Jobhop Jobhop's blog : When A Recruitment Experience Is So Crap You Have To Tweet About It

Who’s had a crap recruitment experience?

I have (many years ago!) and I reckon everyone can recall one or two. These days it seems that most active candidates I speak to have a few horror stories to tell. What’s worrying though, is the companies conducting the interviews are clueless to the bad publicity they’re getting. It used to be that a bad interview would result in the candidate mentioning it to their family, but today their family is on social media as well as the rest of the world!

So when is a recruitment experience so crap that it’s worth tweeting about?

The Black Hole

This is horrendous, there are some companies that have huge, black holes that swallow application forms up, never to be seen again. You spend ages filling in the application form online, click send/submit and then wait for days, then weeks, but you hear nothing. You try calling and the receptionist politely tells you that someone will call you back, but they never do, they’ve been swallowed up by the huge, black hole too!

You wouldn’t want to work somewhere with something so dangerous swallowing everything up, you’re lucky that you never had an interview, a very lucky escape!

You’ll Never Know, So You’ll Never Improve

This is slightly better than the black hole but it’s still rather crap. Weeks later you receive a generic letter or email to say you were not successful, no reason why. You email them back but you don’t get a reply so you decide to give them a call. The receptionist who is doing his job by the book and is convincing when he says that Mr Michaels ( that’s the guy who interviewed you) is in a meeting, however he has said the same line every time you’ve rang for the last three weeks. Face facts, you’re not going to get any feedback so you wont know how to improve and you’ll probably repeat the same mistakes at the next interview because you don’t know you’re making them. A definite crap recruitment experience, perhaps worth the tweet “I know you’re not really in a meeting @MrMicheals #fail”

We’ll Just Do It Here

The interview has been arranged but when you arrive you’re told that the interview room has been double booked. The interviewer says her apologies and then says “We’ll just do it here” “Here” is a busy reception area with customers queueing, employees laughing around the water cooler and an angry electrician on top of a step ladder! The whole experience is just uncomfortable, you can’t hear her questions clearly and every time you answer everyone at the water cooler seems to laugh their heads off, obviously that’s just a coincidence!

Stupid Interview Questions

You’ve gone through all the possible questions you could get asked but when you get to the interview the first question is “Who would win in a fight, Superman or Batman?” Now your mind has gone completely blank and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry! There are many stupid interview questions being asked in businesses all over the UK, it’s not just down to bad luck. Some interviewers will argue that the reason they ask these absurd questions is to monitor your reaction but they fail to realise that stupid questions could have a negative impact on their brand.

If You Don’t Hear From Us

Absolutely terrible, rude and lazy! You’ve spent ages applying for the role and you click send and then you see “If you don’t hear from us it means your application was unsuccessful” Sometimes that same sentence follows the application and the interview, they haven’t got the courtesy to call you even after an interview!

If they’re rude and lazy to their applicants then they’ll be the same to their employees so it’s probably best that you don’t hear from them.

All of these scenarios are so crap that they’re definitely worth tweeting about #recruitingfail

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Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk

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