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Let your next career move come to you.

A thread on which to post interview horror stories/ horror offers of employment

I knew a junior salaried partner who was a commercial litigator at a national firm . He accepted an offer to join a mid sized city firm as a salaried partner. He resigns only to find out the partner who had hired him never had sign off , and recruited him to his team without any reference to his fellow partners . No one knew about it apart from him. Jesus wept.

another was a 4year PQE commercial litigator at a top ten firm who took up a new post at a “boutique “ litigation firm with 5 partners . He lasted a day . His caseload comprised landlord and tenant disputes on behalf of legal expenses insurers .

My coolest interview moment ever (in my very biased eyes) was when a very senior PE guy said to me “so what would x say if I asked him about you?” And I replied “he’s be pissed off that he couldn’t afford me in his current firm”.

It worked, very well actually.

But then I got there and realised that everything I had been told was a complete falsehood and I just unwittingly stepped into not just a falling dagger but a falling sharktank.  Not the nice kinds of shark either. fook that.  Lasted a year lol.

I had one which fell apart as soon as the partner's secretary burst into the room announcing that his wife had been injured in a serious car crash. Tbf that was probably much worse for him (and her).

Another, for a trainee position with Weil (my first trainee interview) where I forgot to look up how to pronounce the firm's name before walking through the door. It lasted 15 minutes

Nightmare scenario.

"Where do you see yourself in a year's time", he asked.

I was about to reply "In your chair", but before I could answer a fetid demonic Hellbeast emerged from a timeslip gore-warp under the table and devoured both of us leaving limbs, gore and blood spatter everywhere.

Hehe foxbat, you aren’t the only one.

A terribly long time ago I was given budget for my team to have three people who would do telemarketing for us.  Inbound primarily, based on adverts that we ran.

Anyway. Most of the interviews were being done by my boss at the time, but as a good fellow that he is, he asked me to join him to get my opinion.  (He is a horrible perv too but I’ll go into that another time lol).

This one bod shows up.  I could smell him from the other side of the desk, but hey, yak is, when we are hard up maybe he was dealing with some stuff so I put that aside.

Mal then asks him what he knows about the company and his (fooking brutally brilliantly honest) response was “mate, I’ve applied for so many jobs I’m not even sure where I am”.

As it happens he didn’t get the job for other reasons - no way was he going to do well in sales - but fook me his honesty was brilliant.

the one held at the CEO's home which started with him asking if I would leave him in the lurch by going off and having babies and ended shortly after the prostitutes arrived, via an even more outrageous bit in the middle that I'm not prepared to divulge here. (no sex, obv)

All of them TBH :)

One at a medium but well regarded city firm for a senior associate insolvency gig about 10+ years ago sticks out 

Them: Any other questions?

Me: My wife is a medic so works odd hours and her day usually start by 8 am. We have 3 young kids. We have childcare for after school  but I really value walking my kids to nursery/ school in the morning. Outside of Court dates and other urgent requirements I intend to be in about 0945 most days. You will have my soul for the hours I work and I will obv do evenings / weekends etc but I want to be upfront about this, do you have any views about that?

*stunned silence*

Them: Err no one has ever raised that at interview with us. 

Me: You do understand that they were either lying or too scared to raise it before arriving, right?

* I turned them down cos the money wasn't good enough but blimey watching the light bulbs go off over two classic old school (but my wife takes care of that) types was totally worth the wasted time* 

  

I had an interview with an old school firm in the west end.... from the moment I walked in they wanted billing commitments from me for my own work.....I was NQ.

Good story Teclis. Don't tell me you were working for some bucket shop firm in the West End with a fancy made-up name flogging dodgy ISAs.

Telemarketing is more or less banned now, not that it was ever really a good idea in the first place in my view.

I think it's crashing insecurity, yes.

Most of the regulars who are consistently sniffy about most things can be ascribed to massive, crashing insecurity, tbh.

oxbat01 Apr 19 12:43

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I had one which fell apart as soon as the partner's secretary burst into the room announcing that his wife had been injured in a serious car crash. Tbf that was probably much worse for him (and her).

 

probably 

Once applied to be a ddj.  Having sailed through the exam they came to a roleplay at the assessment day.  The opposing parties walk in.  I srand up to greet them.   Still cringe.

I had an interview where one interviewer managed to stab themself in the hand with a meeting room pencil before shouting "sh*t" and throwing the pencil across the room.  She valiantly bled her way through the rest of the interview and I got the job and spent a happy five years with the firm as they were mainly barking.

