WHAT, Pray Tell Were You Thinking?

I was having one of those fun discussions with another recruiter last night. You know the kind where one of you says, "you are not going to believe what my candidate or my client did today". They tell you , you laugh and say, "My friend, the first story always suffers." After about 30 minutes of that we reached a learned consensus that the world is doing "weird shit" right now. Maybe we are too, but of course we didn't seem to think so, or at least i didn't think he was doing a lot of "weird shit", maybe a little of it but not really a lot, but not me, i never do weirds. Ha!

To be explicit. He sent a sales candidate on an interview. The first fifteen minutes went well but it seems his candidate suddenly started jamming out playing his air guitar. Scared the young lady who was interviewing him right out of her professional control mode and had her screaming for security. They hauled him out with his jam still going on. Did it end there. Oh, no. That is not near weird enough to be considered "weird shit", but here is what is. HR rapidly sent him a thank you but no thank you letter. Declined, no interest, blah, and blah. He picked up the phone and called the young lady who interviewed him and screamed for security. Told her he had received the rejection letter and could not understand why in the world he would be rejected, said it was "sad, just sad" that they could not see what an asset he would be and he knew several of the other sales reps and they thought it was "sad". Now that is some "weird shit".

Most of the time i can come up with some kind of explanation as to why a candidate or a company did something and have a pretty good idea of what they were thinking. In the past two weeks, i have become convinced that there is something in the water supply or the ozone that is causing otherwise sane people to do "WS" they cannot be thinking.

I had an engineering candidate, great background, phone interviews went well, she was invited into the companies office in another city for two days of interviews, dinner with the executive team, the whole dog and pony show. When i followed up i was told that they would not be moving forward with her candidacy. Good skills but not a fit for what they were doing.

PC answer so i pressed. Seems that she was late for the first round of interviews, late meeting the team for dinner and late the next morning for the second day of interviews. She gave no explanation just late like 30 minutes three times. Additionally after being told in three phone interviews that time/motion studies were to be a big part of this position she made it very clear that time studies were not high on her list of things she liked or wanted to do.

What in the World was she thinking? "Weird Shit", just WS. At that point i didn't much care sent a decline email mentioning the time studies and the concern about her being late to all three appointed times to meet. No response, no explanation, nada. WS is the only explanation.

Next: Candidate goes into interview with a startup division for a key position as a business analyst. I spent hours on the phone with this fellow, good candidate in all respects. Follow up after the interview. Interview went well but one exec. mentions he is a little concerned about his work ethic..How so? Another exec. says he is a contender but a little concerned about his commitment..How so? Weird. So i press, seems my candidate went into an interview in a startup with 350 employees, none of whom know each other , have not worked together, new clients that they have not supported in the past and within 10 minutes of the each interview asked if there would be an opportunity for him to do this job from home because he really didn't like to travel to work and back each day. What, pray tell were you thinking? Maybe a year from now after everybody gets to know everybody, you know the job,you know the clients.

He never mentioned a word about working from home. Should i have asked , do you? I think people are just doing "Weird Shit" Maybe it's me. But it's sure weird.

Comment by Amy Ala Miller on June 19, 2012 at 6:39pm: people are just batshit crazy. There's nothing left to say. :)

Comment by Amy Ala Miller on June 19, 2012 at 7:01pm: Here's one for you Sandra, prepping a candidate for her interview, and she asks "what sort of bribe should I prepare for (manager's name?)". Me: "Um..." Her: "Well I just love to bake so what can I bring her to make sure I get the job?" Me: "let's save that for the 2nd interview. No really, no bribes necessary" and we continued.

So she shows up for the interview and when I introduce her to the manager, she says "I tried to bring you something yummy but this one (points at me) wouldn't tell me what you liked!"

Yep that was pretty much the best part of the interview...

Comment by Noel Cocca on June 19, 2012 at 10:29pm: Ugh. The candidate should have brought that up to you but was probably saving it to get the interview. You could have asked but why would you? Bet you will now however! I guess a nice "how far of a commute will it be for you?' followed up by "can you handle that every day?" will become more a part of my routine. I have never had that one....but I did have a post signed contract turn down due to "my mother won't let me work there" resignation...

Comment by Sandra McCartt on June 19, 2012 at 11:23pm: In my wildest dreams i would never have thought someone would be so dense as to go into a situation where it is a completely new division. This is the only business analyst in the whole facility. I did clarify several times that the area was a good location for the candidate. He never asked or mentioned any desire to work from home. He is unemployed has been for six months and needs to go to work. Who would think anybody would shoot themselves in the foot by talking about wanting to work from home. I keep telling these folks that the time to ask for extra vacation, work from home , an extra week at Christmas is after they get an offer .

