Feel free to share your stories.

We spoke with executive recruiters about hiring today. Interviews have been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Faking a car accident
We had placed a candidate in a temporary position, a light industrial role in Houston. It was his first week, and that day he was late for work. He said it was because he got in a car accident, and he ended up just not showing up at all.

We didn’t ask for one, but he sent us a picture of his car as proof that he was really in an accident. One of our recruiters noticed that the photo didn’t look like it was in the right season. I think in the picture the leaves on the trees in the background had turned, but it was summer out.

We ended up just searching “car accident” in Google Images and that picture was one of the first results that came up. It was, like, stock photography. We then informed him that it would be his last day.

He could have overslept or something, and people are pretty understanding that mistakes happen and no one’s perfect. The best thing you can do is just be honest about it, not make something up. The whole thing was so silly, because no one even asked him to send anything.

—Keith Wolf, Murray Resources

Dressing for success
Early in my career, I was recruiting for a mid-level remote developer position for a tech company. I always prepare my candidates for their interviews, so I hopped on the phone with him and went over the basics: The interview would be over Zoom, but make sure you’re still professional from the waist up, don’t wear a hat, that kind of thing. He seemed ready to go, and I had confidence—he had a great background.

The interview only ended up being like 15 minutes long, which is not a good sign, and the client sent us a feedback email pretty quickly, giving us a heads up that this candidate had been calling from inside his garage, wearing a white tank top and a backwards hat and smoking a cigar. We were like, this cannot be real.

My account manager assured me that this wasn’t my fault, and he called the candidate to give him the feedback and ask what his reasoning was behind all of it. The candidate said he just needed to take a load off, due to his nerves and stuff. He really thought that what he was doing wasn’t a big deal, which is pretty wild.

The candidate had decent longevity at other companies, so we were really confused. But we didn’t work with him after that, unfortunately.

—Molly Hansen, Hirewell

Bathroom calls
The thing I am most surprised by is when candidates are comfortable going to the bathroom while on a call with you. We can hear everything. My colleague once asked me, “Are you sure that wasn’t just a sink running?” and I was like, “No, I think running a sink usually isn’t followed by a flush.” I’ve had it happen more times than I can count on two hands.

One time, I also had an initial phone screen scheduled with a candidate about a software engineer job and they picked up the call while in the shower. I could hear water running, and they said, “Oh, I’m actually in the shower right now.” I asked, “Are you just getting into the shower?” And they said, “No, no I’m in the shower.” I was just like, you could have just let this go to voicemail! It was pretty mind-blowing. And I told them that we should reschedule.

Funnily enough, the person ended up being a great candidate and I placed them in a role.

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...s-can-see-b89a4f14?m

I'm not a headhunter but I've been a supervisor/manager for a lot of years. Most recently a guy was always out for one reason or another. Some excuses...

Car registration expired and he got pulled over.
Mother died.
Mother died. (again)
Girlfriend in car accident.
Girlfriend texts me that he got in an accident and is in hospital.
Covid
Covid

There were others I forget.

Turned out he was moonlighting an overnight shift at a competitor. We found out and he resigned.

Not quite the same, but I had a similar experience.

I had been interviewing for an atty position with a software company. I had done all the screenings and face-to-face interviews. All had gone well.

Before OK'ing my hire, the general counsel decided to call me at home for an unscheduled chat. I was in the shower when she called.

One of my kids told me who was on the phone. I turned the water off and had them hand the phone in to me. I sat on the floor of the shower talking to the general counsel for about a half hour. I never let on where I was, but by the end of the call, all the had soap dried to a crust on me.

I have two stories.

1) Our company decided to bring our call center back in house. They had a first batch with training for a week. In the middle of the week, a woman got fired. She went through the interview process before she got offered the job, right? The requirement for her position was to be bilingual in Spanish and English. Turned out she didn’t know Spanish.

2) I was hiring for a position that reported to me. I was looking for someone similar to my experience. The recruiter gave me a resume that had everything I was looking for in experience. It was like a mini-me. I looked at the companies he worked for and his first company was a company I worked for. I was liking this guy. I looked at the years he worked there and it straddled the time I was there. Funny, it was a small division of a major company and I was confused. I looked at his name: Stephen Smith. I racked my brain trying to remember. Then I did. I knew him as Steve Smith and he was in production same time as I was before he moved to accounting while I moved to supply chain which was what I was hiring for. The MFer took what I did and put that in his resume.

Reminds me of the time I hired a receptionist for the computer consulting company I was working for. She was great, outgoing personality, good phone manner, and very willing to help out around the office with stuff like copying, etc. Her second week on the job she let us know that she might be late coming in because she had to go to the DMV to pick up her car tags. Afternoon came, no show, no call. Turns out she had an outstanding bench warrant, and the sheriffs were waiting for her at the DMV to take her straight to jail.

I friend told me very recently about him and a female team member had to zoom call an IT person.

All in same company. IT guy gets in the video and he’s red faced and out of breath and zoom is in his studio apartment bedroom office and there was Kleenex all over.. my buddy is thinking oh my he just finished…his female colleague was either too naive or too nice to say anything.

when I was management and hired, it was for clerks etc in the grocery business,


besides the sometimes odd names in some demographics, (La Dash A is a thing) there were plenty of Specials and Sparkles as well as the mixed up spelling etc,

however, the big takeaway was to look at the email addresses provided,

fuckmehard@gmail.com was a head scratcher for sure, and there were several worse,


also,

when someone tells you that thier kid can work circles around everyone you have working for you, and they you should give them a chance,

don't,


I took that gamble, (kid interviewed well) a few times and each time the fucker got fired for theft or stupidity, or both, inside a month

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:
however, the big takeaway was to look at the email addresses provided,

fuckmehard@gmail.com was a head scratcher for sure, and there were several worse,

Yeah, if you're an adult, you definitely need at least one non-sexual, non-embarrasing email address. And not just for job applications...