First TC interview, shook their hands and sat down, opening question - "we see you went to quite a good school, do you not think your grades were underwhelming?".

 

My grades were fine. Maybe slightly below average for that firm but I got at least a 2.1 in every uni module and straight As and A*s (bar one B at GCSE) before that. 

I had one recently where her opening gambit was "So you're a lawyer.  That's a problem" and went on to explain why lawyers don't understand business management.  This is despite having my CV in front of her, which indicated I also have a decade's experience as a business manager - which wasn't actually relevant to the role anyway.

 

Many years ago I had a final interview assessment with Andersen Consulting (as was then).  During one of the interviews I was asked,

"If you were prime minister for a day, what law would make and why?"

I laughed and asked the interviewer if she read that from a  book.  She said no. 

Suffice to say I am not a management consultant.

I was headhunted for a senior executive position at a large bank.

After a few rounds of interview, an interview was arranged with the General Manager who headed the Division (with about 70% of the bank's balance sheet).  It was meant to be formality for him to check that I didn't have two heads or something as he didn't have a clue about my area.

I came out and called the headhunter 'I'm not taking the job. He doesn't have a clue.  There's no way the business can succeed with him at the top'.

Six months later they called me again 'Elfffi, he's gone.  Will you consider it again'.

I did. And took the job.  Big mistake. Although I did learn a lot, I would have done better elsewhere.

The following did not happen.

During one of the interviews I was asked,

"If you were prime minister for a day, what law would make and why?"

I laughed and asked the interviewer if she read that from a  book. 

Applied for a job as a company lawyer

The job actually involved commercial conveyancing 

They explained later that, for them, company work meant commercial conveyancing 

Did happen Laz, I was very naive to the corporate types they wanted and 'was myself', foolishly on reflection.  As the interview went on we both realised being and Android was not for me.  It ended on good terms, she also asked, where do you see yourself in 10 years time.  Again, being truthful I said, i don't know, but I'll be happy doing it.  She nodded and said (i think honestly) "I think you will" And then metaphorically put a red pen through my name.  I was so innocent that i was surprised i didn't get it because I had done well on the team excercises etc.  Only looking back I though, hang on, should have used the old 'I will be doing your job' line.  Hey ho.

I went for an interview once in a rather creepy motel. The motel owner was wearing a dress, had the dessicated body of his mother in a chair and tried to stab me to death in the shower.

 

Oh. Not that kind of horror story....

Interviewer (GM for a US software biz) tells me he is a "lion" and asks if I am a lion to. Full-on David Brent nonsense. Baffled, I ask him to explain what he means. More nonsense. I burst out laughing thinking he is taking the piss, but he is not. He is a lion.

There then followed two minutes of horrific silence.

I had an interview at links for a 1PQE position where she tried to find out how old I was by asking when I left uni. I told her I didn't think she was allowed to ask questions like that and she sort of backtracked and said it was so they could put me in touch with a fellow alumnus to see if I had any questions etc. In the end I buggered up the partner interview by not being able to answer a question about market flex on an LMA term sheet. But he turned up to the interview late in a suit that looked like it had been slept on so I had my reservations anyway. 

 

Years later a colleague at a different firm was looking to move to London and had an interview with the same guy. I gave her the heads up about the market flex question. He asked her and she got the job. Could have been on the strength of her other assets. Who knows. 

I was relocating and had just had a job interview at the place I’m currently at, where I got on really well with the partners and it was exactly the same sort of shop I’d trained and worked at until that point.

Went straight to another interview slightly out in the sticks at a smaller firm which had won all sorts of ‘commercial’ law awards. When I got there the managing partner in his 50s was walking around like an Essex sales geezer with the tightest and loudest trousers I’ve ever seen and the ‘facilities’ guy kept walking through the (client) reception in branded sports kit sweating his bollocks off even though it was November and dripping all over the place.

The people that interviewed me were very nice to be fair but one of the employment partners actually spend 90% of his time doing property litigation (probably standard landlord and tenant). The place was absolutely clueless and they wanted me to set up some kind of free employment law advice product that had literally zero way of making money.

I had an interview earlier this year with someone who was new to FS in a large institution and clearly had learned a few buzzwords but didn't understand most of the technicalities of what we were talking about. I asked how their team was perceived in their organisation, and she said "We impressed everyone when we delivered equivalence on Brexit".  I pulled out of the process after that.

When I went for my interview for my current shop, about 10 years ago, was quite amusing.

