 35 minutes away from my old logistics job. She basically questioned why I would have left over the commute and said that I should have just stayed at the logistics company.
I was honestly sitting there thinking, what the hell? Why are you arguing with me about a job I left years ago?
Then we talked about Verizon. I explained that I was laid off during the company-wide layoffs in December. She asked what I’ve been doing since then, and I told her I’ve been babysitting. That was also on my resume. I had been babysitting for a family, and the kids recently went back to school, which is why I’m looking for something else now.
She clearly didn’t like that answer either. She kept questioning why I hadn’t been working a traditional job since December. I explained that I’ve been in school and was intentionally getting all of my required in-person classes out of the way so that I could eventually be completely online and work full-time, which is what I’m doing now.
But it felt like literally every answer I gave her was treated like it was wrong or like I was making something up.
Then she kept asking why I wanted this job if I’m going to school for healthcare. She asked this question in so many different ways that I honestly lost count. It was basically, “Why would you work here if you’re going to school for something else?” over and over again.
And I understand asking that once. That’s a fair interview question. But at some point it felt less like she was trying to understand my goals and more like she was trying to convince me that I shouldn’t work there.
I’m also not even going into a traditional healthcare career. I’m studying Health Information Technology, which involves the technology/information side of healthcare. So working in a sales position, especially one involving computers, business, customers, etc., isn’t some completely random thing that has nothing to do with my future.
Eventually, the whole conversation became so overwhelming that my boyfriend was sitting nearby and basically gave me the look of, “This woman is never going to believe anything you say.” I ended up hanging up because I genuinely didn’t know what else I could say to make the interview productive.
Afterward, my boyfriend suggested I call the company and ask to speak to a manager because the whole thing was so bizarre. I called, and because it’s a family-owned company, I actually ended up speaking directly with the owner.
I want to clarify that my intention in calling was NOT to force them to give me the job or to “snitch” on this woman. At that point, I genuinely started thinking about the possibility that if she was treating every applicant this way, not everyone was going to do what I did and actually call the company afterward to explain what happened.
There could be people who are really qualified for these positions who just hang up, decide they don’t want anything to do with the company, and move on. The job has been posted on Indeed for 30+ days, so I started wondering if this kind of interview could actually be turning away people who could have been really good employees.
That’s exactly what I explained to the owner when I called.
Apparently, I wasn’t completely off base. He told me that it actually took some guts for me to call and tell him what happened because he can’t imagine how many people he’s potentially lost because of this. He said they’ve been having a hard time filling these positions for the past couple of months, and this HR employee has been conducting the interviews during that time.
He told me that she apparently hasn’t found anyone she thinks is good enough for the roles, and that it’s becoming extremely frustrating for him. He also seemed particularly upset that this was happening while she was training another employee, because now someone else was sitting in on that interview and potentially learning that this is how applicants should be treated.
He apologized several times and told me that this was absolutely not how he wanted someone to be treated during the hiring process. He said he would personally handle it, call me back, and interview me himself. He also specifically told me not to take that experience as an example of how their company operates.
Honestly, I’ve never had an interview like this before. I’ve had difficult interviews, I’ve been asked uncomfortable questions, and I’ve had employers question things on my resume. But I’ve never had someone repeatedly challenge almost every answer I gave and make me feel like I had to prove that I wasn’t lying.
So now I’m curious: has anyone else had a job interview like this? Would you have handled the situation differently, or would you have ended the call too?

I’m interviewing for a corporate social media role at a smaller, established company and I’m starting to lose my mind waiting lol.

My first interview was last Tuesday with the person who leads the sales/marketing side of the company. It went really well, and the next morning I was told my feedback was “fantastic” and that they wanted to move me forward.

My final interview was last Friday with someone on the hiring side. That also seemed to go well. They asked about my potential start date and salary expectations, and when I gave my range they said it was within theirs and that they could definitely find something that worked.

At the end of the interview, I was told I’d most likely hear back Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest.
It’s now Friday and I still haven’t heard anything. I followed up around noon today and haven’t gotten a response yet.
I know hiring delays happen, but since this was the final round and they gave me such a specific timeline, I’m starting to get discouraged.

For anyone involved in hiring, what could realistically be happening behind the scenes at this point? Would you take the delay as a bad sign, or can final decisions/offers genuinely get held up like this?