Had a job interview at a secondary school yesterday for an administrative role. Expectation for interview was the usual tour, test and then interview. I did the test first ( they had all the interviewees on a rota i.e.while one was on tour, the other was testing, while another was interviewing).

I opened the test and the very first question basically said please put these tasks in order of importance, but there was no list of tasks attached?

Checked the format of the other questions and these were laid out with the questions on the left page with the examples/information to be used on the right page. I did the other questions and then came back to ponder the still completely blank right page for question 1?

I came to the conclusion that either : 1)I had been emailed about the task prior to the interview and missed it, but I did think this unlikely, 2) Someone had messed up the test, or 3) it had been done on purpose!

So after the test I pointed out the missing information and explained I couldn't answer the question because of this issue. The person who was looking after me made a dramatic show of checking the document, which prompted me to ask if I had maybe missed an email about the task? She said this was unlikely so I straight up asked if this was a trick question? Had the information been missed on purpose? She then said if I thought that what would I do in real life?

I was flabbergasted, in real life no professional person worth their salt would mess someone around by asking them to do a task without giving them access to the required information. That's just plain malicious.

Anyway, I said if that was the case I would contact the person who was supposed to provide the information and ask where is was and when to expect it. She then smiled and admitted that the question was indeed a trick question.

Now red flags are going off, as I have just realised that they have purposely tried to set the interviewees up to fail. Who does that?

It made me question their work culture/ethos and I began to wonder how toxic it was and how far it went up the management chain.

In real life, in any other situation, I would have challenged the thinking behind this scenario but I chickened out purely because my kids go to this school and, if the management was toxic, I don't want them looking in my kids direction. (I am a coward, I know)

So has this happened to any one else? Admittedly the last time I did clerical testing was in 2016, so I was just wondering if this is a normal thing nowadays?