NotHire: Must have criminal record

From Rob’s Megaphone, a great help-wanted ad:

Times: What Not To Do at an Interview

In the United Kingdom, a CV is a resume, and “to scupper” means to sink. Though the words are different, The Times of London has an on-target article about the things candidates do to Not Get a Job. Here’s a sample:

What not to do at an interview
Sarah Campbell asks employers for their stories of job interviews that went wrong — and what the candidates should have said

The absolute disaster. “This story relates to an interview for a junior sales post,” says Mark Rhodes, the head of marketing at reed.co.uk. “The candidate’s first mistake was to turn up in a white suit.” Wanting to find out whether his credentials were better than his fashion sense, the interviewer asked a few simple questions about his CV. “The candidate started to mumble and said he couldn’t answer the questions,” Rhodes says. “When asked why this was, he said that his girlfriend had written his CV for him.” The kindly interviewer tried to put the candidate at ease by talking about the company and asking general questions. “He continued to give mumbled responses. When asked whether he was nervous, he replied that he’d only just got out of bed and hadn’t had any breakfast.” The interviewer terminated the session — after just three minutes. Unsurprisingly, this on-the-ball individual was not given the role. Rhodes points out the importance of first impressions and of knowing not only about the company that you are applying for a position with but also your own CV — and wearing a decent suit.

See the whole article for the great anecdotes.

Evil HR Lady on "We’re in a Hiring Slowdown"

I’ve not met the Evil HR Lady, but it looks like we’ve worked together. She just posted a perfect riff on what happens behind the scenes when the candidate is told “We’re in a Hiring Slowdown“. Here’s a short excerpt:

Here’s how the hiring process should go:

1. Manager decides there is a vacancy
2. Recruiter does what it takes to bring in several qualified candidates
3. Manager and friends interview candidates
4. Decision is made
5. New person accepts fabulous offer
6. Person starts job–total time, start to finish 4-6 weeks.

Here’s how it ends up going many times.

1. Manager decides that there is a vacancy.
2. Recruiter starts looking for qualified candidates.
3. Boss disagrees. “Even though Jane left, you can do the work without another headcount. I’m transferring your headcount over to Heidi’s department.
4. Recruiter sets up several appointments with qualified candidates
5. Manager says, “Ummm, I may be losing the headcount, but let’s interview anyway.”
6. Recruiter cringes, but goes forward.
7. First interviews happen
8. Boss finds out and is livid. Massive political nightmare ensues.

Check out her full posting for what happens with steps 9 through 22. The comments are good too.

The Worst Things to Hear in a Job Interview

From a ten-year-old e-mail, a sample of the Worst Things to Hear in a Job Interview:

1. I take it you didn’t use a spell checker on this resume?
2. You know those picket lines are only temporary.
3. Our company is positioned for major growth… once we get through all this Chapter 11 stuff.
4. We’re going to give the job to an internal candidate, but HR says we have to interview five people before we can do that.
5. I’m sorry – your interview was scheduled for 1:00 PM yesterday.

Hopefully, you won’t hear these.

How Not to Hire: Whacked Job Postings

The Recruitards.com blog has some amusing examples of bad job posting on the web. Recruitards is “A collection of the dumbest job ads from across the web”, complete with comments (in italics.) Samples include:

Think Big, Pay Small

“Since we are a new company our budget is extremely low ($100-$200), and because of this we can only offer a small amount of compensation. However, the right candidate will without a doubt be throwing him/herself into a situation where your skills and talents will gain serious exposure – and more work.

WE think BIG, and so should YOU

Please contact for more information, and include links to your work.

Thank you, and Serious Inquiries only.”

Obviously, they want someone who thinks big, except when it comes to their paycheck. Good luck with that.

and

Must be able to deal with SHOUTING

We found this ad for a ‘Web Designer/Developer’:

“MUST BE EXPERIENCED WITH ALL ASPECTS OF WEB DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT.
MUST HAVE PLEASENT PERSONALITY AND BE EASY TO WORK WITH.
MUST BE ESPECIALLY CREATIVE.
MUST HAVE EXCELLENT WORK ETHIC.

SEND RESUME AND ANYTHING ELSE WHICH YOU THINK WILL HELP YOU GET THE POSITION TO … ”

And if you get the job, maybe you can help them write better ‘help wanted’ ads, too.

(Oh – and they misspelled PLEASANT)

Too bad this blog isn’t updated more often. Please help them out – send them some samples.

Guy: How to Not Hire Someone Via Craigslist

This week, the ever-interesting Guy Kawasaki and his buddy Danny Kay take apart a job posting on New York City CraigsList for Sr. Web Designer/ Graphic Artist Position. The posting is typical – full of requirements, empty of selling the opportunity. But regardless of what the hiring manager/HR Rep/Recruiter want, nobody qualifies for the job. This might be because they’re asking for:

Proficiency with Photoshop, Illustrator, ImageReady, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, InDesign “and/or” QuarkExpress, and Flash.

Guy points out the problems with this requirement:

Only the kids of John Warnock who were suckled at the breast of Adobe could know all these applications.

How Not To Hire: 3rd Interview

And we wonder why we corporate recruiters have such a bad rap.

Thanks for the tip to Martin Burns.

(I will mention that if you interview with me, I expect better a better fake mustache.)

Mind the Gap: Appel on the coming labor shortage

In Chief Executive magazine, Andrew Appel notes three bullets to Filling the Talent Gap. Appel is CEO of Aon Consulting Worldwide, and he points out the impacts of the coming demographic train wreck:

In both developed and developing countries, the evolving workforce is creating a talent shortage. In developed nations, retiring baby boomers will drain the talent pool. Meanwhile, developing countries are growing rapidly but lack experienced managers. What’s more, 60 percent of new jobs in the 21st century will require skills currently possessed by only 22 percent of U.S. workers, according to the Commerce Department. Clearly, it’s time for talent to be viewed as a significant issue in boardrooms worldwide.

This could mean the end of the churn-and-burn job shops.

Hat tip to Execupundit.

How Not to Hire: True Tales from the Trenches

Oi! Here’s what gives my profession a bad name. My good buddy Mark is conducting a search, and had an interesting run-in with a recruiter. Here are his own words:

As a recruiter you’ll appreciate this:

The other day, I had a phone interview with a big company in the Twin Cities, conducted by what turned out to be Ms. Young Clueless HR 2007. She asked a standard set of questions, then asked if I had any… which she then couldn’t answer. I asked basic stuff, like how many states the company had ops in, what the actual job duties were, etc. She even guessed at the location thing, “Gee, I’m not sure… ummm, 13, maybe 15 states… I dunno.”

But my favorite part was at the end when she pitched me the job by skipping over the job duties and in a sing-songy voice gave me the bullet-pointed rundown on the benefits, ending with (and I quote), “And we have a really neat 401-K!”

Really neat interview, I must say.

Later,

Mark

As one of the SHRM presidents said long ago (I’m paraphrasing), “The biggest obstacle to success in Human Resources is that there are no barriers to entry.” No wonder people say “I Hate HR!”