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 Sandra McCartt on June 20, 2012 at 7:47pm: @Barb, who says two wrongs do not make a half assed wrong. I have never had that one happen but did have one where the candidate went to the wrong place, asked for the person he was to meet, was told that he no longer worked there. (Dumb receptionist couldn't find the name on the roster so decided he just didn't work there anymore). He called me and raised bloody hell about why i would send him someplace to interview with somebody who didn't work there anymore. I put him on hold called my HM who was raising bloody hell because the candidate was a no show. Put him on hold and told the candidate that the hiring manager was on hold and was having a fit because he no showed the interview. Finally i asked the candidate to confirm where he had gone. He went to the company next door (how is another Darwin awards story). So we regrouped, candidate went back to the right place, interviewed and was hired. Being the idiot he was he went back to the place next door and told the receptionist that if anyone else asked for Bob Jones that he wanted her to know Bob had gone to work for the company next door. I would have liked to hear how all that shook out but some things are probably better left to the imagination.

Comment by Bill Schultz on June 20, 2012 at 7:53pm: Sandra- it's really not the ATT agent's fault. They just are untrained and completely un-empowered.

So they fill their scripts up with "You are very important to us" and "I'm so sorry for your inconvenience" and "let me spend 2 minutes telling you why I have to put you on hold for 2 minutes" What I do now is have them read the prior notes back to me and then when we are done I ask them to read to me the notes they made pertinent to this call. That way, I don't have to repeat myself (unless you get the system down thing , which happens an awful lot.)

Comment by Sandra McCartt on June 20, 2012 at 8:03pm: The last time one of those nunu's told me their system was down i told them i felt their pain my internet was down also. I had decided to go to Suddenlink maybe they should do the same thing. Their "winback" team called me so many times that after five calls in one day i suggested what they could do with the enirtety of ATT and reported the calls to the PUC. Amazingly, after they told me it would take 30 days to get me off the winback list , the calls stopped within 24 hours of my call to PUC. Start tweeting about how bad ATT is , they monitor that stuff like it meant something. Paranoid about their "brand". Could not service two tin cans and a string but they watch those tweets.

Comment by Bill Schultz on June 20, 2012 at 8:09pm: Yeah Twitter's powerful. That's how I shamed Bullhorn into action.

Comment by Jane-Anne MacRae on June 21, 2012 at 11:44am: Here is one that will put a different spin on WS stories and give you a smile. Some years back I was a Technical Recruiter for an international software company and charged with sourcing, interviewing, etc for a security level IT Architect I found a passive candidate with a CALTech background, advanced technical knowledge/experience, etc. You get the picture..Anyway On the day of the face to face interview he arrived at the HR Department and the receptionist called back to me to tell me the Mr. Jones was here for his interview. At that point, a normal interview on a normal Tuesday....but wait, it gets better. As I walked toward the reception area, I quickly notice a guy clad in bermuda shorts, a hawaiian shirt and sandals holding a 6' cutout of himself in a tuxedo while other people are also milling around the area. My first thought was to approach the receptionist and discreetly ask where my 10AM interview was sitting, AND she discreetly points to Mr. cutout....Now cut to the interview. (no pun intended). Moving right along, I had a list of technical questions to ask of the candidate. After the initial introduction, hi and how are you today type conversation we started; (with the tuxedo cutout of himself perched right next to where the candidate was sitting, important to note here). I asked the first question of the candidate and he said "sure" and proceeded to ask the same exact question to the 6' cutout of himself...listened silently for the "cutouts answer" and then parroted back to me what it had said to him. I had to excuse myself to the restroom to while staring in the mirror and ask myself what was happening...I laughed so hard I cried. After regaining my composure I returned to the interview asking him the remaining technical questions with everyone the same...I was absolutely hysterical inside. After the interview of about 45 minutes, I stood up, thanked him for coming in and walked him back to the reception area. Completed my notes and recommendation and submitted all to the hiring manager. Long story very short: they actually hired this gentleman and I never saw him again, but important to note that this particular job was in the companys R&D design and developmental area and required a candidate with not only a stellar level of experience and educational background but also one that was highly creative and by nature thought way outside of the box. He fit the bill to a T; and beyond that they didn't care a tinkers damn what he or the tuxedo cutout wore to work..True story....

Comment by Sandra McCartt on June 21, 2012 at 11:50am: Love it. Proving once again that superior talent, particularly in geekdom, need not be encumbered with social graces, decorum. Or anything else Pc.

I would have loved to have heard his explanation of his "Charlie mcCarthy act" or been. Mouse in the woodwork to se what he dud at a party. That is indeed some WS.

Comment by Jane-Anne MacRae on June 21, 2012 at 12:37pm: You are so right. Superior talent, in my experience always trumps anything else, assuming of course that a hiring manager can recognize it and take advantage of; and a Recruiter is prepared to go there with that talent! Fodder for another blog I suspect..At the end of the day is it WS; not sure on that score in hindsight; more like creative shit maybe that we could all afford more of in order to keep us moving and sane!

Comment by Sandra McCartt on June 21, 2012 at 3:49pm: the trick is to be able to tell the difference between creative weird shit and plain ole crazy as a peach orchard bore.

How you got through that interview without stopping , looking at the guy and saying, "What the hell are you doing and why are you doing it" is beyond me. I could not have done it. Or i would have had to look at the tuxedo cut out and ask him to ask his alter ego to answer a question. I truly would have turned it into a circus.

Comment