Too Woo in an Interview

Warren & Feathers are joined by special guest and Fraternity Brother Duane
We discuss recruiting stories

• Too Woo in an Interview
• Pink Fuzzy Bedroom Slippers
• Prom Dresses
• Screening Recruiting Calls
• Can't do a virtual interview, Can't do an in person interview

Transcript

Warren 0:00

Hehehehe.

Announcer 0:02

Had you actually read the email, you would know that the podcast you are about to listen to could contain explicit language and offensive content. These HR experts' views are not representative of their past, present, or future employers. If you've ever heard, my manager is unfair to me, I need you to reset my HR portal password. Or get a red up my employee for crying too much. Welcome to our portal. Welcome to HR.

Warren 0:46

Welcome to J2DR podcast by 3D HR professionals who want to help us take you through the workday by saying all the things you're thinking but say them out loud. I'm Warren. This is Feathers.

Duane 0:57

And I'm Dwayne.

Warren 0:59

All right, we have a special, special guest with us. We had to bring in dragging and kicking Dwayne. He is someone that we've well, I haven't known forever, but I feel like I have. But Feathers has known him forever as well. He's another fraternity brother of ours. Feathers smashed in between us. I I left before Dwayne arrived, and Feathers was still there. But Dwayne has recently made a transition into HR. So you're an idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Feathers 1:29

I told you the night we had drinks. I'm like, I'm happy for you. I'm happy for you, but you're an idiot.

Warren 1:37

So would you say that Feathers and I inspired you to join HR?

Feathers 1:41

Of course. Why not?

Warren 1:44

It's fun.

Feathers 1:46

The beers taste so much better in HR because it's like, oh, I fucking need this. Yeah. I earned this.

Duane 1:54

Yeah.

Warren 1:55

So yeah, we we're gonna have a shorty episode today, but before we get started, just remind you to please support us. You can support us financially on Patreon or through our host, Buzz Sprout. You can be an original jaded HR rock star like Hallie. You can leave us a review, and it's been quite a while since we've had a review. You can tell a friend and you can contribute a story, or you can come in on, you can come on the air with us and tell us your story like Dwayne is. So we went out to dinner last week and uh you had some some really cool stories as you're getting into the recruiting world. So tell well, first tell us a little anything you're willing to share about yourself, and then we will jump into your stories.

Duane 2:37

Just uh pretty much uh certified geek. I like to collect everything. I like movies, reading, video games, you know, just the typical nothing really extraordinary. I'm too old for all that new stuff now.

Warren 2:52

Well, except for extraordinary, how many Funko Pops are in your collection?

Duane 2:56

I don't know, but I lost count of after about a hundred or so.

Feathers 3:02

Um what's a Funko Pop?

Duane 3:05

Oh gosh. I'll have to show you.

Feathers 3:08

I will take I will take your word for it, whatever it is. Hey, great job for collecting them.

Duane 3:13

You're like these little thing. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Feathers 3:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Warren 3:19

Okay. Uh yeah. So that's what we were talking about right before we got on air Funko Pops and and fun things like that. So no, really cool. Great to have you on. But like I said, you you had some incredible stories, and I I had to have you come on. So why don't you why don't you kick us off with one of your recruiting nightmare stories, and then maybe Feathers and I will join in with our own nightmare recruiting story.

