serial embarrassment
Have had to interview "young people" for a range of starter media jobs (telesales etc).

1) Candidate one applied giving her webmail address which was sexybabe69@[a webmail domain. She'd also put her full postal address, which began with the line "Ground Floor Flat". No interview but I was tempted to go around and peer through the window.

2) I call another candidate. At the time I'm working in a large office in a big street in central London. She has the address. I offer her the interview despite the fact that she sounds a little bit slow on the phone. She asks me "how do I get there?". Quite patiently, I name the nearest two tube stations. "How do I get there from there?". I check that she has the address. She does. I suggest that she checks an A-Z map. When she comes in for interview the next Monday, I say, in the lift, to lighten the mood - "so, you found us all right in the end?" "Yes," she says - "I came for a practice run yesterday." Not offered the position.

3) My favourite, another one who didn't get the job (she didn't really want it and I'm sure she got another one). Very confident, media studies degree, had done some kind of final project where she'd got top marks, but CV was hazy about the details. She mentions it again in the interview, again evading any detail. "So," I say to this nice-looking 22-year-old (i'm a geeky, ugly old mess of 38), "come on, what exactly was this project?", thinking that I'm expertly tricking her into giving me details she'd rather avoid. Deadpan, without hesitation or blushing she explains: "It was a video of four women who made the film, including me, talking frankly about their vaginas: the film is split screen,with the women talking on one side and their vaginas shown in close-up on the other."
What exactly do you say to that? She was ice-cool, I was a gibbering blushing wreck...
(H-Man, Fri 21 Jan 2005, 14:33, Reply)