If the title of this post implied to you that this post is going to tell you the questions that should be asked by a candidate at the end of an interview, I apologize; this post is not going tell you that. Instead, it’s about a gaffe that I made in an interview.
This incident happened a few years ago when I was studying second to last year of my undergraduate college. I had attended a mass recruitment drive by an InfoTech Company called HCL Technologies. That company also owned a desktop computer manufacturing company called HCL Computers.
On the day of the interview, I was feeling exhausted, perhaps owing to the reason that this interview was scheduled right after my semester exams. My exams usually lasted for 15 to 20 days, which meant a fortnight of sleepless nights and burning of the midnight oil.
I wearily walked into the college campus where the placement drive was conducted, wrote a screening test with a few hundreds of students that hailed from different colleges in the city that I studied. After a long wait of an hour, the results of the test were announced. I was happy to know that I cleared the test. We were instructed not to leave the place and to wait for our turn for the personal interview that was to start right after the announcement of the results.
I had to skip my lunch and had to wait indefinitely for my turn until it was 8:30 PM in the night! By this time I was dog-tired and ready to drop. “Sridhar”, they called my name. I pulled up all my strength from within to look enthusiastic (while I was enervated) and walked into the interview room. Interviewer shot me dead with some really tough puzzles and questions. By the end of the interview I almost understood that I lost this job, but still wanted to leave an impression and fight till the end.
“Do you have any questions?”, the recruiting manager asked.
“Yes”, I reflexively answered.
In fact, I had no question in my mind to ask and was not in a position to think. I struggled to find a question that sounded smart, I thought in my mind, “When is the next bus to get to my house?”… No…This is not a question…. An intelligent question was what I needed to ask… Looked around and found a HCL desktop computer lying on a table behind the interviewer. I shot my question across, “Why do people prefer to buy other brands desktop computers over HCL?” …. Oops, I put my foot in my mouth. I have no idea why I had asked such a dumb question. “I do not know! Is there anything you would like to know?”, the recruiter bounced my question. I thanked the interviewer and left the room without uttering a word.
Needless to say, I was not selected for that job. Here are top worst Job Interview Gaffes from Readers Digest.
Did you ever encounter such kind of embarrassing situation in an interview? Post your interview goof up in the comments.
About the Author: Sridhar Jammalamadaka is the Editor of Interview Mantra. He's a typically non-typical Software Engineer from Pune, India. He likes entrepreneurship, web technologies and Micro Controller programming. He enjoys playing cricket and piano (but rarely does these activities). Through this website, he wishes to gather a large community of aspiring engineers, entrepreneurs and professionals from all parts of the globe. You can connect with him on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/sridhar.j