There are a lot of ways to tell when you’ve got the wrong candidate in front of you ó when presenting that candidate would be a quick step to career suicide. Some are blatantly the wrong choice at first glance. Others will sneak through all the way up to the offer or even a few months into being on the job. Telltale signs of the malady they carry will pop up like daisies in a field. Unfortunately, you’ll just keep overlooking them while telling yourself it was just a slip, an aberration, and you should pay no attention to it. But red flags go up for a reason. Whether you like it or not, you need to pay attention to those red flags. Here are a few worth talking about:
No, these telltale signs were not manufactured. They are a compilation of situations that have arisen in my own experience during the past five years in all types of environments. The temptation to add comments after each was great. But the telltale signs pretty much speak for themselves. A battery of tests to expose this person aren’t necessary. They openly walk about in the light of day as did the emperor without clothes of Andersen’s creation. Their resume isn’t going to disclose these propensities until the actual person shows up and begins to speak. So filtering with some type of complex screening software isn’t going to help. Unless it is also copied from someone else’s work, the cover letter may bear some hints of what to expect. The chances of this are quite remote. The candidate just keeps going through life with this gun in their pocket that’s squarely aimed at their right or left foot. Now the next thing to consider is what to do about a candidate with any of these traits. It’s a huge risk to hire them for any position of responsibility. Training is definitely in order, but it’s possible this kind of candidate will cost the company huge sums in training and damage costs. The unfortunate matter is, as a recruiter, you have no duty to this person if they are not part of your company. Do you, however, have a duty to your business environment to offer some sort of counseling so that this candidate at least leaves your presence slightly changed for the better?