Last week I happened to overhear a post-interview conversation among 3 recruiters (one senior, one very senior, and one intermediate).
The position for which they were interviewing was a fairly senior HR role. The client was looking for a fairly rare combination of specific education, skills and experience, so the likely source of a candidate who met all the requirements was an intermediate HR practioner who could 'rise up' to the role.
They'd finally found a candidate who they thought was a good fit: She had the education, the skills and experience; in person, she was smart, engaging, and gave a good interview.
So how come all 3 recruiters came out of their interviews with her feeling reluctant about sending her to the client as a part of the candidate shortlist?
Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
Not just short, once-in-a-while bitten nails, but the hacked-up stumps surrounded by picked and scabrous skin of the serious nail biter.
The candidate hadn't actually bitten her nails during the interview, but she hadn't been able to keep herself from absent-mindedly picking the skin around her nails.
Besides being a big heap of yuck for the people trapped in a small room with her for 75 minutes, it raised some serious questions: How would this candidate perform under stress? Was this an indication that she just couldn't handle it? Was it just a habit, indicative of nothing, really?
And the all-important: Would the client be grossed out by her hands?
In the end she was added as a distant #3 on a shortlist, of which the client picked candidate #2, so it never came to the crunch.
We've all got nervous habits - 'tells', as they say in poker. But if yours is fingernail-related, you might want to consider trading it in on something less evident, like, say, touching the burners on the stove 4 times before leaving the house.
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