During the pandemic, lots of defendants were allowed to appear by phone or by Zoom for court. During the hearing, the judge would then ask them for their email address, so a copy of the court order could be emailed to them.

Tons of embarrassing and/or explicit email addresses were provided.

(Pro-tip: When you're asking for leniency from a court, offering up something like "BedroomKing69@hotmail.com" or "BlazeEm420@gmail.com" as your email address is not a good look.)

This kid that worked for me, called out one day because his grandmother was dying of Riggors Morris. It took all I had to explain rigor mortis to him and the post death timeline. He didn’t last long after that.

Had an employee come into work late one day. It was snowy and icy out and he drove quite a bit to get to work. After the initial rush of the day, I asked what happened. He responded that some BMW crashed into him from behind and totaled their car, but that his old truck and him were all right.
Later, while taking out the trash, I glanced at his truck which was next to the dumpster, and noticed that the road dirt on his bumper wasn’t even disturbed.
He could have just slept in, had to run an errand or whatever, but after obviously lying to me and the owner, his position was short lived.

I had a boss who was a stickler for punctuality (and whom I disliked, but not because of that). A newly hired employee came in 10 minutes late (starting time 8 AM). When the boss chewed him out for it, the guy said, "But the clock in my car said it was 8:00." He was given the boot on the spot. I had to side with the boss on this one, not because of the guy's lateness, but for the absolutely lame-ass, intelligence-insulting excuse.

For the past few years I’ve known places that have to extend offers to 3 or more people, all accepted for one office position, just in hopes one actually shows up after they claim to be giving 2 weeks notice.

Ridiculous weeks of delay from that scenario.

We had project manager wh0 lived about 45 minutes away that was chronically 20-40 minutes late. It was always because "the train" backed up traffic and he had to take the long way into work. Eventually he moved about 10 minutes away and, amazingly, he still always got caught by "the train".

The funny thing is that punctuality is not all that important at my company unless something specific is scheduled. He typically put in 10-11 hours a day. He could have just said he didn't like coming in at 8 an no one would have cared.

Back when I was a shift supervisor for a security officer group, on third shift I had a no-show one night. You are supposed to be there at 10:50 pm to begin your 11 pm to 7 am shift.

I started calling this guy and finally got ahold of him him around 3 am.

“I’m sick” he says

Me: “ and you can’t pick up the phone and make a call?”

Him: (and his exact words)

“ I didn’t know we were required to do that”

Me: (slams head on desk repeatedly)

I transferred in to a management position where prior supervisors granted sick leave too frequently and with no proper cause. I made a list of the worst offenders and started tracking the call-ins and listing the reason. I took action on one guy who's grandmother(s) had died five times in less than a year.

Especially those who are chronically sick on Mondays.

I was never a manager or head hunter, I spent most of my career as a computer tech. There was a lot of formal and informal(OJT) training.

One of our customers was the Federal Reserve Bank in New Orleans. I was a backup tech for the site. When one of the onsite techs was out for a week I would go onsite to service the computer system and peripherals. Due to the mechanics involved the check sorters required the most maintenance.

On this one day about 20 years ago a fairly new tech was to come on site and I was to provide some OJT for him. Management wanted to give him some exposure to servicing check sorters. Most of our service calls were on laptops, pc's and laser printers. The new tech had never seen a check sorter before.

He was an outgoing, confident, friendly person. He was about 6 foot 3 and had a 4th degree black belt in karate. It didn't seem like anything would phase him. To say he was brimming with confidence was an understatement.

When he came on site I told him what we would be doing. I planned to perform preventative maintenance on a couple of high speed sorters. I was going to show him how to power the sorters off/on, how to remove the outer panels and lift all lids then vacuum the sorters, pretty basic stuff. After that I would check all the mechanics and run test documents to check the functionality of the sorters. Any problems that arose I would repair. He wasn't expected to repair anything.

When he came into the main sorter room and took a look at the sorters, which were about 40 feet long, the expression on his face immediately changed to one of fear. His confidence was gone, his demeanor had changed. To a casual observer there was nothing intimidating about the outside of the sorter. I can only imagine he tried to envision what was underneath the outer panels. I reassured him he wasn't responsible for anything, I was the only one responsible. That didn't matter to him. He immediately left the room, went back to our tech room sat at the desk called the boss, told him he wasn't hired to repair sorters and would go on to take other service calls. He left the site after that. I don't think he ever returned, if he ever did return it was to pick up or deliver parts.

Management took no action against him. He just didn't do his career any favors by leaving the site. We also had a few senior techs that wanted nothing to do with repairing check sorters. It could mean long hours of sometimes hard physical work.

I think the reason this incident stands out is that I've never seen confidence in someone evaporate so quickly and so thoroughly.

quote:

Originally posted by KDR:

The funny thing is that punctuality is not all that important at my company unless something specific is scheduled. He typically put in 10-11 hours a day. He could have just said he didn't like coming in at 8 an no one would have cared.

This was me. I always put in long hours and so I was not concerned about showing up at 8am.

I didn't think anyone noticed until I was on a call with our head of Finance. The client we were talking to wanted to schedule the next call and suggested the next day at 8am. Before I could say a word, our Finance chief says "8am won't work. Rich is never here that early".

I went on a battery of interviews back in October
On interview 3 of 4 with the company, an investigator had a file folder on me.

They had a psych and an investigator.

That is pretty unusual. Security position? Would they let you record the interview?