Duane 3:45

No problem. So we'll start off with I was doing an interview, actually in-person interview, which is kind of new for or you know, trying to start up again because before everything was virtual. So now we're doing in-person interviews again. So I had an in-person interview with this girl. I read her resume, and I don't want to go into too much detail about what I want to do because it's kind of uh, you know, I don't want to give too much away. But so she had reasonable, you know, she had a reasonable background. Her work history was okay with what we needed. She actually worked for one of our competitors. So I thought, okay, yeah, I'll bring her in for an interview and just see how things are going. So phone conversation went well. We, you know, decided to meet up for a week later. And when I get to work that day, when I'm supposed to interview with her, it's like eight o'clock when I arrive. And there's already a message on my phone. So I listened to the message. She had to cancel. She wanted to reschedule for later, which is not bad. She let me know it enough time. So I was like, okay, that's fine. She'll be real professional about it, really, you know, sorry about it. So it was okay, it's all good. These things happen. So we ended up rescheduling for the next day. And so the next day comes up and everything's good. And she shows up. She's actually early, so which is the, you know, which is one plus. So they show up early. And go and meet her. She was professionally dressed. We decided to go ahead and go to the conference room to get the interview started. And again, yet she's apologizing profusely about how she had to reschedule. And I'm like, okay, these things happen. I totally understand. She goes into, I mean, I did not ask, and all of a sudden, she goes into telling me about how Mercury is in retrograde, something about Jupiter here and Mars there, and all of this, and her signs, and how everything, the numbers of the day we were supposed to meet the day before added up to seven, and that was not a good number for her. And so she had to reschedule the interview to a better day. So I was just like, uh-huh. Yeah, all right. Okay, I get you. And trying to call, get it together. And because you know, me, of course. Me, of course, I'm like, I don't want to do so. She keeps going on, she's apologizing, and she's telling me more about her family and her parents' sign and all this thing, how they plan to have her so that she can be born under this sign, so that she can have this great life and everything works out for her, but she says sometimes it just doesn't, and she just wanted to reschedule the interview with me on a different day. So eventually I can pry myself in there because you know when people go on and on, you have to wait for that single breath, and then you have to jump in and then try to ask a question. I know we've all talked to you, Dwayne. Well, we had to get it. So I got in there with that one little break, and so I asked her, I was like, well, tell me about your last position. She proceeds to tell me that it was full of uh Capricorns, that everybody worked there was Capricorns, and it was a very, very bad environment for her, and that she wanted to, you know, buy everybody crystals and just kind of leave them on their desk and everything like that. And she didn't end up doing it, and she just ended up leaving. So I'm trying to just say, well, she's going on and on about this. For we're going into 15 minutes here, and I'm just losing control of all, if I I've already lost control, actually. So I do kind of get her in kind of geared into some stuff and ask her a couple of questions, and you couldn't really tell anything about her experience. She had a good experience, but she had a little jumpy experience where she moved around from job to job, and now I can see why. So at the end of the interview, I told her thank you. It was nice meeting her. She was going, you know, it was a good interview for her. She said that. She said, This is a good interview. I feel like I connected with you, and it went well. She said, I could tell we'll work great together because you're an Aries, which I'm not. But I said, Oh, well, I'm glad you enjoyed the interview, and uh I didn't give her any determination on what it was like. And she ended up leaving, and it was just one of the worst interviews. I was like, what just happened here?

Feathers 8:10

My initial response would be, here you go. I'm a Gemini, I'm a split personality. There's one part of my personality that doesn't like you, it's time to go.

Duane 8:22

The evil twin doesn't like you. Yeah, see, that's why I needed you there. It was one of those things that when it happens, you're just like, wait a minute. What? And needless to say, it well, I guess it wasn't a good day. Maybe she should have tried on the day before. Yeah.

Warren 8:43

And you know, I think this whole astrology numerology thing is making a comeback. Uh, with people I hear more and more people talking about it and uh saying things like that. I'm just like, oh gosh. Uh uh I I don't know. Even my own daughter talks about astrology. I I just I can I can say rude things back to her, but I can't.

Duane 9:07

Uh I know, right. When you got to be professional, you get paid for you, just can't say, hey, get out of here. You know.

Warren 9:14

Time to beat street there. Yeah. But anyways, yeah. Right. Well I I have one one of my I'll give you two horror interview horror stories. They came both came from the same place. I I worked in a temp agency, and horror story number one, now I might break them up here, not horror story, just what are you thinking, stories? Lady comes in for once a temp job that we had advertised, but she's dressed professionally, but she's wearing like some fuzzy pink bedroom slippers rather than rather than shoes. And I so bad wanted to ask, but I didn't want to ask because I didn't want to hear the reason why. But the whole time, all I'm thinking about are these bright pink, fuzzy. You know, if she'd said, Oh, you know, I just had an ingrown toenail removed, and I have to wear, you know, my other shoes compress my toe. I'm sorry. You know, if you'd said something like that, okay. But the it was just in my mind the entire time, fuzzy pink slippers. And uh I have the magic.

Feathers 10:17

Warren's like I have the matching pair at home.

Warren 10:19

Like I have the pink matching robe, baby. Uh I need those slippers.

Duane 10:26

And and they actually attach to my pink bunny outfit with the EV from Christmas.

