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Perhaps not "best", but certainly most amusing, so what the heck!

Years ago as an intern, I applied to a large pharmaceutical company. On part of the application form, you had to enter the code of the department you were applying to.

What I *should have* put down was "IT", which is the department that houses all their devs. However, I didn't actually read any of what the codes meant, assumed that was the department for helping people with how to mail merge, and put down "COMPSCI" instead. This was computational sciences - loosely summarised as computational data analysis on various druggable molecules.

I do *not* have any sort of biology or chemistry background, so the interview was rather... interesting, and I muddled through on the basis of getting some more interview practice assuming it was a no go.

To my amazement, got a phone call saying that they'd been thinking they wanted someone more technical on the team, and despite my lack of scientific experience they thought I'd be a good fit. I was unsure as to whether I should accept for a while, but then decided to just go for it - and had a fantastic internship there, working on a great variety of stuff, and learning tons all under a supervisor who I'm still in touch with to this day.

tl;dr - Applied for the wrong job. Coincidentally got it anyway, and miraculously had a fantastic year working there.

Comments
  • 6
    Great story
  • 17
    tl;dr should come first
  • 3
    Love this. Just goes to show how unpredictable life can be! :D
  • 5
    @hell For what I saw, Reddit posts have TLDR at the end... Quiet annoying imho.
  • 1
    @okstar Yeah, sorry about that, only use the desktop version so wasn't aware. Not sure I can edit it now either unfortunately.
  • 2
    How did your supervisor and others react when you told them what happened? And how long did you wait?
  • 1
    @AlmondSauce it's not only you, it was some time that I was seeing this habit on other posts too, you're not the main cause but a drop in a little Ocean.
    There's no need for being so sorry 😉
  • 2
    @Drewtato Some good friends of mine applied for the "correct" role, and it became abundantly clear to them (and therefore to everyone else) that I hadn't applied for that when our interview dates were different!

    As for my supervisor - I can't actually remember if I ever told him. That'll be an interesting reunion story!
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