Too Crazy Not to Share~It's a Red Flag

OK. So I am on yet another little rampage this week.

It is not as bad as that post and actually I do have follow up news to said post. Good news first. It has been brought to my attention from a higher up that DH from the said post will be moved into another position and his current position will be transformed and given to a new person. HALLELUJAH! I got the news and almost cried, though DH will still be around, he will not have as much direct contact with me and hopefully the change will be for the better for the entire situation overall. Could DH's replacement be worse, I doubt it and I will take my chances there. There is more to this story and I am not giving that much detail on purpose. Not sure who reads this and even though I have the policy "my blog, my complaint so suck it", I choose to be vague as to cover my tracks because people are people.

Anwayzzzz

The newest thing....it is actually kind of humorous.

Okkie dokkie

I do a lot of recruiting for my company, a lot, like all of it for the entire Southern California area. Needless to say I meet and talk to a ton of different people. I know everyone has their own story or version as to why they are unemployed or looking for work and blah blah blah. I sympathize with people and do my best to be sincere and help them out if they flip the bill or I keep them in mind for other positions when possible. A lot of our hiring is dependent on our clients so I don't get a lot of say sometimes, I just grease the wheels and try to find the most qualified people to represent. But there are some interesting people I meet and just have no idea what to do with. Sometimes this group of people interview really well or they know how to write up a solid resume but then little red flags pop up that just scream, "You should never hire me! or Ban me from your planet because I just don't have the smarts for it!"

At times I feel like I need to be wearing this shirt

Case and point.

I had a candidate, we will name him Jimmy Joe, his resume is outstanding and exactly what we are looking for. I phone screen him and he sounded professional and decent over the phone so I schedule him for an interview. Being hired with our company is contingent on a background check. SO I coordinated with Jimmy Joe to email him the form so he can fill it out and email it or fax it back to me for processing to speed up the hiring process. Easy enough right. I email him and then a few minutes later he emails me back with the following question...

"Hi Stephanie, What is your email address? Is it www.dtiglobal.com" (company website I have posted in my email signature)

You could hear the sounds of my hand smacking my forehead from across the room.

Dude, did you not just realize that I emailed you and you emailed me back and now you are asking for my email address.

I replied and gave him my email address and then decided to update my signature with my email address posted in it, guess I should be more obvious.

Jimmy Joe emails me the form and I open it only to discover that all he did was send me back the original file I sent him. He didn't fill it out or he did and he just sent me the wrong file? I really have no idea but I can't help but assume the worse with this guy.

I then replied to that email and instructed him to just fill out the form while at the interview. However, I did make a call to the manager conducting the interview to share all of the above with him and gave him a heads up. Man oh Man! That was just a series of red flags that are really hard to ignore. Jimmy Joe is not alone in the world. I have met other like him and I don't know what to make of it anymore.

The hardest thing about recruiting is really knowing and believing how much people say they know and can perform. Most of our jobs require having a sound understanding with technology and especially computers . We try to take precautions when hiring. We screen people, have them go through a rigorous interview process with more than one person and even the client when necessary, and we check references. I am starting to think that we need to create and aptitude test as well just to be on the safe side.

I have learned in that last few months of recruiting that:

when people say they have taken "computer classes and are certified" its a red flag

(almost all the people that i have hired that said that had the hardest time getting trained on our computer procedures)

if they have trouble sending me emails after I already sent them an email it's a red flag

if they ask me what does gender mean while filling out the background form it's a red flag

if they only answer "assisting"to the question "What did you like most about being a Administrative Assistant?", it's a red flag.

All you can do is do you best to read people and read through the lines. Ya just never know and sometimes the surprises are funny, sometimes they just make me shake my hands to the sky and scream, how do these people walk among us!!