Have you ever talked to someone for the first time and immediately disliked everything about him/her?
No?
Do my job, and you'll quickly become familiar with that kind of situation.
I hit a new PR (that would be a Personal Record) of twenty-four seconds recently. Yep, twenty-four seconds into a phone conversation, I decided I liked absolutely nothing about the guy on the other end of the line. Nothing. And the longer the conversation went on, the more he pissed me off.
Now, why would I waste my time by continuing a conversation with a guy when I knew I wasn't going to hire him? Because I'm petty, that's why. Because I wanted to waste as much of his time as he was wasting mine.
Oh, and because I felt like collecting a story that I could rage to others about at a later date.
I'd first like to preface this story by telling you this happened around noon (and no, I was not hangry, though that can and does happen). The dude calls in to follow up on his application and was yawning--yes, yawning--throughout the entire fourteen-minute interview. There was no, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry" or "My apologies, I worked an overnight shift last night but wanted to make sure I reached out to you today to follow up" kind of an excuse for the yawning. And it wasn't a quiet yawn. No, it was the obnoxious loud yawn that someone does to ensure everyone around them knows they're yawning. Like a child. Like an entitled man-child. Which is way worse.
First off, why are you tired? You don't have a job.
Second, it's noon. Stop. It’s the time of day where even if you DID work night shift doing God knows what, you would have been able to get a solid five hours of sleep in before your interview.
Third, if you were actually serious about getting a job, it doesn’t matter if you were tired or not, you sure as hell wouldn’t be obnoxiously yawning throughout.
Anyway, I was immediately irritated with this guy when he let out several large, casual yawns in the first twenty seconds. I almost asked him if he'd like to call me back to continue our discussion when he wasn't so tired to carry on a conversation without the yawning interruptions, but I was already too irritated to bother offering him the option. If I'm going to be irritated, let's go the distance.
Let's discuss his work history. He said he left Job X "about 2 years ago." (my math puts that sometime in 2021) but, interestingly, he worked there for "about four years" and his resume indicated he started Job X in 2019. I ask him to verify the year he started: 2019 (yawn). I tell him that 2019 to 2021 is two years, but he was adamant that he was there for four years (yawn). I'm all about engaging this guy, so I politely explain that, if he left a job two years ago, that would be 2021, and if he started in 2019, he could not have possibly worked at Job X for four years. He then changes his story to leaving in 2022 (yawn).
Mind you, that still doesn't equal four years, but whatever.
I ask him if he was working at Job X and Job Y at the same time since his resume placed him at Job Y the same time that he was working at Job X if he was, truly, working at Job X until 2022.
Yep, he was working both jobs at the same time (yawn).
Alright, sure. Sometimes people need to work two jobs. I can have sympathy for that. What about Job Z that also happened to be listed during the same timeframe as Job X and Y?
Oh, oops. Not sure what happened there. There’s probably a mistake somewhere on the resume (yawn).
I guess there is, buddy. I guess there is.
After he starts getting a bit miffed about me drilling into his work history, I decide it's time to move on. We get into the open-ended questions phase of the interview: the tell-me-about-yourself bit.
When asked to describe the training he received during his last job, he said he didn't need any training because he already knew it all (yawn).
He has never faced a single challenge at any one of his jobs because he could do it all (yawn). Not one! Can you believe it? Me, either.
I asked him to briefly describe what assets he would bring to a company should they choose to hire him and learn that he "can do anything, you know, that kind of stuff" (yawn).
We wrapped the interview, wherein I lied and told him that I would send his information over to the supervisor for consideration. If the supervisor was interested, we would reach out to schedule an interview. Have a nice day.
I ended the call and promptly notated all the reasons why I wasn't going to hire him. Perhaps I was a wee bit hangry at that point because I ran out of comment space in the box where we type our notes, and it sounded a bit like a rant by the time I was done. Hmm. Oh, well.
Have fun in your job search, dude. Don't bother resubmitting an application with us because I put you on our blacklist.
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