Bad job interviews are unfortunately common – but it’s not every day that the employer is to blame.
If you’ve ever been on an extended job search, you’ve probably had at least one bad interview. Maybe you weren’t prepared for the questions you were asked, or perhaps you didn’t quite have the experience needed but were hoping you’d be able to impress your prospective employer anyway.
Failing at the interview stage is just part of life – and while it does feel awful to be rejected from a potential job, especially if it was a position you really wanted, you’ll learn and grow from each experience.
Things are slightly different, however, when the failure isn’t your fault. That’s the issue one woman had recently when she attended a job interview and found out that the interviewer had made a huge mistake that almost guaranteed she wouldn’t get the role.
Jess Han posted a video on TikTok that she had recorded during her interview, which took place over video call, in which she realised her prospective employer had offered her an interview based on someone else’s CV.
In her video, Jess awkwardly told the interviewer: “I don’t know how to bring this up, but I think you may have a different resume.”
The woman was wearing earphones during the interview so viewers were unable to hear what the interviewer was saying in response, but she indicated that the experience listed on the CV wasn’t “her background” and said her name is “quite popular”.
Jess later posted a second video in which she explained the awkward situation in more detail. She said she “realised pretty early on” that her potential employer had someone else’s CV, but she initially tried to work around it in the hopes that she would still get the job. However, when it turned out the other person had experience that she couldn’t call upon, she had to come clean.
She shared: “I tried to play along with it in the beginning, but when they brought up a master’s degree and all their work experience, I was like, ‘Okay, this is not me’. I just awkwardly brought it up as you can see in the video, and I proceeded to screen share my resume, which looked nowhere near as impressive.”
The woman said that the hiring manager was “super nice” about the blunder – and told her that the interview was set up by the HR department and not the hiring manager herself, so she had no idea about the mix-up until Jess told her.
Jess also explained that the company she applied for is currently on a “hiring freeze” as it’s the end of the financial year for them, but she was told by the hiring manager that she would reconnect with her in April to see if there are any openings that are suitable for the experience she has.
In the comments, people were flabbergasted by the company’s huge mistake. Many said they could understand how it happened, considering Jess and the other candidate had exactly the same name, but others said more should have been done to prevent these situations from occurring.
One person said: “I’m sorry, that’s a difficult position to be in and embarrassing for the hiring manager as well. But I can see how it would easily happen when more than one person has the same name applying for a job.”
Another added: “Girl, I once went into a full-blown meeting with an executive at a place I used to work, and they thought I was someone else.”
