Uno, Dos…Oops
In college, I was applying for a co-op internship at some big corporate company. Of course, like all applicants, I wanted to make myself sound as appealing as possible. I decided to change “Familiar with basic Spanish” to “Proficient Spanish Speaker” on my resume.
The job didn’t have anything to do with speaking Spanish as far as I knew, so I figured it was a harmless fudge. I thought they’d never find out the extent of my Spanish knowledge was the three years I’d taken in high school. Well, I get to the interview. Everything starts out seemingly going well.
Until she says, “Oh, you speak Spanish! That’s great!” She said, “We’ve been hoping to find someone to help in our South American division. Let me grab my colleague.” Before I could respond she leaves the room and quickly returns with a woman who is clearly of Latin descent.
The original interviewer says to her “This is him; he says he speaks Spanish well.” I’m sweating at this point—but it was about to get so much worse. The Latina lady looks at me and immediately starts going off in full-speed Spanish.
I could tell she was asking me questions, but have almost no idea what she’s saying. I tried desperately to remember anything left in my brain from high school, but think I just stammered, “Si” a bunch of times while smiling and nodding like an idiot.
Eventually, I just said, “Sorry I’m a little rusty, it’s been a while.” She just gave me an annoyed look and left the room. Needless to say, the rest of the interview was pretty awkward. A decade later, and that remains the only job interview in my life that I didn’t get an offer from.
Valuable LPT learned that day: Don’t put anything on your resume you’re not prepared to potentially get called out on. Too bad I had to learn that the very hard way. Story credit: Reddit / Inthedarkend