I ran an interview with a young-ish candidate a couple of years ago.
[Sidebar: Ok, fine. Not the most original of introductory sentences for a blog post about recruiting, I grant. I invite you to read the rest of the blog post and let me know how you would have started this entry, though. I had nothing better and a deadline to meet.]
This candidate’s work history was, shall we say, subpar, and I was anticipating a substantial fraction of the interview would be focused on the aforementioned history. Accordingly, we worked our way through some of the preliminary material before quickly transitioning to his past employment.
[Second Sidebar: Actually, no. We won’t say ‘subpar.’ We will say ‘terrible.’ It was outright terrible. Two months here. Four month gap. One month there. Eight month gap. Three months here. You get the idea. If we are judging - and let's be honest, I'm usually judging - this kid was clearly not going to pass muster. I’m not entirely sure why I even called the guy back other than a vague notion that I was going to get a good story for the dinner table. Turns out I was right. Ha!]
Anyway, standard operating practice is to ask for the reason why someone left his/her jobs, as well as the reason for any gap(s) in his/her work history. To be fair, I’m not going to ask after every job, as that would take far longer than I would ever be willing to spend on a call for someone who's been in the workforce for three decades. But we do go over the past several years. If you've had one job for the past three years, that's probably the only job I'm going to discuss with you. If you've had seven jobs in the past three years, you can bet I will ask you about Every. Single. One. Your answers will tell me a lot more about you as a worker than almost anything else during the hopefully-less-than-sixteen minutes I spend talking to you.
[Third Sidebar: We recruiters document as we interview. Usually it's a summary of what a candidate says. For those of us overachievers who really peaked in high school typing class and can type fast, though, we will document, word-for-word, the responses that come out of a candidate's mouth.]
Back to the young-ish kid with the subpar—I mean, Terrible—work history. As one may expect, his interview was progressing along just as well as his work history. Better, even.
Me: "You were at Hy-Vee for only about three months. Why did you leave that position?"
Kid: "I got let go. They didn't think I was doing a good enough job showing up for work."
Mic drop.
Having anticipated significant entertainment potential out of this interview, I was already prepped to document this kid's answers word-for-word, so I typed out exactly what he said without thinking. Comprehension of what he said took my brain several additional seconds before I understood. There was silence on the phone during this lag. I had to re-read it twice to make sure I understood what he just told me. Then, there was an additional five seconds of me attempting to swallow the burst of laughter that threatened to escape upon the realization that this kid was blaming the loss of his job on Management.
Unreasonable expectations, I guess.
In case you were wondering: No, he did not join our ranks of gainfully employed contractors that day.
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