I’ve noticed that the response from people to this email, which I blogged about yesterday, has been split into two main areas.
a) Should Gary Chaplin have been fired for sending the email(s)
b) Debate as to whether you would ever be in a similar situation.
Obviously the stereotype of recruiters is that of the type of person who is always slating candidates, bitching about clients, abusing everyone in sight. We see plenty of comments of that nature on the discussion board from disgruntled jobseekers and HR professionals. I can assure you I don’t have rose tinted specs – but I really don’t think it’s fair to tar recruiters with that same brush.
However, I can see how a recruiter could quite easily get cross with a lazy jobseeker emailing his CV, with no covering note, to 4,000 recruiters in one go (and with another recruiter using the opportunity to try and do a spot of headhunting). In those circumstances can you see why he (or she) could have, in a heated moment, sent an email back saying they were both a pair of twonks? Do you find yourself regularly annoyed by the attitude of jobseekers and do you ever want to tell them to brush up their act?
Or, regardless of your frustration levels, would you NEVER even think of responding to a candidate in a negative way.
What do you think? Which camp do you fall into?
Unfortunately this sorry episode has just given more fuel to the recruitment bashing society. We know 2 of the replies from the 4,000 but I would suggest all the rest either simply ignored this mass-mailer or sent a polite, but curt email highlighting the error of his ways.
On a separate point, Gary was attributed to billing £200k via Twitter earlier this year. I congratulated him on this at the time and his response was that it was mostly due to common sense, a trait he seems to have lost!
I got the original email, which wasn’t as extensive as the one as reported, and just saw it as a joke, if a misguided one. I even joked with colleagues that there but for the grace of god – we’ve all said the same thing to lazy bad spelling jobseekers and/or spammers, just not quite so publically.
I feel for the guy, he screwed up, but someone has hung him out to dry big time. Punishment doesn’t fit the crime here.
Dude, I hope you’re ok.
It’s a shame how a few minuets of madness have affected this man’s career for the foreseeable future, but it’s a mistake you can’t afford to make and shouldn’t. Recruitment can be frustrating! But that’s why you can either make it or you can’t, even with all his experience.