What If Something Goes Wrong During a Job Interview? Some job seekers never do anything to prepare for a job interview. Some candidates do the opposite - they spend hours researching information about the company, analyzing the job opening, and talking with the employees of the company to get to know the company's culture better. But no matter to which category of the job seekers you relate yourself to sometimes interviews don't go the way it was planned. There are things that don't depend on how well you prepare for the interview. The question then is how to react when it all goes not the way you planned? Moreover, the way how you react may either become a big plus or a turnoff in the eyes of hiring authorities or an interviewer...
What Can Possibly Go Wrong?
One of the most common problems during an interview is that it can be cut short. Most of the job seekers would immediately assume that an interviewer doesn't want to spend any more time on it as he/she had already made the decision. However, it is not necessarily so. Sometimes HRs and interviewers are interrupted in the middle of the day because their nature of work assumes certain kind of emergencies to happen throughout the day. And it is their responsibility you react to those kinds of emergencies. So theoretically such an explanation can be legitimate and the worst thing you could do it to freak out or express your disappointment with the situation. All you can do is to thank the person for the meeting and wait until one get in touch with you.
Another situation when job seekers don't know what to do and how to react is when they are contacted via phone without a warning with the suggestion to conduct an interview via phone at that very moment. Most job seekers, when caught in such a situation, would agree to the suggestion just because they would think no one will ever call back with the same offer. So wherever they are they try to accommodate and to pass the interview even if they are on the bus, a grocery store or at work. Obviously, with such approach, it is unlikely that one will be able to demonstrate his/her best during such phone conversation. So we recommend to, first of all, say that you would love to talk with them. Secondly, if it is not the best time for you to talk you should say so. Say something like, "I am at work XYZ place right now and have only a few minutes. Should we talk then or is it better to schedule another day for it?" Sometimes everything goes well until you come to the office of the company you want to work for. That's when statistically candidates get most of the surprises.
One of such surprises is to have a different interviewer that you were told you would have. For example, you were to meet the vice president of the marketing department and instead you will be meeting with his/her assistant. Such things happen and that doesn't mean that they don't want to talk to you anymore and the whole interview will be just a waste of your time. Don't worry about it because it probably means nothing else but that a person you were supposed to talk couldn't make it for some reason. Keep calm and show that you can take the unexpected turns and still be a professional when such things happen.
