Blogs are great for airing dirty laundry especially if it’s the kind that has a familair odor to others. This particular situation is one I’m sure you can relate to.

It was the perfect book end to a crazy week. I’m always amazed by the number of working professionals who can’t grasp the idea that we’re here to help them. When I write “help” I don’t mean “serve your beckon call” even there are times when I wonder if someone has secretly put a “kick me” sign on me somewhere.

The recent experience I’m referring to was with one of our all-time favorite pet peeves here at Paramount Recruiting Partners, LLC. I’m sure you know the type quite well - - the candidate who thinks the world revolves around them.

These are the people who think the rules simply don’t apply to them and who - - if they don’t get their own way - - threaten to remove themselves from the process altogether.

There was one assignment that we had been working on for nearly a month. Our search yielded some modest results, but nothing close to a lock. Then one day we’re contacted by an individual who is “very interested” and who even “interviewed with them years back, but the timing wasn’t right.”

He was contacting us to let us know how interested he was and he wrapped up his little introduction with, “I am not interested in a group interview since they are familiar with me and my expertise. I am not competing against competition for this career opportunity. Do they want to pay me what I ask for and offer me the job or not? I am interested.”

Wow. That was rather bold. Yet, for a senior level sales management position serving as the #2 in this company’s Sales Department just behind the VP of Sales we expected to be dealing with some intense individuals as it comes with the territory.

Naturally, A quick review of this person’s background and credentials confirmed that he was an excellent match and he immediately jumped to the top of our short list of candidates. We then verified that he did in fact interview with our client years back and they had no problems revisiting him again. All they asked was that we conduct a few Reference Checks to cover the employers he worked for since his last interview with them.

Great! A process that normally would take close to 6-8 weeks was being fast-tracked given this candidate’s background and prior history with them. No complaints here! So, the very next thing we did was immediately get on the phone with him to share the good news. Unfortunately, we reached his voicemail so we left a message telling him what we needed so that we could save time and get things done quickly. What happened next shocked us.

About 20 minutes later my firm received an email from him that simply said, “No need to move the process forward. I am no longer interested in your service or in working for your client. No need to contact me again.”

Come again?

I won’t bore you with the transcript of the resulting conversation, but suffice it to say that after personally speaking to this guy it was clear that he simply didn’t think the rules applied to him. He wanted an offer now and when my client wouldn’t give him one he took it personal because “can’t they see that I’m an expert in this field!?!”

Despite my attempts to explain to him that (1) every company has a formal hiring process they must somewhat adhere to, that (2) the company was expediting the process for him as much as they could as was within their power to do so, and that (3) it was ridiculous for him to go from “I’m very interested” to “no need to contact me again” in a matter of 1 hour just because the process wasn’t exactly to his liking, this individual remained steadfast in his position.

Nice.

No matter how long I work in this industry there are some things I will never truly understand.

Candidates who are all hot-n-heavy one minute for a career opportunity only to become ice cold towards it the next are one of those enigmas.