I walk into reception and announce myself, and who I am there to see, then turn around to take a seat, and see one of my colleagues at the firm I was trying to leave, sitting there, clearly also waiting for an interview. I shall call her Sarah. That wasn't her name. I was surprised to see her there. I thought she loved it at the place where we were.

"Goodness, hello Sarah. What are you here for?"

"Oh, nothing. You?"

"Oh, nothing."

I get called into the interview by the two partners who are seeing me, who apologise fullsomely about the mix up. "Hey, don't worry about it, it's not like she can tell anyone, is it?"

Interview went OK. I think I was a borderline case though as (as a litigator) they asked when I had last taken something to trial. We were on punishing fixed fees at my old shop, like £1000 a case or something, and the only thing I could remember taking to trial was a Death By Dangerous Driving criminal thing, which wasn't their line of work. I was set a mock report to do, and ended up staying quite late to finish it. Everyone had left except me and one of the partners from the interview. I knocked on his door and said "Look, I should explain that trial answer". His jaw dropped when he heard about the level of fixed fees. They were on all hourly rate work back them. He confirmed that he wouldn't take anything to trial for fees that low either. And I got the job.

Sarah's interview didn't go so well. She saw the chap who was, then, the Managing/ Senior partner. He was a... difficult... person. They didn't gel. She walked out of the interview halfway through. Happily, she got something else though.

Shooty , sounds like you are or were an Insurance litigator of some description. A former boss of mine said we don't do panel work, as the process is led by procurement whose sole job is to drive rates down YOY, audit and report on files about which they know nothing, and ensure the report to insurers on all files is behind the blue tab, not the red one.

He made the mistake of successfully pitching for an Insurers PI(Professional Indemnity) work, on the basis of a blended rate of x hundred pounds an hour. Said rate was very decent , given the work was mostly commoditised low end High Court work. The process was led by a divisional GC, and when it came to sign off procurement halved the rate with little or no consultation with the GC. The partner said, " no thanks, adios"

Interestingly we still got half a dozen off panel instructions a year for complex very large scale stuff defending claims brought agains financial institutions

Yep, that's right, and I recognise the situation you describe.

I remember when the fixed fees came in. One insurer went totally nuts about them and instituted two-part timesheet codes, then audited even the fixed fees. It was insane. They'd involved some American consultants. The insurer started with a "Z". Leave it at that. So, the first 4 characters of the time sheet code were for the stage of litigation, and the next 4 for the activity. So a 0142-0002 was a pre-defence telephone call.

Words like "perusing", "research" and "overseeing" resulted in time sheet entries being disallowed (to this day, I don't know why, when the fees were fixed), so we came up with ever more convoluted says to say the same thing. 

This was all in the days of manual timerecording on paper as well, mark you. The guide to all of the numbers took up half of the time sheet, even when printed in teeny tiny font. 20 years ago. Man, I'm old. 

We had something called a File Review Form. I can't remember what it involved now. I do recall it was referred to as the FRF, which quickly came to stand for fooking Ridiculous Form. I worked with some great litigators, brilliant people. They rapidly got fed up and left. No idea what they do now. Think one of them became an art restorer. My intake, and the year ahead of me, were utter social misfits. Proper freaks.

Anyway, I never found out which bright spark it was who originally said "we can do this work for a pittance! No problem!"

My money is on DACB.

Thanks, Beachcrofts.

Well done.

Interesting shooty, in part the partners of years gone by have some explaining to do . Work was  procured by building a relationship with the claims manager of a local office , who could and did make the decision as to who to send work to . Cue extraordinary rates being paid , no scrutiny of bills and processes , everything being ran to the opening morning of the trial regardless . And all you had to do was get the claims manager pissed , massage his ego, and buy him an extravagant lunch every month . The tide has turned to the exact opposite and I don’t know how firms make any money, especially as composite insurers pay months and months after .

 

got could mates at 4 new square and so many of them thinking about pissing off to other sets because they can’t stand the fees and the bureaucracy of doing work for composites . I was regularly criticised by procurement and audit as my advice /report to insurers as being too long especially in relation to a couple of £ 20MM cases in the TCC. “Have you read it i asked “ err “ no “ cane the reply .

best just to do work for small Lloyd’s Syndicates, captives, and off panel work 

I once was a final stages and met the big cheese and he asked me where I lived. He said his wife had a string of dress shops, incl in my area and he said they could never understand why the sales at that particular store had recently dived. So I offered that it was probably because the council had recently changed the parking provisions and all the locals were up in arms and the council was a nightmare etc and he clearly thought this was the most incisive commercial intel he’d ever heard....I thought he was a d1ck and indeed his company went bust 3 weeks later.

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