It goes without saying that a resume and an interview often say little about a candidate.
Sure, it does foolproof the system to some extent. After all, a recruiter can see how much effort the applicant is putting into getting the job, and they can also identify some potential red flags this way.
But it’s not until this person is hired and already doing their job that you can truly see how well they fit the role. Which is frustrating, but it is what it is.
So, some recruiters take a different, more laissez-faire approach to things. “Yeah, sure, that’s a red flag, but maybe it isn’t?” [Gestures in Jedi]. And then it comes back to bite them on the rump.
Folks on Reddit have been sharing such stories—recruiters, hiring managers, as well as coworkers and friends thereof shared how much trouble ignoring or missing a red flag has cost them in this thread.
Scroll down to see the best of the best responses from the viral Reddit thread, and while you’re at it, smack that upvote button, share stories if you have any, or just tell us a work joke so we could all have a laugh in the comment section below!
More Info: Reddit
#1 Murder She Wrote
Ran a grooming shop with my ex-wife. We hired this lady who seemed a little high-strung (tweaky, actually), but we needed the help. Some customers swore that they recognized her from a while back at another shop, but she denied ever working there, and seemed oddly defensive about it.
One night, we found reviews on our Yelp page from one of her neighbors who she was fighting with. The neighbor specifically called her out in the reviews and spilled about how she was responsible for the death of a customer’s dog: she walked away from the table for a break, the dog fell with the harness around it’s neck and hung. We fired her immediately for lying to us and bringing her drama to our business.
Image credits: rick_blatchman
#2 Nepotism At Its Finest
“He has family in upper management”.
Laziest person I’ve ever hired. His dad was an exec.
Image credits: IAMENKIDU
#3 You Expect Me To Work With Women?!
Not a hiring manager, but I recently worked under a supervisor who had been out of the industry for several years but was trying to make a move back in. During his interviews, he apparently directed his answers only to the men in the room, even if the question was asked by a woman. They hired him anyway, and once he started, he refused to work with the women on the team – even though they knew more of the industry, since it had changed quite a bit since this guy had left. Thankfully he was let go about a year after he was hired.
Image credits: LovelyOtherDino
#4 Oh, My! Look At The Time, It’s Late O’clock!
I actually hired someone who was late for the interview. Her apology was totally reasonable and I looked past it because she seemed like a good fit. A few weeks into the job it came out that she didn’t know what time zone we were in. That’s not the reason she was late, but it did turn out that her understanding of time and clocks was insufficient for a job where scheduling things across time zone was a primary responsibility.
Image credits: TheSource88
#5 When Your Mom Does The Whole Job Search For You, And I Do Mean All Of It
We were swamped. I needed bodies and I needed them quickly. At the time I was mostly in need of FOH engineers. Most of my hires are by referral, but I got a cold email from a girl with a resume. It seemed too good to be true. Degree from a music school, history of engineering and design. Musical background. I didn’t even check references. We had a couple good emails back and forth, and she seemed clever enough. I told her we’d hire her, and to come into the office and fill out paperwork.
The girl who shows up is incredibly timid. This isn’t unusual for me? I’m a pretty huge, intimidating white guy. I look like someone who’s going to pull out a confederate flag and a tiki torch. I’m not, but people often feel uncomfortable when meeting me for the first time. So I give her the benefit of the doubt. We make awkward small talk. Real awkward. She fills out her paperwork, and leaves.
So her first day comes. I pair her with one of my assistants. My assistant used to work for a theatre where part of her job was doing community outreach. Backstage tours for kids, elderly, and special ed classes. She was real good at it, so she’s on the job for ten minutes with the new girl before she comes up and tells me that the engineer I hired was a barely functioning autistic girl. I instantly felt stupid, but I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I asked her to stay close to her, do her best, and I’d pick up the slack when I could. My assistant became the new girls best friend in the next hour, and found out that the whole thing was her mom. Her mom wanted her to have a normal job, so she made her daughter a fake resume, and corresponded with me by email, while doing really stellar research on the field to appear knowledgeable.
Once we knew all this, we moved the new girl out of the position we had picked her up for. She worked on our general labor crew for awhile, and did really well, till she eventually ghosted us.
Image credits: TapewormNinja
#6 “So, What’s The Fastest Anyone’s Been Promoted Here?”
Not a hiring manager but everytime someone brought up in an interview “what’s the fastest anyones been promoted here? I want to break that record!” They end up being duds
Image credits: fffw001
#7 But I’m Your Elder!
Not a hiring manager but a dev. teamlead. Had to hire new people for the team. This guy came along with a ton of experience, pretty much spot on, there were some differences in code styles but that was that. Only thing was, the guy was around 15 years older than me and had 10 years of experience more. I specifically asked him how he would be around someone much younger maybe making decisions that he might not like (I’m all up for democracy in projects, but sometimes there is more at play then specifics, as a dev I know what those are like). He told me he was and that we could just talk about it when it came up. Turned out I was arguing over every little thing in a ‘his way or the highway’ kind of deal. Should have seen that one coming in hindsight
Image credits: enplanedrole
#8 There’s No Point In Being Unsatisfied If You Can’t Complain To Others About It
Not a hiring manager, but was evaluating applications for a position. One candidate gave some very thoughtful, insightful criticisms of his current workplace. We appreciated his candor, and the content of the critiques were perceptive.
