“I stole the B2B client base from my previous job.” 17 funny stories from recruiters

There is always a place for funny stories in recruiting. They happen even at respectable interviews or are “read” in the lines of solid resumes. After all, candidates are first and foremost people, with their pros and cons, question marks or exclamation points. And recruiters are the ones who masterfully find a connection and meaning between all this, sometimes smiling and laughing ☺

CleverStaff has collected “funny things” that will definitely cheer you up and prove that a recruiter’s self-possession and delicacy are priceless!

So, let’s go!

Password “Green banana”

“Probably like most of my colleagues, I often look through the profiles of specialists on LinkedIn. Sometimes I come across a lot of interesting things,” says Anna Paraskieieva z ITExpert. – For example, there was a Java Developer who, among his technical skills (Spring, Java, SQL), added an audacious skill in his profile – “Dreamboat” (although the profile photo was quite modest ☺)”.

Another candidate in the section “Experience” wrote about his previous company briefly – “Hell on Earth”. “I instantly wondered why he left that company,” Anna smiles.

Also, once, while looking through profiles in the section “About”, I came across the following: the candidate wrote at the very end that he responds only to those messages that contain the phrase “green banana” in the greeting. “I’m not sure it was green, but it was definitely a banana, ☺”, – Anna remarks. “It sounded pretty funny! After all, it turns out that the candidate used this gimmick to weed out those recruiters who send mass emails and “spam” without studying the candidates’ profiles before writing ☺”.

When CVs are the whole stories

There was a situation when Anna helped a specialist correct and improve a CV. The third of the total information was in the section “Hobbies”. The candidate did not want to reduce it at all.

It was probably important for him that a potential employer should be sure to get acquainted with all his hobbies and rich inner world ☺ However, he took all other corrections and alterations calmly and with understanding ☺

Yes, a CV is a part of something significant and… sincere, it is a method of self-expression for certain people. Sometimes they are sent with quite frank content.

Here are the ones mentioned by Zhanna Kondratieva from LVIV HR SOLUTIONS:

• “ I stole a B2B client base from my previous job”
• “ A Christian lady, dedicated to her work, ambitious”
• “ I ask stupid recruiters not to call me, I speak only to business owners”.

Let’s agree, these ones are really catchy 🙂

Interviewing a foreigner: quick and “painless” ☺

We’re used to believe that it’s usually the candidates who find themselves in a funny situation during interviews. But sometimes recruiters do, too ☺.

Thus, Yulia from SMART SOLUTION mentions her start of working with IT vacancies. “If earlier I usually interviewed Ukrainians, not so long ago I started appointing interviews with Europeans, which required conducting interviews in English. When I scheduled the first interview, I warned the candidate that it would take about 30 minutes. I was very nervous, because it was the first interview I had ever conducted only in English. Because of this, I spoke sooo fast, and the whole interview took only… 10 minutes! The candidate was a bit puzzled at the end and asked me intensely: “Oooh, is that really all? That was really too fast… ☺”.

The main thing is not to mistake it!

Here’s a case from a recruiter who told us about the following situation anonymously: a candidate came for an interview, but at first he immediately asked to show him where the restroom was. The recruiter politely accompanies him and automatically says: “Come in, sit down, I’ll come to you in a moment!” There was an awkward pause, but the good sense of humor in both of them quickly covered it.

A mysterious whisper and a T-shirt “to be remembered”

And here are the stories from the girls from Indigo Tech Recruiters.

Once they were looking for a candidate for a Front-end developer position for a product company.

Everything was as usual – an online interview, started with standard questions.

“But at some point I heard whispering and… a barely audible knocking. Pretending that nothing had happened, I was already planning to move on to the next question, and suddenly I heard the phrase “Ask her, ask her about the bonuses!” It was a woman’s voice, and I was surprised, to say the least, that there were not only two of us ☺”.

It turned out that it was the candidate’s girlfriend who wanted to control the interview with the recruiter. She probably expected her boyfriend to “mute” his microphone and didn’t realize that she was revealing her presence. After that, of course, she disappeared, and the interview was completed normally, but… the candidate did not receive an offer.

