Fundamentals of Human Resource Management 6th Edition by Raymond Noe, John Hollenbeck, Barry Gerhart,Patrick Wright

Exercise 21

Interview Alarm Bells
When managers or HR professionals select candidates to interview, they are trying to find the best match among candidates with basic qualifications. Sometimes, unfortunately, what happens in an interview signals a troubling lack of motivation or business sense. For example, interviewers are unimpressed with someone who arrives at an interview after making no effort to learn anything about the company or prepare any questions to ask.
Sometimes candidates' behavior demonstrates such poor motivation and lack of judgment that it resembles a bad comedy routine. Interviewers have complained of candidates checking Facebook or wearing headphones during an interview; one even took a phone call about a job at another company. Some make odd statements: one told an interviewer she had taken "too much Valium" beforehand, and another said his personal hero was himself.
Some memorable incidents reported by interviewers are downright frightening. One applicant had a car accident-hitting the employer's building. Another tried making a secret recording of the interview. And a third applicant, responding to an interviewer's prompt to "impress me," lit the interviewer's newspaper on fire.
With a multiple-hurdle model, interviewing typically comes late in the selection process. Based on what you know about the steps in the process, why do you think the candidates described here made it past the earlier hurdles (For example, might they have other qualifications, or might there be problems with the process )