When we hired him, we realized that while he spoke well and appeared intelligent, all he could is criticize everything… even when his criticisms made no sense. We started to see him complaining about the same things with us that he complained about in his letter, even things that were objectively false (like our vacation policy being use-it-or-lose-it, which it literally wasn’t).
Moral: a good candidate will find ways to frame criticisms in a positive, forward-looking way in a cover letter, not complain about their current employer.
Image credits: Moltrire
#9 Oh, Yeah! No Problems Here, Ever, Trust Me, I’m A Master
I used to do hiring for a small store and the biggest red flags were “too good to be true.” Candidates who claimed they loved the public, never had any problems with coworkers, and were never late or absent invariably caused the biggest problems because they were lying through their teeth.
Image credits: turingtested
#10 I Don’t Understand This, So I’ll Change It So Nobody Else Would Either
Candidate for supervisor position was asked about a time when they had trouble completing a task (I hate corporate interviews!). Candidate mentions something they struggled with but the answer was that they found a way of completing the task that worked for them and did that going forward.
So we kind of take that to be a big positive for thinking outside the box and being able to solve problems independently using the tools available to them. Now this was a preferred candidate so we didn’t do a lot of deep digging questions around the standard questions we were required to ask by corporate.
Fast-forward and Candidate is now Supervisor. We have a team of about 12. There is an opening checklist and a closing checklist. Supervisor struggles with learning tasks on checklist. No other team member has issue with tasks on checklist as it literally writes out what buttons you need to press. Supervisor concludes that checklist is poorly done since they cannot understand it. Proceeds to make changes to checklist master document to the way they feel it should be done and chaos ensues.
Now we have Supervisor that understands checklist, about 3-4 that just press the buttons, and the rest of the team is now lost. On top of this, Manager checklists have tasks that can only be done once staff has done their tasks. As a result of some of these tasks being removed from the checklist, manager tasks are no longer being done on time and everything is thrown off.
When coached on this incident, Supervisor did not ask trainer, teammate, or manager about how to understand the checklist and just made changes without communicating this to rest of the team. We did thank Supervisor for being proactive but then worked as a team to make any necessary changes but used the original as a template. We also did some extra coaching on what they didn’t understand. It took a few weeks to get everything back on track though and our scores took a hit as a result.
Supervisor was up for Manager position at another location. Supervisor puts on their resume “revamped morning/evening checklists for improved team performance.” Couldn’t help but chuckle at that one.
Image credits: BadLuckBaskin
#11 I Hate Everything
Company hired an arrogant individual who had issues everywhere he worked both with co workers, product and policies, supervisors, and customers. When I brought the issues up with him he seemed ok and when I left he called upper management crying . He said I had offended him and was a racist. This was relayed to me and we had a meeting with upper management. I begged my manager to get HR involved and either look at me and see if I was racist or if he was full of it. They did not get HR involved and told me to try my best to train him up. I gave it a try and failed to get any buy in or progress. I ended up leaving the company via headhunter for greener pastures and after I left they transferred him to another location because they put a more inexperienced person then myself. He is now at another location doing the same thing. I have a friend with the old company and that dud of a worker has called 4 different people racist who have brought up his performance. I don’t know how folks like that keep jobs. Disruptive and zero effort in any tasks. The hiring manager apologized to me when I was leaving.
Image credits: WpgPtPro
#12 Reading The Signs Perfectly
Hired a guy because he reminded me of my good friend who was addicted to oxy contin. Turned out the guy was addicted to oxy contin.
Image credits: TheKingOfNeverLose
#13 So You’re Saying You’re The Bestest?
People who speak in superlatives rather than answering questions directly.
Turns out the guy while super excited to work for me really didn’t understand the role. I ended up firing him the last day of his 90-day probation period despite spending an enormous amount of time with him trying to get him right.
Image credits: anon
#14 “The Number Of People That My Boss Says Are ‘Great’ That End Up Being Absolutely Trash Is Staggering”
My boss hires and I kinda get to give input during their first trial shift which is almost always 2 hours with me. The number of people that my boss say are ‘great’ that end up being absolutely trash is staggering. My boss has no clue how to read people and even a complete moron is considered great for her.
I suppose that’s why we have been trying to fill our main administrative position for 5 months now and have gone through 20+ hires that quit fast or ghost us.
One that stands out is an old lady that didnt have any experience in the field. She couldn’t operate a computer which is central to.the job!
Image credits: Flincher14
#15 Avoiding The Past At All Cost
Applicant wasn’t looking for this exact position, but rather was running away from her previous career. Was an interesting person with lot of potential, though.
Didn’t fit in, was dissatisfied with everything and two years later left.
Image credits: anon
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