There was also the following case: a candidate came to an online interview wearing a brightly colored T-shirt with the client company’s logo on it. The recruiter noticed this only after 15 minutes of the interview and immediately asked the girl about it. It turned out that she had put on the T-shirt on purpose – she had borrowed it from her boyfriend, who, coincidentally, had worked for the client six months earlier. The candidate said that she did it because she wanted to be remembered, and she succeeded. ☺.

Soup, samurai and verses

From time to time, the A-HR team also notices unusual situations during interviews.

For example, there was an experience when a candidate… was eating soup with appetite during the interview, “because he had a special diet” ☺. Well, they had to do nothing with it, they couldn’t let the candidate stay hungry ☺

And, of course, there were “difficult” candidates. For example, once, recruiter Viktoriia was looking for an SEO specialist for a Ukrainian e-commerce company that works for the US market. And she had the “good fortune” to talk to one very persistent candidate. I mean, really persistent.

After the interview, Viktoriia presented him to the company’s CEO, but the latter rejected the candidate for some reason. The candidate was tactfully informed of this fact. In such cases, candidates usually ask for detailed feedback or simply thank the company. The same SEO specialist wrote to Viktoriia within a week something like:

“You don’t realize who you are losing!”

“You are making a huge mistake!”

“No one will get you to the top faster than me!”

The last thing he wrote to the recruiter: “I am an SEO samurai!!!”. Hopefully, he didn’t go to hara-kiri because of the failure with the vacancy ☺.

And here is the case “From Aggression to Poetry!”. Recruiter Aliona tells: “Once, during a mass recruitment of managers for a bank, there was a young man who, after the interview, began to write me poetry, highlighting his strong points in the profession.”

Whether he really wanted the job or fell in love with the recruiter at the same time is not known for certain. But it’s very touching, indeed. ☺.

Unexpected interview formats

Recruiters work in different interview formats – from competency-based interviews to situational and group interviews. If you look closely, candidates also have their own formats ☺ Here are a few “cases” from ITExpert.

Drunk and wants to sleep. There was a situation when a candidate joined a technical online interview… was drunk. To be fair, he tried his best to answer the interviewer’s questions, slowly and strangely, but he tried. At first, there were doubts – perhaps the man was not drunk, but just talking like that. Well, it happens, doesn’t it? It does happen. But when the candidate fell asleep peacefully in the middle of the important phrase and did not respond to all online (and this was not an easy task ☺) attempts to wake him up – there was no doubt. The video was also recorded, and the candidate was informed about it in advance so that the client could review it if necessary. What memorable thing it was ☺

The hookah format. There was also a candidate who connected to the interview from a hookah bar and enjoyed all the delights of this place – smoking a hookah during the interview, drowning in romantic shaped clouds. And all this – slowly, with pauses for a puff, with relaxing music in the background…

You can tell he is a gentleman! One day, a candidate came in for an interview wearing a conservative suit and tie, with a beautifully styled and “artistically” twisted mustache. He answered the questions in an emphatically polite manner and held a pipe similar to Sherlock’s… It seemed that in a moment either Dr. Watson or the hound of the Baskervilles would appear…

Sometimes it was without a suit. When the candidate showed up for the interview… in a terrycloth bathrobe on his naked body, also in an untied bathrobe ☺ Well, it just happened, we are all human beings, not everyone has time to be punctual, not even to get dressed for an interview…

“My wife doesn’t let me do it”. Sometimes candidates successfully pass all stages of the interview, the client company is rubbing their hands with satisfaction, and everything is “in the bag,” as they say. And then, all of a sudden, the candidate refuses the offer. And why? “My wife is against changing jobs and won’t give in to persuasion.” And that’s fine, because you don’t want to spoil the mood of a caring wife over such a “trifle” – a very difficult job, a candidate who has taken a lot of effort, and an even more difficult customer. Family happiness of candidates is above all for a recruiter ☺

We hope we’ve made you feel better with this selection 🙂 If you have something funny to share from your own practice, write to our editor here ev@cleverstaff.net

We will definitely publish it:)