Not all the clowns are in the circus

At my age, I don't get many interviews, so to be granted one last week interviewing for E commerce executive was a real thrill.

I'd done a fair bit of research on the company in the past, as they are always advertising. A Chinese company recently having changed its name to something more western, they sell bathrooms mainly on Amazon and E Bay and need someone to work on SEO and ensure the product specs sell the product.

Most of the techie stuff I could handle and rather like when I joined my current job, I could learn the rest.

Ode un gave me a lift there and I arrived in plenty of time before the time they said they finish on a Friday.

I was led into a scruffy office so time you couldn't cuss a cat without getting a mouth full of fur. Two Chinese people in there and an overpowering stench of smelly feet.

I was beckoned to perch on a stool and the interview began. I could see she'd printed out my interactive PDF which of course was no longer interactive on paper and she'd got a cv pinned to it. Problem was, it wasn't my cv.

Having been a marketing luvvy many years in my chequered past, you get used to objection handling, but not before the pitch.

Woman looked over the newly designed brochures I'd taken along and made comment "but you sell service not product, we sell product".

We were less than five minutes into the interview and I was objection handling.

If a person who markets service can't handle marketing of product then they're certainly in the wrong business and wouldn't last long in a marketing agency.

We had almost half an hour of this sort of lunacy and it started to dawn on me that even if I were to strip naked and do a handstand, there was no way this job was coming my way.

Three times during the course of the meeting I asked for an indication of what the ideal person was going to be doing on a day to basis and what the priority jobs were. I asked at three times how my experience and skills stacked up and got no answer to that either.

It would be fair to say that their grasp of English was poor. Forty minutes of my life wasted fucking about with a couple of spill overs from the Chinese state circus.

From the research I did, I am pretty certain they've had someone working on this project who either left or got fired. The job was advertised a month or so ago and I applied only to receive a Dear John telling me my application for warehouse work had been unsuccessful.

Seeing the ad run again a week or two ago, I applied again. Like I said, clowns.

I've had some poor interviews in my time, but this was one of the worst.

The last interview I had wasn't so good either. A Toyota dealership, the marketing job looked as though it had been written for me.

Got there to find they'd omitted the fact it was maternity cover and when I met the lady who was leaving, the job itself bore no resemblance to what the job actually was.

Er, maybe we shouldn't have used a Toyota template or at least edited it bit the Dealer Principal said.

Another three hours of my life wasted chasing wild geese.

When you consider all the advice that's out there for jobseekers, dress smart, research the company, don't fart during the interview, such handy hints. Maybe the likes of Reed and co could print some up for interviewers. Have the job match the advert, make sure you're interviewing the right person and for fuck's sake wash yer feet.

Was in such a foul mood when I got home and there was not in the house to eat and no milk for a coffee, I spat the dummy and ordered up a curry. Only partly cheered me up, but it was a nice curry.

When I was recounting the story to Bob and Daz the butchers next morning, Daz summed it up perfectly. "I suppose you could say it all went wong"...

Nuff said.