This message is not for you if applicants and candidates are queueing up outside your office every day looking for job opportunities, and you have absolutely no problem in finding and hiring people. Google, Apple and Starbucks come to mind.
Your corporate brand and value proposition may be so unique and spectacular that applicants will be on their knees begging for a job. At that very moment, they will take any abuse and arrogance just to get in the door.
If you recognise yourself and your company in the lines above, you may stop reading now; better check in with me next month.
For the rest of you – don’t stop here. The following may save your career if you are involved in hiring people. I will draw your attention to ten outrageous and rude employer behaviours that will have applicants and candidates going nuts – and not in a good way.
- Not informing the candidate who will be interviewing them and how long they are likely to be at your place for the interview or interviews.
- Letting the candidate sit in the lobby waiting for the interview to start (instead of the meeting room), while other people or guests are staring uncomfortably at the person while strolling through the lobby.
- Requesting the candidate to fill in a ridiculously detailed application form when you already have the candidate’s resume. Please, wait with this form until you have hired someone.
- Sending a junior HR person to interview an obviously more senior and older candidate. Show some respect and play the game of seniority that is so important in Thailand.
- Asking insane questions like: why do you want to leave your current job, when the person has been headhunted and seduced into coming forward. Candidates may not yet be convinced to leave current employment and are unlikely to do so if you ask the mentioned question.
- Using one of their typical 10 annual leave days to come and meet you for an interview; only to be told that same morning that the interview has been cancelled or postponed.
- Going for three to five interviews over a period of weeks, using precious annual leave days, and then never being told that another person got the job.
- Being given the reason that he or she is a job hopper when the positions were actually at the same company but in different departments. Aaarrgghhh.
- Insulting your preferred candidate by offering a low-ball compensation. Be realistic please and avoid your super candidate abandoning the salary negotiation and walking away from the job. It’s a seller’s market in Thailand (the seller being the candidate).
- When you, the hiring manager or HR recruiter, talk down to a candidate and have no answers to legitimate questions about the job and your company. The answer “I don’t know” does not count as an answer but rather becomes a valid reason for the candidate to reject an offer.
