Recruiters get a bad rap - sometimes, candidate behaviour is just plain inexplicable.
As the Director of User Experience for a recruitment services company, I am often the recipient of out-of-the-blue phone calls from candidates ("To speak with someone in our marketing and communications department, please press 2043...").
Most of the time, I just roll my eyes a little: A-list candidates know that unless you have a specific contact name, it's best to make first contact with a recruiting company by email or applying online - so when I get a random phone call, it's generally safe to assume that the candidate on the other end is either a bit clueless or a little desperate. But it's easy enough to gently redirect these candidates to the website.
But once in a while, I end up having a conversation which reveals just how useful the term 'WTF????!!' really is.
Unbelievable but true
Friday afternoon, I picked up the phone and engaged in the following - slightly abridged, but otherwise verbatim - conversation:
ME: "Sarah Welstead."
MALE CANDIDATE, AGED 22-35: "Your office is open?"
ME: "Yes, we're open today..."
MC: "But you're closing at 2 o'clock?"
ME: "Ummm...no. We're here til 5 today."
MC: "So you're not closing? I can come there?"
ME: "The office is open, but - I'm sorry, did you have an appointment with someone here?"
MC: "I want a job. I'm going to bring my resume there now and talk to someone about getting a job."
ME: (light dawning) "Oh, I see. Actually, we don't really take resumes in person like that. Have you visited our website? If you're interested in a specific position, or want to send us your resume, you can do that through the website."
MC: "I need to talk to someone. I want to give you my resume."
ME: (eyes now rolling quite a bit) "Yes, the best way to do that is online. Once we receive your resume or application, a recruiter will be in touch and you can make an appointment."
[this back-and-forth continued for several minutes - he was determined to drop off his resume in person and was disinclined to believe me when I said it wasn't the best way to get our attention]
MC: "But I need some advice."
ME: "About looking for work? What kind of job are you interested in?"
MC: "IT - information technology."
ME: (trying to stay positive) "Great! We've got an IT recruiting division, so you should just check out the IT jobs we've got posted, and apply to whichever ones you're interested in. If you don't see anything that fits with your skills, you can email us your resume and we'll let you know when something comes up."
MC: "But I don't have email."
ME: "You don't have an email address?"
MC: "I don't have a computer or internet."
ME: [a few seconds of silence] "Um, you'd like to work in IT but you don't have a computer or access to the internet?"
MC: "Yeah."
ME: [speechless]
I did finally succeed in giving him the email address of one of our IT recruiters (who, 30 minutes later, received a brief email from someone requesting a meeting and 'advice' - but no resume or an indication of the type of job or advice he was looking for). But two days later, I can't get the conversation out of my head. I can't stop thinking: "What the HECK was that guy thinking?"
Why did he forego any semblance of a greeting or explanation ("Hi, my name is Bob and I'm looking for work in IT and would like to drop off my resume...")?
Why did he persist in his resume drop-off plan after I'd told him that the best way to bring himself to our attention was to go online?
And why did he tell the recruiting company that he wants a job in IT but doesn't have a computer or internet access?
So what's my point?
For years, recruiting professionals have ranked somewhere between 'real estate agent' and 'travelling salesman' on the Unscrupulous Professions list. And there's no question that recruiters aren't always as assiduous in acknowledging or responding to candidate applications as they should be.
But it's no wonder that recruiters often come off looking jaded or dismissive when it comes to candidates, because while the conversation above is unique in its specific punchline ("The IT guy who doesn't have a computer"), it's just one of the many, many examples of inexplicable candidate behaviour that most recruiters see every day.
(Don't you wish that, when you encounter one of these Egregiously Bad Candidates, you could just ask them, straight out, how they thought that doing [insert inexplicable behaviour here] was going to bring them any closer to their dream job?)
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