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Career Article: Scruffy, ill-prepared and negative: the Nation’s Jobseekers?

Posted on Thursday, 10 May 2007 01:11PM by Editor

The UK is a nation of flustered interviewees. Job hunters are arriving for interviews across the country late, unprepared and scruffy. Research released today from fish4jobs, one of the UK’s most visited recruitment websites, has highlighted the seven deadly sins candidates are most likely to commit in interviews. It also gives an insight into the most common bugbears that recruiters experience when tackling the momentous and often stressful challenge of hiring new employees. The fish4jobs Seven deadly interview sins: 1. Not doing your homework - Not preparing for the interview or doing any background research on the company 2. Negativity - Criticising and being unprofessional about their current employer 3. Boredom - Chewing gum and showing a lack of enthusiasm 4. Arrogance - Being arrogant, over-confident and pushy 5. Sexism - Not shaking the interviewers hand, especially if they are female 6. Inappropriate dress - Body decorations including piercings, tattoos etc 7. Bad first impressions - Poorly written and designed CVs are a huge turn-off This research, conducted amongst 1,013 recruiters in the UK, reveals the extent to which candidates are not doing themselves justice in interviews. Over three quarters (80%) of those surveyed said candidates with bad breath or unkempt hair blow their chances of selection before even entering the interviewing room and those who arrive late or are unenthusiastic about the role cut their chances even further. Two thirds (60%) cited little things such as having a weak handshake and not enough knowledge about the company as factors that can send CVs crashing to the bottom of the pile. Joe Slavin, CEO of fish4jobs, comments: “Candidates need to make sure they are doing themselves justice when they go to interviews. To do this they need to dress in their best clothes, research the company and show enthusiasm. My top tip for a successful interview would be to research the company and go online and read up on interview techniques.” As well as causing recruiters major headaches, recruitment is also costing companies thousands of pounds in lost working hours. Inefficient recruitment is turning the simple task of finding a new employee into a momentous challenge. At an average of 13 hours and 20 minutes, it is taking almost two full days of dedicated working hours to hire each new recruit; precious time that the majority (57%) of recruiters say they don’t have to spare. The research also reveals almost half (48%) of recruiters are still receiving CVs by post compared to more efficient and savvy methods such as email. Dated recruitment methods such as sending CVs by post prolongs the recruitment process for both parties – meaning the client could miss out on the right candidate. Source: Onrec.com Editor's Note: One of the problems with publishing a story like this is that you never know what kind of job levels we're talking about here. When I used to recruit for Sainsbury's many years ago, all kinds of of weird and wonderful candidates would turn up especially when we were bulk recruiting for new stores. I once interviewed a woman who cracked her knuckles in a very menacing 'Kray Twins' kind of way throughout her entire meeting with me! If we were talking about relatively unskilled level and low pay jobs you might be tempted to think that these issues were simply the norm. Sadly, however, poor behaviour surfaces at many levels and frankly not uniquely on on the side of the interviewee. I have met plenty of employer recruiters and recruitment consultants with 'marshmallow' handshakes, unzipped flies, stained clothing, coffee breath, a tendency to avoid eye contact and talk to the ceiling or to ask fatuous questions that clearly showed that they hadn't actually read my CV. It takes all sorts! In any event, if you would like New Life's practical advice on how to succeed at interviews please click here, on improving your personal impact click here, or to find CV help click here.