Hi there,
Here is a list of things that many recruiters do that are completely absurd. I’m sure you’re familiar with some or all of them.
- Pretend you are a magician
Now with the great shortage of employment that exists worldwide, jobs have more and more requirements. So, it is already common to see offers for a junior or assistant position in which they ask you for 10 years of experience, a master’s degree, 4 languages and an infinite number of courses. In addition, you must have all this experience and studies without being over 30 years old.
Do not believe that the number of requirements is proportional to the salary that you will be paid. You will earn minimum wage and in Spain, for example, you will reach retirement earning that same minimum wage.
- Appoint you without asking for your availability
It has happened to me many times that after applying for a job, I get the typical template requesting my presence at a specific time and day. That company is already ruled out because you are not going to summone me en masse as if I were cattle.
Then there are those who call you to tell you the same thing. In other words, you are calling me to make an appointment tomorrow at 10 a.m. when my resume says that I am currently working. What time do you think I work? Did you take the trouble to read my resume?
A normal company contacts you by e-mail to ask when they can call you and logically, they contact you when you can, and they are the ones who adapt to you. Or they send a calendar for you to schedule when you want to do the interview.
There are also those people who, even though you tell them that you work from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and that they call you after your work hours, they continue to insist on calling you at 12. What part of my work schedule did you not understand? Also, if I use time from my current job to do your interview, which is unethical, you know that in the future I’m going to do the same to your company. Doesn’t that worry you?
It happened to me that I was in a selection process for an outsourcing company, and I had to do 24-hour rotating shifts. I tell the human resources person to call me after 6:00 p.m. and she tells me that it is impossible because they work from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. How wonderful! You are going to enslave me in 24-hour shifts, but you work queen hours.
There are also times when you apply for an offer and when you look at your phone, you have 20 missed calls. Really? Did you not understand with the second or third call that I am not available? Didn’t you dare to think that I could be busy?
- Pretending that you take the tests right away
Now it is fashionable to take tests and they send them to you automatically without even having read your resume. The funniest thing is that you must do it in 24 hours because after that time, it expires.
As human resources personnel, it is assumed that your vocation is the people of your company and their needs since you do not manage robots. Therefore, you will have to ask me when I can take the test because I work, clean my house, cook, exercise, and have a lot of activities. I’m not sitting on the couch all day doing nothing waiting to take your test.
- Ask you things that they should have read on your resume
Please don’t ask me stupid questions. You have my resume, my LinkedIn profile, my LinkedIn “about”, my website; read them.
Don’t ask me things that you can answer yourself. Because if you do, I’ll understand that at least as a recruiter, you’re incompetent.
I remember a recruiter who wrote to Diego and sent him a template asking about a lot of technologies, when in his LinkedIn “about” he has a list of all the technologies he masters.
- Not to say the salary
In Spain, especially the salary is a taboo subject. When any normal company puts your salary in the job offer because it is the best way to do the first filter, in that country it is unthinkable. If you ask, you look bad and in fact there are people who have accepted jobs and have started working without knowing what they will earn at the end of the month.
Because one is supposed to be at the employer’s command. I go there, I work 8 hours a day and they pay me the will. In Spain, as there is so much unemployment and so much need, most people have no other option.
There are others who tell you the salary in the final interview and it is a selection process of about 6 interviews and 8 tests. No friend, I am not going to invest my valuable time in your selection process to get to the final interview and be told a salary that does not interest me. Because let’s be clear, if the salary is not included in the offer, it must be miserable.
A friend who lives in Australia was stunned since she did not understand how it was possible that no job offers in Spain had the salary specified, since in Australia it was the first information they placed.
- Infinite possibilities to grow
From the above I come to this point. Many recruiters fill their mouths telling you how wonderful the company is and the endless possibilities for growth that exist.
Even when I tell them my expectations and the salary they are offering is way below, they still try to convince me to go to the interview because this company gives me a great opportunity to grow. What are the chances of salary growth?
Gentlemen of human resources, like you, the rest of us who are looking for a job have to eat and pay bills; Therefore, if I earn 20 and you offer me 15, no matter how wonderful the company is, I am not going to lose money.
A guy wrote to Diego telling him to do a test in 24 hours. Diego responded by indicating his salary expectation to avoid wasting time for both parties. The recruiter responded offended by telling him that “he was looking for people who love to work and not money.” Apparently, this man loved his job so much that he did it for free.
- The company is wonderful
I remember that I went to an interview at a company called Yeeply and they told me for two hours how magnificent the company was, and they even told me the story of how “two friends decided to create it after a few glasses of wine.”
I am not interested in this information; tell me the salary, what I am going to do in the job, the vacation days per year, the hours, and other benefits that I will have. Do not make me waste my time.
Because obviously, if I’m working, to decide to resign and go to your company, it must compensate me for everything, not just the salary. Therefore, give me the information that interests me if you want to hire me.
- Mediocre incentives
Don’t tell me that you give fruit or cookies for free. I’m not going to change jobs because you give me cookies.
I am interested in the salary, the bonus, the medical insurance, and those things that improve the quality of life.
- Absurd answers
First, they write telling you that your resume and profile are wonderful.
When you tell them your salary expectation, instead of admitting that unfortunately they have a lower budget, they tell you that your experience is not enough to earn that money.
It is more decent to admit that you do not have the budget that I ask for, than to want to denigrate my resume by telling me that I do not deserve the salary that I ask for when in the first email it was “wonderful”.
- Misspellings
Reading an email from a recruiter with misspellings is like being slapped in the face. If that is the human resources people, What will be left for the rest of the company?
- Not knowing what the employees of your company do
If you are going to interview me, you must know everything about the job position, because I am going to ask you questions. Don’t tell me that someone else will tell me that later because you must know it.
- Pretending that others do your job.
If you’re an HR person, it makes sense to know salaries for the various jobs in the various markets. If you’re in the business of hiring developers, for example, you’ll need to know what developers do and how much they charge based on their experience, training, and languages.
A guy from Michael Page wrote to Diego on LinkedIn to tell him that he wanted to offer him a job with a “very competitive salary.” Diego told him his salary expectation and the recruiter replied with spelling errors that they did not pay that. The worst thing is that he wanted Diego to tell him how much developers in his company charged for “market knowledge”. Excuse me but no, if you want to know the market you investigate it yourself because that’s what they pay you for.
- Not complying with what you say
If you say you’re going to send something, send it. If you have a problem or have already found someone else, let us know. If you work in human resources, you are supposed to set an example when it comes to communication.
If you interviewed someone and you discarded him, send an email and inform him because perhaps that person is waiting for you to get in contact again. It really costs so little to make some templates and send them.
- Lack of education
The most basic of the basics: being polite.
I remember that I went to an interview at ING in Valencia and two women interviewed me. The offer was for bank adviser who for me is the person who is inside the bank serving customers, but it turns out that it was a cold-door sales position. What I had to do was trick my friends and family into putting up pension and investment funds with ING.
Do not think that I was going to receive a salary, no sir. If I sold more than 10,000 euros a month of bank products, they would give me around 100 euros. I don’t remember exactly the number, but it was kind of surreal.
The worst thing was that one of the women began to scream hysterically because “I didn’t know what I had gone to.” No, ma’am, you are the one who, apart from cheating people who are looking for a job, does not know what it is to have an education.
In short, the job of a recruiter is something that should not be so difficult; however, there are so many people who do not have the basic notions of education, communication, and cordiality; Therefore, apart from wasting their time, they waste ours too.