Warren 10:34

The Christmas story bunny outfit.

Duane 10:36

With the Christmas story.

Warren 10:37

Yeah, I uh no, I that that was one thing I just couldn't get out of my I was so distracted thinking about slip those slippers the whole time. But you know, when she was sitting behind the desk in the interview, I couldn't tell, but I was still thinking about these bright pink, fuzzy slippers. So you you've gotta have you've worked some great industries, feathers. What what sort of horror interesting recruiting or interview situations have you been in?

Feathers 11:07

I they're more funny than they are like tragic, in the sense of I had I had a f I had a female show up for an interview for the warehouse job and she showed up in her prom dress. I mean, like just dressed to the nines and with like high heels and everything, and she was a very nice, bright young lady, and I'm still trying to figure out nine o'clock in the morning, like that's the option you had for a warehouse job. I mean, I appreciated you dressing up. I shrugged my shoulders going, really? But I couldn't take I couldn't take her out in the warehouse floor because a couple of reasons. We know the cat calls that would have happened. I was about to say cat calls. Cat calls would happen, and second of all, she had to like shoot high heels on. Like, I'm like, well, let me show you a picture from the computer of what our warehouse looks like. I'll pull the video cameras and I can't take you out on the floor. I don't remember if I hired her, I didn't hire her, but that I just that would always stuck out in my head. But I had an opportunity to interview this one gentleman. Oh, yeah, is that mine? No, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. I had an opportunity to interview this one gentleman. He was probably in his 50s. Um, he went on this long speech. Like he's like, Man, I love to work. I get up in the morning, I'm excited to go to work. I'm excited to get my coffee, I'm excited to get that day going, we're gonna do some working, we're gonna pack some boxes. I mean, he this went on for a good five minutes, and he was like, I love your company, I love what you guys do here. And he stops, looks at me dead face, deadpan the face, and goes, Oh, wait a minute, what do you guys do here? A for enthusiasm. I mean, I was excited. I brought him on as a temp.

Duane 12:57

What do you guys do here? Two really simple one bad interviews for me in my last position. When you you couldn't be promoted. So if you were doing a part-time job and you wanted to do the same job full-time, you still had to apply for that position and interview for it. So I interviewed a part-timer, and his interview was so bad, I thought to myself, in mid-interview, I was like, How do you you how do you work here? How do you still work here? Because he was hired before I was manager. So I was like, How are you even working here? You can't even answer questions of stuff you're supposed to already be doing. And I had one, this girl, she was so bad. I mean, she did not know any, not know the answers, but she actually was so wrong and she kept talking. She actually talked herself into the right answer. So I had to give her credit for that. I was like, you're so bad talking yourself into the right answer. Yeah.

Feathers 13:50

Wow.

Duane 13:52

Yeah.

Feathers 13:53

I mean, do you do you give her like style points for eventually getting that?

Duane 13:57

I did. I did she didn't get the position, but I was like, I give her credit. She actually talked herself into the you know into the right answer for a couple of these questions.

Warren 14:08

Yeah, inter interviewing is is so much fun. Now, now Dwayne, you had the the second story you were told that I wanted to share.

