There has been a power shift in the job market and the competition to find new talent is becoming harder. Today, we see a surplus of positions opening up and not enough candidates to fill them. This gives candidates a real power advantage and more flexibility in their job selection. And even though more companies are becoming aware of how important the candidate experience is to find and recruit new talent. Some are still stuck in the past. Here are four examples of inexcusable interview mess-ups that will make your candidates walk away.
1. BBC featured a woman who had an ”utterly bizarre” interview
Last year a UK based tech firm was put on blast as a candidate spoke out in social media about her bad interview with the CEO. She claimed that he questioned and ridiculed her taste in music, asked inappropriate questions and then tore apart her resume. And as if that wasn’t enough, he continued to tell her how bad her answers and body language was.
A couple of weeks after the bizarre interview, she was contacted and offered the job. Do you think she accepted the position?
2. When your career opportunities could be compromised, because of your hair!
In 2019, the New York Commission On Human Rights banned discrimination based on hair. Which could sound like an unnecessary law in our modern society. But the reality is that there have been several discrimination cases where candidates have been rejected because of their hairdo. One example was an ivy league educated black woman from South Carolina, who was rejected because the recruiter thought “she did not embody our brand”.
And since hair wasn’t included in the list of protected classes of discrimination, the company got away without any consequences.
3. South Korean job seekers believe their appearance is a competitive advantage
An increasing amount of people are getting plastic surgery to get hired. Because in Korea, it is mandatory to attach a photo to your resume and that is the first thing companies look at. And it is specifically women who are judged harshly on their appearance. Even for regular admin jobs, where your appearance should’t matter, a resume photo is still compulsory. Check out this video to learn more.
4. Testing candidates by messing with their lunch
A controversial American politician, Nicholas Sarwark, has sparked a debate about what we consider to be appropriate interviewing techniques. He suggested that interviewers should take candidates out for lunch and then tell the waiter to deliberately change something in the order to see how the candidate would react. This created a heated discussion on Twitter where people thought it was manipulative and completely wrong to play mind-games with job seekers.
How is Tengai ensuring a fair and objective candidate experience?
Tengai is unbiased by design. This means she doesn’t event notice the candidates’ age, looks, gender or ethnicity. Equally important is that she won’t judge candidates based on their tone of voice or dialect. At Tengai we understand how to enhance the interview experience and our focus is to make objective evaluations, and fair assessments.
Read more about the candidate experience HERE