Happy Halloween! In the spirit of the spooky season, we dedicate this blog post to a very relevant, and often terrifying subject: recruitment. Our colleagues reminisced over horrors they witnessed this year, and we have selected some stories guaranteed to make your stomach churn, ranging from innocent to truly devastating. To protect the identity of our storytellers and their protagonists, all posts are anonymous. Ready? Fasten your seatbelts, you’re in for a ride.
1. No shoes? No problem.
In the middle of an interview, a candidate complained she was hot. She then proceeded to remove her shoes, then her socks. After carefully laying them on the table, she said ‘excuse me’, and continued as if everything was normal. It wasn’t.
2. Mother knows best
I was interviewing a candidate on the phone for a relatively high position as part of the pre-screening process. As soon as the questions become a little more technical, I start to hear the candidate’s mother giving him the answers. I immediately ask him if the person in the background could step out to do the interview herself. He played it off as if no one was there, to which I responded that I could clearly hear his mother in the background. The applicant got flustered and hung up.
3. Talents and hobbies
On average, my interviews last 15 minutes. One guy with a promising profile came in, his interview lasted 44 minutes. Not positive. My second question was: ‘What do you do in your free time? Any hobbies?’. The nightmare began then. The 40 minutes that followed were spent listening to the candidate doing awful “impressions” of celebrities, characters, cartoons and personas he had invented himself. Some of them were okay, but the whole experience was just terrible. I attempted to stop the carnage exactly 6 times to resume the interview, before giving up and trying to enjoy the show.
4. Safety first
A candidate once came to an interview and did nothing but look everywhere frantically, whisper and jump at every sound… when asked something, he always replied that it was confidential, that they could be listening to us and that no one is safe.
5. A sudden gas leak
During a video interview with a candidate, everything seems to be going very smoothly. The gentleman is a great fit for the role… until we get to the English part. As soon as I ask him if he has any objection to us speaking in that language for a while, he tells me that he is not feeling very well: “I’m afraid I am having terrible gas at the moment, so I won’t be able to speak English” and he hangs up on me.
6. Recruiter’s best friend: cat.
We usually do video interviews, as it’s part of our process, and believe me when I say I’ve seen everything. Once, during an interview, everything was going well and the candidate fit the role very well. Suddenly, in front of the candidate’s camera, on the table, a black cat walks past. The candidate went on as if nothing had happened, and me, a cat lover, called him back.
It’s not all about horror!
Despite everything, we love our work and meeting our candidates. We have many funny anecdotes and that’s why we want to give you some tips. Don’t be afraid! Before anything, we are human, like you.
- Be ready for the interview, but not too much. Be natural.
- Why do you want the job? What makes you the right candidate?
- Prepare some questions for the interviewer.
- Practice, again and again.
- Be assertive, active and interested. An interview should be a conversation, where both parties respond to one another. Interaction is key, and being too passive can come off as lack of interest. Act engaged, have an upbeat attitude to stimulate your interviewer’s interest so that he ends up as interested in you as you are in the job.
- Think positive !! Whatever you talk about, turn it out to be something positive. Don’t dwell mistakes made in the past, negative experiences, etc. If one of the interviewer’s questions regards a point-blank negative question, answer it in a way that makes the interviewer think it ended up being a positive experience. Keep a positive attitude throughout!
Hey recruiter, what is your story?
