OCI-style interview at a job fair. My day starts out like *&^% anyway--I stayed with friends the night before; I'm 2 miles from the job fair hotel and I can't find a cab, so I'm wandering haphazardly through city streets as the minutes tick by, tick, tick, tick, until it's 9:10, 10 minutes before my first interview and I finally find a cab and hop in. The cab gets stuck at every stop light, tick, tick, tick. I rush in the hotel door, it's one minute before my first interview, the elevators are all stuck on the 6th floor--not surprisingly, since that's where all the interviews are. Tick, tick, tick, my head is about to explode.
I finally get to the room of my first interview, about a minute late, to find my career services rep switching me with somebody else. @#!*, I think to myself, there goes that interview. So I get moved to the 9:40 slot, and now I'm back to back with my second interview at 10:00, right next door.
The 9:40 interview actually goes amazingly well, and I end up getting a callback. The 10:00 interview, however, went FUBAR.
The guy has no personality (IP, big shocker), I know nothing about him or the firm other than its culture is "collegial" and they do "top quality work."
Then, about 10 minutes in, my cell phone goes off. I apologize, he says it's OK, but is giving me that "how incredibly stupid must you be not to turn off your cell phone before an interview?" look. I proceed to spend the next minute nervously fingering my phone in my pocket, to make sure it doesn't go off again when the voicemail comes through. I stagger through the rest of the interview decently well under the circumstances.
During a break, I go up to the guy again; I'd forgotten to give him a writing sample, when all of the OCI materials said that they really valued the writing sample, so make sure to give them one when you interview. I get the "why are you wasting your time giving me this writing sample when you know you have absolutely no chance anyway?" look. Then, as if I hadn't done enough stupid things for one morning, if not for the week, I told him that I couldn't remember his name (his firm didn't post it on the OCI info sheet), and he says, "Didn't I give you my card?" I reach into my front shirt pocket, and there, the ink smearing from the sweat accrued while running around looking for a cab that morning, is his card. I managed to sputter out a "really nice meeting you" before I walked off, head hanging in disbelief, trying not to laugh too hard at my own idiocy.
Yeah, I wasn't to surprised to get that ding in the mail.
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