Career Advice

Check out 15 of the most shocking and strange recruitment stories revealed by hiring managers!

Things do not always go to plan during the recruitment process.

This isn’t suggesting bad CVs full of spelling errors or candidates who say the wrong thing.

This is suggesting jaw-dropping, shocking, bizarre, maddeningly frustrating things that would be hard to believe if they weren’t true.

Take a look at these odd stories – and count yourself lucky they didn’t happen to you:

 1. During a phone interview, a recruiting manager heard a candidate’s mother giving the applicant answers to her questions. The interviewer asked him, “Who’s feeding you the answers to my questions?” He said no one. The manager told him she could hear his mother in the background. The applicant got flustered and hung up.

2. At the beginning of an interview, an applicant told an interviewing team that if he should pass out during the interview, his mobile phone was in his pocket and that they should call the emergency number.

3. An applicant showed up for a job interview wearing a noticeably greasy, see-through white dress shirt and bottle-lens eye glasses being held together by tape. He also sported a comb over covering only the front half of his head, so when he turned to the side, there was a large, exposed bald area. The icing on the cake? Severe skin shedding. During the interview, the candidate repeatedly scratched his head and arms, causing large flakes of skin to fall onto the table and onto his clothing. By the end of the interview, the table was covered with a thin layer of skin flakes.

4. A recruiting manager found a candidate he really liked who interviewed well over the phone. He also interviewed well in person, though the candidate did say he had an appointment to run to and asked if he could take the job application with him and return it completed later on along with his references. He returned both the next day, the company checked his references and hired him. On his first day, the company gave the new employee a short telephone script and asked him to make some phone calls. Strangely, when someone would answer his call, he’d ask for a person whose name wasn’t on the script sheets. After a few calls, he stopped asking for anyone by name and just said, “Who’s this?” After a few more of these incidents, the company realised the man couldn’t read. The manager found out later that the handwriting on his job application was that of his girlfriend. The firm felt so bad for him they gave him some phonics books and asked him to study up and come back when he felt he was ready to give it another try. He never returned.

5. After an interview, one candidate asked a recruiting manager if she could borrow some money to get her car out of the car park. She didn’t have any money with her and didn’t know how she was going to be able to get her car through the barrier. (Happy ending: She did end up paying the manager back!)

 6. An applicant showed up late for an interview wearing a long trench coat with his hair slicked back in a pony tail. As the interview progressed, he answered the recruiting manager’s questions, sipped on his Starbucks coffee and tilted the chair on the back legs. When asked the question, “Why should I hire you?” he responded by taking a sip, leaning way back, running his hand along the side of his hair and saying, “Because I’m so good looking.”

7. A recruitment manager hired a woman to help out with typing proposals. The woman said she could type 75 words per minute and, in a crunch, the manager hired her on a trial basis without giving her a test. Rushing past her desk to an important meeting, the manager happened to notice that new hire’s computer screen was completely filled with spelling errors and mistakes. He asked her what she was doing since she seemed to be ignoring the spell check warnings. Very calmly, she replied, “Oh, I do that at the end. How else could I type 75 words per minute if I stopped every time I made a mistake?”

8. A female recruitment manager and her team thought they’d found a great male candidate. The applicant eagerly accepted the offer – and began emailing and calling the recruiting manager every day for two weeks until the first day of work. Then came the cards, unsolicited breakfasts, joke emails and statements of “being friends forever” – all within the first two weeks. Management eventually had to counsel the employee about appropriate behavior in the workplace.

9. A Human Resources manager worked with an outside agency to place job adverts in the local newspaper. The agency got the job adverts in the newspaper without a problem – except they went in newspapers 30 miles from the store. Potential candidates began calling to enquire about train schedules and which part of town the store was in. Worst of all: This happened twice – to the tune of a huge financial loss each time.

10. A recruiting manager hired a receptionist who during her employment used the emergency room as her primary care physician and ran an escort service on the side.

11. A recruitment agency helped a company hire a new IT technician based on his CV alone. The new employee arrived on the job the very first day, looked at the company-issued laptop and said, “What is this?” Needless to say, the company promptly and respectfully returned the new employee to the Recruitment agency.

12. One applicant for an attorney position giggled the entire time during the phone interview. The manager thought it was probably nerves, so he asked her for a writing sample. She submitted a detailed legal brief that used the names of characters from the cartoon “The Family Guy” and placed them into horribly violent situations.

13. A recruiting manager hired a promising candidate with two master’s degrees. Upon being hired, however, she shooed people away from her desk when they tried to train her. (She said she knew how to do the job better by herself.) She also spoke over everyone else in the office when they tried to talk to her, frequently screaming, “What?!” Finally, she sent strange Youtube videos to other staff members about race horses for no apparent reason.

14. One company hired what they thought was a qualified, excited applicant. But 10 days after the employee started, he resigned – and moved to a larger company. Turned out he’d used the company’s salary as leverage.

15. A police department hired a new recruit who successfully made it through the academy and field training. A few weeks later, though, he quit. Why? He had to touch a dead body and said he didn’t think he could do that ever again. The icing on the cake: The recruit’s family’s business was the community’s only funeral home and mortuary.

Well there you have it! 15 of the most shocking recruitment stories. If you’d like to elimate the chance of you experiencing any of these scenarios, check us out to see how we can help you by clicking here!

– ProgressiveBusinessPublications