Duane 14:17

All right. This one is okay. So like I said, we're doing in-person interviews now, but now we're also still doing virtual interviews. And I actually recruit for the northern part of the state for this certain position. So this one guy applied for the position. I was like, okay, I'll do a phone screen, see how we'll see where he's at, see what's going on. So give him a call and pick up the phone. He did sound a little, for lack of a better term, gruff. Like, uh, I just can't really. It was just he was really gruff. Okay. So um, I'm I'm pre-screening him. I said, well, tell me about your experience. He added, I have his resume. And I was like, Yeah, I do have your resume, but I kind of like want to hear it from you, what you do, you know, because you're not putting everything on your resume. So I eventually got him to go into it. And so I said, Okay, well, finally, uh, when will you be available to do a virtual interview with me? He said, a virtual interview. I was like, Yeah. He's like, I I can't do a virtual interview, I don't have any equipment. Um, okay. Uh the your phone, do you have a computer with a, you know, a webcam, microphone? No, I don't I don't have that. What about your phone? Does it have a camera, webcam? Nope, I can't do that. I can't do any virtual interviews. I can only do in-person interviews. I can come and do an in-person interview with you. Where are you at? Sir, I'm on the southern part of the state, three hours away from you. So he was like, I'm not coming that far down. No. And I was like, okay. I was like, let me see what I can do. And I can tell this is just about to go bad. So I was like, let me do it. I see what I can do. I'll give you a call back. So I talked to my manager, I told him, okay, this guy I want to interview for. Uh, he can't do any kind of virtual interview. He can only do in-person interviews or phone interviews. So she said, Well, why don't we get him set up at our regional office in the north? Sure, not a problem. So I called him back and she said, Well, you can have him interview with the staff there, or you can have him, the staff there can give, show him to the conference room and get him set up to interview with you here. I said, Okay, that'll work. So I called him back. And I'm telling them, so okay, well, here's what we can do for you. We can let you send you to the regional office, you can interview there, uh, you can interview with one of the girls there, or you can they can set you up and you can conference with me here. So you don't have to come here. Okay, where's the regional office? Okay, I told them the city. It's uh about maybe 45 minutes away from and he was like, Oh, there? I can't go there. Garrison's too high, I can't go there. I'm just gonna only do uh virtual interviews. Okay, telephone interviews. And so that's when I kind of you could probably he could probably tell the switch in my voice. Cause I'm like, you can't even do uh an in-person interview now. No, I'm only doing virtual telephone interviews. That's it, telephone interviews. And so, all right, and I say, can we try to schedule asked this and hung up? And mind me, some people will get pissed off about that, but my first response was, well, you're not gonna get a job with that kind of attitude. And so I kind of made note and kind of like pushed him away. And something should have warned me, Tim. This this is where uh uh the second part of the story is something should have warned me about him because when he sent his uh application packet, he included everything, including his resume, his driver's license, and his social security card, a copy of all of that. And I just like found that to be completely odd. And so for this type of position in the northern part of our state, that you can't get hired in that position without going through me. So a few weeks later, he applied to another one of our locations in northern, in that northern part of our state. And I was just like, hmm, I could call him up and we can go through this whole song and dance again. Or I could just kind of like, you know, push him to the side and go ahead and get them, you know, take them out of consideration. And I wanted to be, you know, just kind of to tease them and kind of like call him up and say, hey, you want to do another interview? Blah, blah. But I decided no, I'll just leave to the and just take him out of consideration. So and that's the other part of the story.

Warren 18:24

No, that you sometimes when you get people like that, you want to, you know, have a little fun with them, jerk them around a little, but we've got to be remaining professional and we gotta do do whatever.

Duane 18:35

That is no thing. I mean, uh I was taken by complete shock, and he's like, F this, and hung up on the phone. How do you go from I can't do, I can't do virtual, I can only do in person or over the phone, and then you can't even do in person. You just want to do over the phone. You want me to blind hire you.

Warren 18:55

What does he have one of those Nokia brick phones from like the early 90s that don't have a camera or anything like that on it that he can't just set up his phone?

Duane 19:05

I don't know. I don't I couldn't tell you. I haven't talked to him since before, but it was just a very odd.

Warren 19:12

Once upon a time, we actually set someone up to go to a library for a virtual interview. And we called the library ahead of time and said, Can we make sure a computer is available with the cam that's in a private area? And they, oh yeah, yeah, we do this all the time. And we set that person up. This was before COVID, and person hadn't relocated here yet, and we wanted to meet with them, so we did a a virtual, but they their computer was broken. I forget whatever the story was that they couldn't do it, but there's always something. I think they ended up hiring that person, but yeah, always, always something.

Duane 19:45

This guy was not gonna hire, especially for the position. But for this type of position, I don't expect anyone to I mean, to be that kind of cranky and that's not caring at all. He was just kind of cranky and mean and this just doesn't work. How are you how did you ever get employed? Yeah, I think it was ex-military too. So, but how do you ever get employed?

Warren 20:08

Oh, now that you're in the recruiting world, I'm sure we'll get a lot more fun stories out of you.

Duane 20:14

There's a lot.

Warren 20:17

Especially in the field you work in. Uh I'm I'm somewhat familiar with it, and I know it it it produces a lot of stories.

Duane 20:25

So um there is a lot. Yes. Between me and the whole team, we always, you know, sharing stories about what happened to us and you know, how we got through it, or we always laughing about it and just sharing to make each other's day better.

