Here are some of the things that would totally turn us off:
- Tell me what you’re qualified to do when you haven’t looked for a job in five years and you have no idea what the market is like
- Want a $10,000 increase when you change jobs because your spouse says you deserve it
- Send me a three-page resume with the first page devoted to your “objective” and your “summary.”
- Refuse to come interview with me when you live within 50 miles of my office.
- Tell me what you’re worth because you read it on the Internet.
- Tell me you want a management job because the people you work for are idiots and you know you can do better than them.
- Keep your voicemail full
- You tell me that you don’t want to go on the interview because you can make more money than what the employer told us they would pay by staying on unemployment
- Tell me you only want to communicate by text
- Tell me you already know how to interview when I go to coach you.
- Tell me you want to review every company I might try to get you an interview with before I do it.
- Tell me you know exactly how recruiters work because you were one for six months
- Refuse to go on an interview because: it just doesn’t sound good… you looked them up on Glass Door and didn’t like what you saw… you had friends that worked there and they didn’t like it… It’s not the size of company you want… you never heard of them, so they can’t be good….that’s the wrong title… I need more money than that
- Tell me you really know what the market is for your skills because you’ve been reading about people on the Internet, your father-in-law and three friends told you what the market is like and, “Oh, yeah, my old college roommate got a job with the kind of company I want to go to work for in Florida. He’s nowhere near as smart as I am, so get me one like that!”
- You give me a time when you can interview and I get my client to commit to that time and you call me up an hour before the interview and tell me “something has come up” and you won’t tell me what it is. You just leave me a voicemail.
- Give me a vague resume with company names, but no clear explanation of what the company does, vague titles that don’t tell me what you do or did, no measurable accomplishments associated with each recent job (not what you did 20 years ago).
- You tell me that since your unemployment has run out, you are ready to go back to work
- You don’t call me back after an interview
- You don’t write a hiring authority a thank you note after you interview
- You lie on your resume or your LinkedIn profile …or the experience on your resume and your LinkedIn profile don’t match
- You tell me you need a job and then I get you an interview and can’t find you.
- I get you an interview, you don’t show up, you don’t inform me and then five years later call me and ask for my help acting like nothing ever happened (thinking that I don’t remember… I do!)
- You expect me to work a “miracle” and get you a job that you are not qualified for and what’s worse, be angry at me when I can’t do it.
- Be mad at me when I can’t get you an interview, not realizing that I don’t “write the rules” of what my clients are looking for. They tell me what they want and need and I do my best to find what they asked for.
- Telling me exactly how you should sell yourself to a prospective employer
- Not realizing that if “we” don’t win together, nobody does
- Not realizing that you may need me again somewhere down the line and it’s not a good idea to alienate me. (I do realize that if you need a job and get one, you no longer really need me… at least for the moment. But somewhere down the line, you may need me.)
- You act as though you’re doing me a “favor” by gracing my doorstep and getting the unbelievable, phenomenal, exquisite opportunity to represent you.
- When you don’t realize that this is an equitable business deal for both of us. If I get you a good interview and a good job, I’m a hero. If I don’t, I’m a bum.
- It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been here. If I’d been here 47 minutes or 47 years, if I get you a good interview that results in a job opportunity, we are all heroes.
- When you don’t realize that we do our dead level best to help everybody. We wish we could place everyone, but again, we don’t write the rules.
- When people don’t appreciate that an organization pays us around $20,000 or more to get better candidates they can’t find on their own. We have to come up with as close to perfect as can be.
- You don’t tell me everything going on in your job search…you were fired three months ago and tell me you are still employed… you’ve already accepted a new job but want to see if you can find something “better”…your present job is being eliminated, but you don’t tell me… you were fired for cause and don’t tell me…you’ve got a felony in your background and don’t tell me.
- When people aren’t aware that we have empathy for everyone. We would love to help everybody find a job.
- Since you heard the market is “hot,” you are “casually” looking for a new opportunity if it comes your way and then proceed to give me all of the parameters you’d “have to have” before you even consider a move
A few years ago, a fellow came by our office and asked to speak with me. I went to the front office and he introduced himself. He said that I had found him a job in 1983. I placed him at a chemical company as a chemical mixer. He was hired to mix some rather toxic chemicals (the EPA was only a few years old and probably didn’t pay much attention to this company. It only had 12 people in it). He was driving by our office and he wanted to stop and thank me for finding him the job. He was the ninth candidate that the company offered the job to then…everyone previous to him turned the job down. They paid him $750 a month when I placed him. He wanted to thank me because now he not only owned the company, but he had close to 100 people working there. He said he was making a boatload of money… a whole lot more than $750 month. I have to admit that it brought tears of joy to my eyes.
That’s the reason we do this kind of stuff.
