Rejecting People You Interview
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Obviously, you aren’t going to hire everyone you interview. You aren’t even going to hire 30% of them or 5% of them.
But they all talk.
They tell stories to others about mistreatment particularly when that occurs during later-stage interview processes.
You send messages to people when they’re 15 minutes late to an interview that you’ve already rescheduled twice and need to be reminded of.
You tell the potential hire that they were misaligned for the role even though they presented down to the exact bullet points everything the hiring manager asked for. This indicates malpractice.
When you ask this managerial candidate to meet with his potential staff and tell him that they were concerned about his management style because he asked them questions about working there, you are sending a signal (four questions of three people over 2.5 hours. How abusive! Did you expect s/he to just nod and say, “Wow’ to everything and not have their questions answered).
You could’ve just told him the truth that you have a preferred candidate and that he was the fallback position. You could’ve told them that despite the accolades communicated by the founders directly to the candidate, he was never under serious consideration.
Instead, you have to rationalize your decision and are cruel.
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If I’m this job hunter, well, I’m not going to say it. I’ll just say that the treatment at the time of rejection was wrong.
Be honest with people.
You can simply say I preferred someone else.
You can say there is someone I worked with previously that I wanted to hire.
You can say things other than make up excuses.
By the way, this is a real story of how someone was rejected after six interviews.
In my opinion, it’s absolutely awful and unnecessary and reflects the immaturity of the manager.
And you wonder why stories get out about particular organizations.
It reminds me of an episode years ago when someone I was representing for position at a firm was turned down for the job after taking a polygraph exam (they were legal then). HR told him that the hiring manager rejected him. The hiring manager was told that he accepted another offer. I learned he was asked an illegal question on the polygraph.
After suggesting that you contact an attorney and indicating that I would testify if necessary, the attorney contacted the firm and asked them for their explanation given what I told him.
Amazingly, he received an offer less than 24 hours later, joined have a long and successful career with the firm.
There is no reason for stunts.
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2019, 2023
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. He is hired to provide No BS Career Advice globally. That can involve job search, hiring staff, management, leadership, career transition and advice about resolving workplace issues. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2500 episodes.
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