Warren 20:41

Oh, and that's the other thing about your your love is being in HR is or in recruiting, sharing the stories with other HR people. And it's just like you, you that person did what? They did they said what? You know, uh just people are just always surprising. They never let you down, even when they're letting you down, they're not letting you down.

Duane 21:00

I've always said, you know, they nothing's new to me. No matter what happened, nothing's new. This is I've heard it all, nothing's new, but then they always find something new.

Warren 21:10

Absolutely.

Feathers 21:12

Always make sure you take a note of what their email address is. That's always my favorite. When I have like Big Bootylicious69, hotmail.com. Yeah. I had one that was like highly educated at something.com, and then I look at the resume and I'm like, oh, nice spelling. That's not how you spell.

Warren 21:32

I I remember I had whack ass white girl at whatever uh uh applied to to me once at a professional position. Whack ass white girl. Like, oh geez.

Duane 21:45

Oh did they miss it?

Feathers 21:49

This is this is the Daddy Matt calling. I'm calling for the whack ass white girl. Daddy Matt calling the whack ass white gallery.

Warren 22:00

I just they don't think. They really really don't think.

Duane 22:04

No, they don't. They don't think.

Feathers 22:06

My my other favorite will always be like when you're doing initial phone screens and you call somebody. Like, hey, can I speak to Mr. So and so? Who is this? What you want? Why are you calling me? This is Mr. from this company. You called by your application. Oh, yes, sir. Thank you so much for calling today. So excited. I've been looking forward to this call. Cracks me up. Of course you have. Quickly the demeanor changes. No, I'm not your parole officer. No, I'm not trying to collect money. It's not your Visa card.

Duane 22:39

And they always like the phone, the phone screeners who you leave a message and 10 seconds later they call you back. I get that all day long. It's just like you're screening your call. Who are you hiding from? You're hiding from somebody.

Feathers 22:54

Or why do they call back like nine times in a row? I didn't answer the first nine times. Stop calling me.

Warren 23:04

Yeah, that's something that I still am not used to. People screening their calls out the way they do. I'm not hands-on involved in recruiting as much anymore, but that that is something that would irritate me. And then or they would just blindly call back. I leave a voicemail. Nobody listens to their voicemail anymore. Oh, someone from this number called me. It's like the 1980s again when someone had a page or oh, I got a page from this number. Oh, yeah. That's basically what they're using it as. Yeah. Yeah. That bothers me. Or when I get to someone's voicemail, their voicemail is full.

Duane 23:38

And yeah, or it's not an ID. Or an ID.

Warren 23:43

We now have a program that allows our recruiter to text people from their office number so they don't have to use their personal text number. So that's really cool. She takes advantage of that. And I actually use our texting system occasionally. It's good. And you know, I I just don't think as a recruiter, you should be giving out your personal cell phone so you can send out a uh a text message. As I don't want them calling me Saturday night at you know whatever, and I'm having a good old time and interrupting.

Duane 24:13

So sometimes when I work from home on one of the days, I might make a call because I really need to talk to someone. And but when I leave a message, I always leave my office number, which is tied to my cell phone number, but then they'll call my office. And then they'll call the cell phone number and I don't pick up on the cell phone. It's like, well yeah. I didn't pick up on my phone, I was gonna pick up my cell phone. And sometimes somebody will text me and I don't text back. I'm just I told you how to contact me. Call me by my office phone.

Warren 24:39

Yeah, yeah. So well, this is a little longer for a shorty episode. I'm probably not gonna call it a shorty episode after all. But Dwayne, thanks for coming aboard. This is our 99th episode. So next week will be the big 100 for us, and then uh two weeks after that is our beginning of season four. So we're we're just cruising right on along. So once again, support us of any of the ways. Look at our show notes, probably. So how to support us. There we go. I can say it that way. Since it's a long one, I'm gonna go ahead and put the intro and outro music. The intro music is the Devil the Devil by the underscore orchestra, and the voice artist is Andrew Kolpa, who does our disclaimer. So, best practice. If you have an awesome recruiting story, share it with us. Come on board with us, tell us your awesome story, HR recruiting. We'll get it out there. So, as always, I'm Warren.

Duane 25:39

This is Feathers, and this is the winner.

Warren 25:42

And and we're here helping you survive HR one what the fuck moment at a time.