5 Recruitment Nightmares

Plus 1 for luck!

In this National Careers Week, you may be thinking about your next role. So we thought we would share some of the worst recruitment practices we have come across.

Here are our 5 Recruitment Nightmares (plus 1). Some of them are for recruiters, some for candidates and some are for both!

1. Fishing

Our number one bad habit is employers who don't know what they want. They put out vague job adverts with wide salary scales (or no scale at all) and ask people to come in for interview for a chat to pick their brains. This is a waste of everyone's time. Avoid them!

2. Talking too much

Both sides can be guilty of this. The interview is an opportunity to get to know each other. It ought to be a conversation. The potential employer wants to find out whether this is a person who could do the job well and they would like to hire. The candidate wants to find out whether this is an organisation they would like to work for. It is a big commitment for both sides, so make sure you listen as well as talk. And if you find the other person isn't doing that, you might want to look elsewhere.

3. Ghosting

This is the first of two dating terms that are useful to describe bad practices in recruitment. It is the act of suddenly going quiet or disappearing. It might be a candidate that fails to show up for the interview or stops replying to emails afterwards, or it might be an employer that goes quiet after the interview and fails to follow up in any way. Either way, it's rude and you shouldn't do it.

4. Breadcrumbing

This one is more likely to be the potential employer but is again a dating term. It describes a series of crumbs or fake promises. It often involves some prework for the candidate and even some free intern type work with the promise of a possible position. It might involve the overselling of a role to make it sound much more interesting than it is. Often it is done unintentionally but it is still unprofessional, and you should avoid getting drawn in.

5. Laziness

This may seem obvious, but you see it all the time and on both sides. It is not uncommon for candidates to invest the time in coming to the interview, but not to have bothered to find out anything about the organisation or to think about why they might want this role. Why would you hire someone who hasn't shown any interest in you? Likewise, candidates all too frequently report walking into the room to find the interviewer reading their CV for what is obviously the first time. Inviting someone to interview is asking them to give up quite a bit of time and to invest their emotional energy in your job. The least an employer can do is to know why they have asked each candidate in and what they would like to find out more about.

And finally, one extra for luck…..

6. Recruitment agents

Don't you hate them? It's like all the estate agents in the world have got together and identified the least likeable amongst them and sent them off to be recruitment agents. If you are going to use them, make sure you understand why they add value. Do they have knowledge you don't have or contacts you can’t tap into? Don't hire them just to do your dirty work for you.