The Weirdest Interview I’ve Ever Experienced as a Recruiter

Farmers Insurance has this great commercial campaign featuring actor, JK Simmons, where he describes outrageous situations. This is my own “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two” moment.

It was a tricky role to fill with a rather specific skillset, but we finally had a candidate (let’s call them Alex) advance to the final round. Yay! With the team’s green light, I scheduled the final interview for Alex to come on-site and meet everyone. (This was prior to the COVID pandemic and widespread remote work.) I confirmed the date and time, the agenda and interviewers, and the location and parking details. All set and ready to go.

On the day of Alex’s interview, the hiring manger arrived at the office at about 9AM. With the interview scheduled for 10AM, the hiring manager was surprised to find that Alex had already arrived. Kudos to Alex for arriving extra early like an overachiever? Mmm, no not quite. 😅 We found Alex in the dining area eating fried eggs with company utensils and plate. When asked where they got their breakfast, they said that they cooked it themselves in the company kitchen. The hiring manager, albeit a bit weirded out, told Alex to enjoy their breakfast and that they’d meet them by the lobby at 10 to start their interview.

10 o’clock rolls around and the hiring manager didn’t find Alex by the couch. (If you ask me, pretty impressive to be late to an interview despite arriving so early.) About 10 minutes past the hour, Alex comes out of the bathroom and meets with the hiring manager. You can all guess what they were up to in there.

Alex’s story actually starts not on the day of their interview but rather the night before. After the interview, we reviewed security footage to better understand how Alex got into the building at 9AM. Wellllllll, it turns out Alex waited until an employee arrived at 8AM to get into the building. They brought their own eggs (thoughtful?) and used a company frying pan. But it doesn’t stop there! Around 5PM the night before, Alex slipped into the building when an employee left, allowing him to survey the office and discover the commercial kitchen inside. Thanks to the footage, we could also see that they actually spent a total of 20 minutes in the bathroom, making them 10 minutes late to their interview. (Clearly, they were deep in thought, maybe practicing for their interview, in their “office.”)

Let this be a lesson to all employees out there. If you don’t recognize someone trying to get into your office building, double check and ask who they are.

And no, we did not hire Alex.