Firstly, excuse my blog title; I realise that most of these aren’t funny for a jobseeker – however, when you scroll down to the survey findings you probably can’t help but snigger at what some recruiters get up to!
A new study from CV-Library shows, rather unsurprisingly to me I’m afraid, that the majority of UK job hunters have witnessed unprofessional interviewer mistakes during the application process.
I’m impressed with their sample size on this one as they conducted research of over 2,200 UK professionals to uncover the most bizarre interviewer behaviour from the perspective of a job hunter. The findings showed:
- Over a third (37%) of interviewers haven’t read the candidate CV
- 41.1% of interviewers have shown up to an interview late
- Candidates have been asked inappropriate and discriminatory questions – 15% admit to being asked their age, and 8.5% have been asked about their family plans (we did a quiz around How We Discriminate in Interview a while back and to be honest I’m surprised their percentages aren’t higher)
- 2.3% have had an interviewer pass wind
- 1.5% witnessed their interviewer act drunk
- 1.1% actually had an interviewer fall asleep during the meeting!
This article of 6 Dumb Things Interviewers Do backs up CV-Library’s findings. The thing that I dislike the most is interviewers who keep jobseekers waiting; nothing says “I’m more important than you” than this.
Luckily for businesses, candidates can be forgiving even when an interview has gone awry. The survey showed that while 91.8% of candidates think it’s unprofessional for an interviewer to be unprepared, the majority are still willing to consider accepting a job following interviewer mistakes:
- 64.8% would consider working for an interviewer that hadn’t fully prepared for an interview
- After a bad interview, 35.6% of candidates were later offered the job and a further 55.5% of those who were offered jobs went on to accept the position
Finally if you want to hear about the extreme end of the scale check out World’s 8 Worst Job Interviewers which has a pretty unique “topless” interviewer situation in there. Keep your clothes on guys and please try and turn up, sober, and on time!
