Digital Media

If you were interviewing people for a job, what would you do if a young female candidate began openly flirting with you, or if another said the reason he liked his former job was the "lack of responsibility?" How about if one job seeker said she relocated to the area so her husband could pursue a career as a Sasquatch hunter? (See video below).

After seeing a YouTube video of people doing these things in job interviews I thought it was a put on. But after making some phone calls to the guy who operates Howtonailaninterview.com, and one of the people interviewed, I learned that I was wrong, or at least partially wrong.

Steiner Skipsness, the man who produced the videos, works in search-engine marketing. He says he has nothing to do with job placement or head hunting. He swears his clips are not a YouTube prank. He initially started filming job seekers--without their knowledge--to offer insight into good and bad interview techniques, he said.

It was only after he saw that some people were capable of bizarre behavior during interviews did he turn the clips into reality TV for the Web.

"This is what people want," said Skipsness, 27. "This is just like Borat," referring to the fictional character created by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who films unwitting people reacting to his character's outrageous behavior.

In the videos, did Skipsness ever stretch the truth?

The woman in the video who said her husband hunts Bigfoot is named Kelly Lusnia. In a phone interview, Lusnia confirmed her husband moved to Seattle to become a volunteer expedition leader for Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a group dedicated to studying "the Bigfoot phenomenon." A BFRO worker also confirmed Lusnia's husband worked there.

Lusnia said that she sensed during the phony job interview that something was amiss. The office was barren and the man who posed as the interviewer poured what she assumed was liquor from a metal flask into his coffee. When I asked Skipsness whether he attempted to spook candidates into doing something funny, he said just that once.

"The original idea was to give pure interview advice," Skipsness said. "We only thought later to add a hook, something funny. We did the flask thing to get the deer-in-the-headlights look from her. But we stopped when she told us about Bigfoot. That was 100 times funnier than what we could have come up with and we stopped."

(Credit: Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization)

But Skipsness also acknowledged editing some quotes out of context on at least one of the other interviews. Won't this send some of the people he covertly videotaped running to their lawyers? Skipsness said he obtained waivers from everybody taped.

Lusnia said the waiver she signed mentioned nothing about hidden cameras or being part of an Internet dos-and-don't video. What she was really upset about, however, was that her interview response was under the heading "Don't mention your spouse's job."

"How would that be a 'don't?'" asked Lusnia, 25, who is now in graduate school. "Everyone I talk to finds my husband's job interesting."