Jon Osterholm

My most bizarre interview experience is, without a doubt, a trip I took to downtown Miami, from Pompano Beach, Florida, on the regional train system. The ride was a first for me. I switched to the Metro to get to downtown Miami and walked, in the Florida summer heat, to the highrise office building where this interview was meant to take place, before 11 am. It was sunny and hot!

The thing was, the trip was what I thought would be the most wasteful part of day (though I read a newspaper on the way there). However, the worst was yet to come.

I arrived at the office, waited around 40 minutes until the president of this apparently leading-edge information company (newsletter and web site info for a specific financial/security field) made his way out to greet me. One problem: his assistant, who was out the day I showed up, the one who set the interview and confirmed it with an email to me, neglected to clue in anyone ELSE about my interview. No one, not the prez, not the woman at the reception desk, NO ONE knew I was meant to be there.

In short, I spent an entire business day -- round-trip -- traveling and waiting, only to be told no one understood that I was to be interviewed, and the president did a rather shocking-bad job of trying to care that I was there. (Reset the appointment? Naah - just muddle through half-interested.) His assistant was the impromptu HR coordinator for this growing company. So much for doing that duty effectively.

It was an amazing waste of a day. But, I got to ride the train! I had not ridden on a train, even a subway or monorail, in a long time. So all was not lost, but I resolved myself to double-check an appointment BEFORE leaving for it, from now on. I mean, with someone like an HR manager or the actual interviewee if I can manage that. Of course, I'd do it considerately, unlike how the prez of that Miami company handled my effort to interview with him....