My mommy won't let me is one i have not heard yet. How old was the candidate, 40 and single?

I have taken a vow, actually a couple of vows, (silence is not one of them) Every time i see or hear that blubbering, whining, poor me crap about "The Candidate Experience" i am going to spit at somebody like a mad cat and say, Let me tell you about "the recruiter experience", or "the client experience". We spend an inordinate amount of time trying to beat into so called functioning adults heads the basics of personal hygene, have to tell them not to go to an interview in dirty tennis shoes,jeans with a hole in the knee and t-shirt that says "The blood Rock" and a baseball cap that smells like the cat crapped in it. We have to tell you to be on time or you fall over your ass and show up late three times in two days. All i can say is that any recruiter who depends on a candidate to think and act like a reasonable adult without giving them a play book written in big letters on a big chief tablet gets what they damn well deserve, Now tell me your sad story about your "candidate experience" where they gave you chicken salad without asking if you were a Vegan. Eat the damn potato chips and the pickle and try not register your whiney complaint on glass door before you leave the building. You people are acting like "weird shit" is normal behavior, that would be the reason for your starange candidate experience.

@Amy, Little Miss cupcake and her basket of goodies. I had one show up for an interview with four dozen donuts. She was so busy walking around the building passing out donuts that when the internal came to the lobby to get her they couldn't find her. Had to call security to find the lady passing out donuts. When they found her the internal recruiter told her that it had taken so long to find her that half the time for interview was gone so they would reschedule her. It got so much press internally that i got a call from several of the dept. heads asking if they could do a rotating schedule of a Thursday interview so they would be sure the donut lady would be there each Thursday. There was no reason to hire her just keep scheduling an interview.

I am going to start sending all these batshit crazy people doing weird shit to some job search coach , they deserve each other.

Comment by Robye Nothnagel on June 20, 2012 at 8:23am: I'm glad I'm not the only one having a weird week too! My weird candidate is working for a company that is letting everyone go in by the end of the year so you think he would be excited to get an interview for a new job. After he was contacted for the face to face interview with the times to talk with 4 people, he emailed the HR person back and said - oh I didn't realize I was going to meet with that many people, can we reschedule for next week.....and he still hasn't told me! Ugh...think that was is going to fail.....Called him and he still hasn't called me back.

Comment by Dyll Davies on June 20, 2012 at 8:40am: Guys this is just normal surely? Recruitment (sorry Recruting!) is simple stuff made complicated by all the idiots you have to deal with - and I am talking candidates AND clients. Without revisting previous threads on this blog when the client starts acting stupid (or weird as you put it Sandra) I just cut them adrift - silly people not good enough for my candidates. Fortunately generally my candidates don't do too much stupid stuff but if/when they do I strike them off my Christmas card list. That'll teach 'em!

Comment by Aurelio Sisto on June 20, 2012 at 9:20am: Ha! Got a candidate for the WSHOS (Weird Shit Hall of Shame)...

Had a DBA interview over the phone with a manager; technical rock star, and the manager did everything except extend the offer right then and there. He still wanted to meet her, before pulling the trigger. Get to the office building, met up with her to walk her in. Get ready to go to the 15th floor... "Wait a minute", she said. "I can't go past the 13th floor".

Say that again?

The candidate was superstitious. Are you kidding? Unbelievable. And we needed to get upstairs in 5 minutes. Decided to come clean with the manager, since you really can't make this stuff up. Amazed, he was willing to forge on; he found a conference room to finish the interview on the 12th floor, and still went ahead and hired her! Weirdness all around... when working in a people-oriented business, you get to see many crazy things :-P

Comment by Erin Passmore on June 20, 2012 at 9:51am: I had a great candidate for a role in Accounting. Went throught the offer, the backchecks process, she asked what time to arrive on Monday... Monday comes, no employee. We call, email, text... nothing. Next day we call, email, text... nothing. Now its Wednesday and still nothing. WTF? WS.

Comment by Theresa Hunter on June 20, 2012 at 10:33am: As they say "shit happens". I do ask questions during my initial screening process such as what do you like to do in your current job and what don't you like to do. I ask them how much time do you want to spend commuting to your job. If I get push back on any of those questions I press them to explain what they mean. Here is the thing you can ask all the right questions prep them for their interviews and unfortunately these are people and they are going to do what they are going to do. You just hope that they do it after the guarantee period expires. : )

Comment by Julia Briggs on June 20, 2012 at 10:44am: Hmmm......if you want to hear some candidate/client experiences of bloody awful recruiters I have them by the shedload. Some people are just different, or rude, or arrogant etc and that is in all walks of life.

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