Job seeker's honest reply at interview loses him work opportunity but wins over the internet

Job interviews can be monotonous, where employers usually ask job seekers a series of cliche questions and expect them to come up with a generic answer. But one person on Reddit shared what happened at a particular job interview and how their honesty was not appreciated at all. As a result, this person did not get the job, which they did not even want in the first place, but the tale ended up winning over the hearts of many netizens.

u/Decent-Photograph391 shared their personal story of an interview gone wrong on Reddit. The post was titled: "Interviewer can't handle the truth." The Reddit user recalled an interview they went to a few years ago after being pestered on the phone repeatedly by the interviewer. "It wasn't my dream job, but I reluctantly agreed. The interview started pretty uneventfully. Then the guy asked me, 'Why do you want this job?'" the post read at the beginning.

"I can't be too honest and say, 'I don't really, but the recruiter would not stop pestering me about doing this interview,' so I straight up told him why I would want any job, 'so that I can pay my bills.' That did not go over well. He ended the interview right then. My recruiter ghosted me as well," the person continued. "First of all, why do interviewers insist on asking these moronic, cliched questions that everyone has heard a thousand times, that only get the same moronic, cliched answers?"

"Second, why is it so offensive to him that I was being totally honest with my answer? Does he really think most people go to a job to 'find their passion in life' or some other stuff like that?" the post concluded. The Reddit community had a lot to say about this encounter between the user and the employer who was allergic to truth and some of them even shared their personal story in the comments.

u/Southern-Beautiful-3 wrote: "I once answered, 'To support myself in the manner in which I have become accustomed, living indoors and eating regularly.' I got the job." u/darthkarja shared their story and wrote: "I was the hiring manager at a company, I just said leave it. I'm not doing these "interviews". I'm going to tell them the job, tell them the pay, see if they can work the schedule I need and do the job, send them for their drug test, and if they went to the drug test, then they were hired. I had the same success rate as the previous hiring manager who did actual interviews."

u/Mental_Mixture8306 added: "A long time ago I had a boss who told me that hiring someone is a 50-50 gambit. The candidate is usually on their best behavior and you cannot tell how they work with others, habits, etc. You don't know until they start working. The key is to make sure you handle a bad hire as quickly as possible so they don't cause problems with the current team members. Then rinse and repeat until you find the right people." 

Editor's note: This article was originally published on August 5, 2023. It has since been updated.