Adventures In Recruiting: Crazies And Eccentrics I Have Known

When I started recruiting, it never occurred to me that I was actually dealing with the general public.  But with so many people I have met, that is the truth.  On a bell shaped curve, some fall into the upper 2%, but some fall on the left side of the curve in the bottom 2%.

I thought it would be fun to briefly recount some of the “crazies” and eccentrics I have met.  Suffice to say that I don’t work with any of them.

• There was the woman who refused to come to my office for an interview, despite me being well known.  She told me, “I don’t go to men’s offices.”

•  There was the guy who wouldn’t give me his address.  It turns out he was saving money by not paying rent during the summer. He was literally living under a park bench on Long Island.

•  There was the woman who unbuttoned her blouse in order to try to convince me to send her out on interviews.

• There was a man who refused to tell me where he currently worked or what he worked on, “For reasons of security”.

•  There have been several “new business” people who claimed to be able to move an account with them. But when I contacted the ad or marketing manager of the business, they either didn’t know this person or hadn’t been in contact with them or had no intention of changing agencies.

• There was an account guy who did primal screams in the middle of the day and saw nothing wrong with it. He told me he could not share and office and could not work at an open plan office.  Not surprisingly, he was out of work.

• There was a guy who sent a résumé under a false name; he even had an email account. When I met him he told me his real name, but did not want me to identify him to my clients until after he received an offer.

• There was a woman who heard about a job at a company and asked me to change her name on her résumé.  It seems she had worked there before and didn’t want them to know it.

• In the days of snail mail there was a guy who used a false address on his résumé, “So he didn’t get junk mail.”  He never told me. When his offer letter was returned marked “address unknown” his offer was withdrawn.  He told me he did not expect a letter, just an email.

• There was a group account director, a notorious screamer, who has been let go many times. He screamed at me for not sending him out.  He then sent me an insulting email rant, which ended with, “If you don’t send me out, I will never use you to recruit for me”.  He never had before.

• I was about to hire a recruiter.  I called her on a Saturday morning to make her an offer.  She cursed at me (literally) and screamed that I had no business calling her on a weekend and that I was stealing her personal time.  I did not make the offer.

• I got a call from a client. He had just fired a person I had placed a year prior for making a huge mistake in scheduling; it cost the agency a lot of money.  She told him it was my fault because she did not like being there.  The client and I both had a good laugh.