Comments on: Candidate leaves interview — right through a glass door

By: lori

lori — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:16:48 +0000

That’s supposed to be “interviewER” up there….

By: lori

lori — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:16:23 +0000

Just had a chance to catch up on these newer stories….

Since this post came out, we’ve been interviewing interns to help us with a special project. One intern emailed the interviewee afterwards, pointing out what he saw as a grammatical error with our company name. Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:07:06 +0000

Shortly out of college & in my first HR assignment, as the first interviewer of the day, I had the pleasure of greeting a candidate. As I escorted the candidate to my office, he proceeded to tell me that I “sounded shorter and fatter on the phone.” At nearly 6′ & 140 lbs, I was neither (and I towered over him by at least a foot). Suffice to say, he didn’t get my vote nor the job.

By: nikkiflem

nikkiflem — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:21:59 +0000

I was a production supervisor once and we did a group hiring panel made up of hourly employees with a supervisor. We all had preset questions. We were hiring a lot of people for a new assembly line we put in. One older gentleman came in who had been “on strike” for about 2 years. We weren’t a union plant. We asked him about his previous job and he proceeded to tell us that there were a lot of days where he wanted to bring his gun in and “go postal” on everyone! Yeah, we weren’t interested in that happening at our place. We ran 7 days a week 364 days a year. You could go nuts, but we didn’t want anyone going postal.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:50:59 +0000

Wow Cindy, that’s awful. I’m glad you made it out ok! How long were the counselors available at work? I bet some people never got over it… did you?

By: CindyD

CindyD — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:33:22 +0000

Mike, you are so lucky!!!!!! The ones wacked out employees or ex employees go after the most are HR and whoever was the immediate supervisor who usesually blamed anything bad on HR to begin with. After that, co-workers they never liked in the first place. I was in a work place shooting. A man’s wife was not covered by insurance because he never enrolled her. Then she got cancer and could not understand why I was being such a b*&^h, just back date some forms (that were almost two years old. two days later, I heard shooting, shut off my light and got under my desk and called 911. I didn’t even know who it was until it was all over. The employee was killed by the police and one other employee died a few days later. He had been on the job 16 days. 7 more were injured including my HR Assistant as she was coming in from lunch. Her giant handbag saved her life because it slowed the bullet down enough before it went into her.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:47:32 +0000

I once had to conduct interviews for a supervisory position at a production facility I was running. The hourly workers knew of the opening, and some were very upset that “outsiders” were being interviewed. The job opening required a college degree (not my rules) so that eliminated most of our workers. One guy in particular begged and pleaded and made a good case for himself, so I sold the idea to corporate and proceeded with the interview. Everything went well until he pulled his gun out. He didn’t point it at me, he just admired it as he stated how much he deserved to be “a boss” and that things might get real uncomfortable if he didn’t get it. When he got out of jail (repeat offender) several months later, he showed up with the union steward to file a grievance for “unsubstantiated firing.” We actually had to go to arbitration, but won the case. I was more than nervous when he approached me afterwards, but he just shook my hand and said “Thanks for trying to get me in..”
I guess he bought my story that “corporate” had him arrested, not me.

Whew …

By: Tracey

Tracey — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:16:39 +0000

I conducted most of the interviews for our company based out of NYC. Lots of diversity to say the least. The most interesting of them all was with a young man name Jeff. At the end of all interviews I explain that there is a intense background check before we hire anyone. This gives the interviewer the opportunity to discuss any findings that may arise. After a moment of silence Jeff said there “might” be something that shows up…….he was just released from jail for murder.

By: Melonie

Melonie — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:46:57 +0000

Stacey,

I will say this again. Hopefully someone will finally get it. The yelling and demeaning of the employee that was done by the manager with the disability, had nothing to do with his disability. It had everything to do with him being a jerk.

My son tried telling one of his teachers that he had Coprolalia and that if he yelled out an obsenity it was part of his Tourette. I personally went to the teacher and explained that while a very small number of people with Tourette do have that verbal tic…..my son does not and it should not be tolerated.

What upset me, is that Cori was trying in her first post to say that the manager’s brutal treatment of this co-worker was due to his disability, and yes – I get very offensive when people who are uneducated about this disability say very inaccurate statements such as that because Tourette does get such a bad rap to begin with. I have helped my son battle and educate some extremely rude people that make very rude and hurtful comments about his tics as he was growing up. One lady even yelled from her table across a restaurant at him because he was doing his usual “physical tic.”

I do not condone the manager’s behavior. I also do not beleive that the behavior has anything to do with his disability. Please do not blame someone’s obvious charater flaws and unprofessionalism on a disability that has nothing to do with it.

Melonie

By: Stacey, PHR

Stacey, PHR — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:15:57 +0000

Responding to Cori & Melonie

First off – congrats on your professionalism Cori for asking Melonie to respond to you “privately”.

Melonie, I understand your feelings regarding this highly misunderstood illness however, you do have to understand that while a person may be accepting of people with this disorder and may even have as much knowledge of it as you seem to, still may not be able to deal with an extreme situation such as what Cori is describing. I’m not going to go into detail but I too suffer from a (neurological) disorder that is considered to be a disability. However, if the symptoms of my illness were as severe as it seems Cori’s former manager’s are, I would not expect someone to just let it slide because I have a disorder. There is a fine line between being accepting of and accomodating to a disability in the work place and all out allowing extreme behavior that would not be acceptable from a non-disabled employee to continue just because someone pulls the disabled card. A hostile work environment is a hostile work environment…period.