Worst top ten candidate excuses

Our first showcases some of the worst / best or most unusual candidate excuses we’ve had over the last ten years to get out of an interview. Some of them we hear time & time again, while others are somewhat less common! 10.The most common excuse used is that “I’ve had a car accident on the way to the interview.” 9. Candidate calls to say “I’m not taking the job at ____” after watching the Panorama exposé the previous night. 8. A candidate called to say he couldn’t attend his interview after a member of his family was beaten up. 7. Someone once turned up 23 hours early. He was a day early and even if he had got the date right, he would have been an hour late! 6. A candidate went AWOL when he should have attended an interview. He then sent us a ‘selfie’ from his hospital bed hooked up to oxygen. 5. A candidate who used the same excuse twice, which was that his mother had died – 6 months apart. 4. Someone emailed in: “Apologies for the late notice. I’m going to be unable to attend today. There was an issue at my wedding involving others and I have to go back to my home town to make a statement. Please apologise on my behalf.” 3. We had a candidate start a job then after two weeks go missing in action. When we finally tracked him down we found out that he had not quit his last job but instead simply taken two weeks holiday to test out the new role! 2. Someone we’d put forward for an international role, called in the night before the interview to confess he’s afraid of flying…. 1. Foreign language speaking role: One of our candidates calls the day before to explain they think they have forgotten the language, despite having originally been a native speaker!