William Blake, one of the greatest poets in English literary history, once wrote: "a truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent" ...but then he never worked in recruitment. Let's give Blake some credit, though. Every lie begins with a truth told with bad intent, which almost always starts with the words: "Yes, I am interested in the job - please put me forward".
Everybody lies at some point - candidates, clients, recruiters, everybody. They lie for the same reason anybody lies: to control the conversation and keep their options open. Some enjoy it, some don't care, some do it out of fear, and most do it reluctantly for the 'greater good', i.e. money. Below are a selection of the most memorable lies I have ever heard during my short career in recruitment and the stories behind them.
"Sorry I lied about my mother being rushed to hospital"
If you have ever wandered how recruitment consultants can be so cynical and cold-hearted as to question the veracity of such an excuse (sorry, I mean personal emergency), it is because of stories like this: a former colleague of mine was quietly confident he was about to fill a difficult role with a candidate I had found for him, when he received a phone call about 45 minutes before the final interview was due to begin. The candidate sounded quite flustered and informed him that his mother had been rushed to hospital at 5 am with chest pains and it was touch or go - the interview would have to be postponed.
We took him at his word and informed the client only to receive another phone call from him the next day: he had taken a job somewhere else. Indeed, he admitted fabricating the entire story so he could interview for that position instead while keeping our client on the back-burner in case he didn't get it. I had to give him credit for coming clean, but in so doing I officially lost all faith in the human race - just another day in the life of a recruitment consultant.
CAUTION: If you are going to feign such a serious incident, be sure not to 'kill off' the same relative more than once otherwise you'll get the same response one absent-minded staff member received when attributing their absence from work to the death of their mother: "What, again?"
Would you do this if you had just been mugged?
Picture this: you've just left the house to go to an interview when BAM, right on your doorstep, a mugger assaults you and takes everything - your keys , your phone, your wallet. Everything you have on you. What is the first thing you do?
a) go to the local police station and report the crime
b) take solace in the home of a friend or neighbour to recover from your ordeal
or....
c) break into your own home and email your recruitment consultant
This is what another former colleague of mine was led to believe when his candidate emailed him just minutes after supposedly being mugged to say he would not be able to attend his interview which was due to take place the following hour. Interestingly, he never responded to any of the reply emails offering messages of support and a revised date for his interview.
"I can't make it into work today - I've been kidnapped"
The jury's still out on this one - quite possibly literally - so I leave it to you to decide if this is a tragic case of an unfortunate employee being hard done by or the stupidest lie ever told. Here's what happened.
This story, as you can probably tell, is not about a candidate, but a fellow recruiter - well, ex-recruiter now - who we'll call Stanley to protect his (or her) identity. Stanley already had something of a reputation for taking days off without telling anyone before the fateful day of his abduction, while his performance at work had recently come under scrutiny from his manager who was less than impressed.
Nevertheless, nothing had prepared his team for receiving a phone call on a cold Monday morning from a diverted number, informing them that Stanley would not be available for work because he had been kidnapped. Least of all did they expect the person placing the call to be none other than Stanley himself. They immediately followed up this harrowing news by contacting his mother, who corroborated the story, explaining that he had indeed been 'taken' from his very own doorstep by his assailant to an undisclosed location. Miraculously, it transpired, Stanley had somehow escaped and evidently found a way to call both his mother and his manager to let them know what had happened.
The manager, still inclined to give Stanley the benefit of the doubt, tried on several occasions to call him back on his mobile to check if he was OK and ask when he would be able to return to work. Each time, the call went unanswered, only to be shortly returned via the same diverted number, by Stanley, who explained that he had gone to the police station to report the incident and submit a statement.
The plot thickened when one of his colleagues revealed that Stanley had recently been complaining that he could not attend a business meeting in Germany (he ran his own thing on the side) that very Monday because he had already used up all of his holidays. The colleague continued that not long before that, Stanley had told him about a friend of his who had managed to score a free day off work by pretending he had been kidnapped. The story was so serious that no-one dared question it, thereby making it the perfect excuse - take that, William Blake! I imagine, though, that if Stanley had consulted his friend before trying out this tactic himself, he most likely would have advised him not to brag about it at work to the very same people he planned to use it on less than a week later.
But then, who am I to judge?
Hugs :)
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