TIFU by mistakenly presenting an HR presentation at a job interview

I’m currently a university student in my third year of study, so I’m actively looking for jobs in hopes that I can secure a return offer from a company before graduation.

I land this interview for a somewhat prestigious company in my industry. I got through the first two rounds but wasn’t that confident throughout, so I was pretty stressed about my chances. So when I got the third round email I was excited, albeit a bit nervous since they said they had a case study assessment prepared. Prior to this I had never done any case study assessments, so I proceeded to look up and get a sense of what case study assessments consisted of for the next few days. On the day of the interview, I opened up Teams feeling somewhat more confident.

I enter the meeting and an HR person greets me. They briefly introduce the rules: You’re going to prepare for a presentation in a limited amount of time, you’re not supposed to leak the assessment info, blah blah blah. They proceeded to show the “assessment materials”. I see an HR presentation pop up on my screen.

Confused, I look over at the HR person, who seems completely calm and composed. After announcing that my time starts now, she looks at the screen for a few more seconds then moves onto doing her own work. Looking back now, I should’ve said something, but I was not the type to speak up unless I was certain something was wrong.

“Well, I’m guessing they just want to test my time management skills…? And seeing the HR person is literally right there, they can see what they’re presenting, so this can’t be wrong, right…?” I just went with this logic and used 30 minutes to prepare for the presentation.

30 minutes pass and the HR person invites the company examiner in and drops off the call. The examiner greets me and was very friendly which put me more at ease. I then proceed with my HR presentation, and the friendly expression quickly shifted. She asked me to repeat the content I had been given. I talk about the HR presentation and all the nitty gritty details of the company they had given me. She brings the HR person back onto the call and tells me to repeat what I said to her. The HR person pretty much immediately realises lol, blaming for not telling her sooner that she presented the wrong PowerPoint file. At this point I didn’t know what to think cuz 1. I realised I just wasted 30 minutes of everyone’s time and 2. My instincts were right that that was in fact not a case study but was just too much of a wuss to point it out. All 3 of us stare at each other for a bit (felt like ages), not sure what to do until the examiner graciously tells me that she would be able to hop back on in an hour and redo the assessment after a meeting. So both me and HR person hopped off the call for 30 minutes to wait for the examiner. I pretty much just stared at a wall during that time and hop back on afterwards. The HR person, who definitely thinks I’m not that bright at this point (tbh fair lol), shows me the actual case study which I can tell is definitely the right thing this time. My nerves were kinda messed up but I still prepped it and delivered a somewhat solid presentation to the examiner. We had some small talk afterwards with her joking to me about the situation, but at that point I just wanted to get out and never look back. So I hopped off the call once I noticed that we were running out of conversation and said goodbye.

So yeah. Speak up if you think something is wrong in a job interview. Don’t be like me. But at least now I know some extra details about the company’s background, training and the type of intranet they use.

Oh and also I got the job so now I can laugh about this lol.

TL;DR: job interview had a case study assessment. didn’t know what a case study assessment was. HR person presents their HR presentation instead of the case study. i wrongly present an HR presentation to the examiner. still got the job.