Oh, the stories we could tell. When it comes to hiring and recruitment, each recruiter has their own book of horror stories and pet peeves, filled with tales of rogue job candidates or interviewees. In this feature, we look at the 3 most common recruiter pet peeves.
From latecomers to rude salary negotiators, we’ve seen it all. While the stories below aren’t specific juicy tales, they are common pet peeves that we recruiters can all commiserate about.
Job Applicants Applying For Everything Under The Sun
Let’s start at the beginning. Generally speaking, screening is a tedious process. We have to go through a million resumes to find ten that match the criteria that we’re looking for. And while there is something to be salvaged for those who might be fulfilling nine out of ten criteria, if you only fulfil three, please don’t apply and waste our time.
However, candidates seem to keep trying, and in their haste to find work, will apply for every single open role that’s available. We’re sure we’re not the only ones who have seen the same candidate pop up in different job openings for completely different departments.
In high-volume recruitment, especially, that can happen more often, so it’s imperative that recruiters have a good pre-screening process or ranking system to filter out the unqualified.
Overly-Creative Resumes
Glamour shot from the 90s? Check.
Vague Job Titles and Descriptions? See: ‘Growth Hacker’.
Odd formatting that doesn’t make reading easier? All the time.
Self-Appraisal for skills we didn’t ask for? Yup.
Long essay in lieu of a condensed resume? Always.
It’s a wonder how many candidates send in resumes like that and expect that recruiters will read them and be impressed.
Candidate Interview Unprofessionalism
We’re not just talking about the no-shows here, even though that’s always a big problem when it comes to interviews. When you call the interviewee and ask where they are and they tell you that they’re not interested and aren’t coming in anymore? It’s…infuriating, to say the least.
(Pro tip: get an interview scheduler that also sends reminders. That way, if they don’t reply to the reminder, you can start on your Plan B.)
However, we would say that candidates that are unprepared are so much worse than those who just pull a disappearing act. We spend all that time screening the candidate, only to see them walk in without any of the documents we asked for, sometimes dressed down to the point that it looks like they just rolled out of bed.
Some don’t even spend the time to research anything about the company, which makes it a humiliating experience when the reporting officer is involved in the interview and you have to watch the candidate keep saying ‘I don’t know’ to the questions. Yikes.
Still interested in improving your recruitment process? Check out our Ultimate Recruitment Guide 2020!
