7 Recruiter Horror Stories That Will Give You the Chills

Most recruiters have had some interesting “horror” stories up their sleeves when it comes to the hiring process. As if sifting through tons of resumes, scheduling interviews and stressing about finding quality hires isn’t scary enough, there will still be times that you have to sit through an interview with pretty peculiar candidates. Though most job seekers may think working with recruiters can be scary, a lot of recruiters know the feeling can be mutual. In the spirit of the holiday, we’ve compiled a list of real recruiter horror stories across the internet. Maybe you’ll get a good laugh if some of these mirror your own, or maybe get some “chills” from these scary tales.

1. The yellow liquid stuff

“I am a recruiter. One day a colleague of mine was interviewing a candidate — and the candidate peed in her chair! The irony of it was that she was also an executive recruiter.” —Ruthanne Feinberg, Acuitas Search, San Francisco.

2. Too much information

A girl I interviewed for the position of sales rep got a call from her boyfriend. The content of the call had to do with an unprotected intimate encounter the night before.

She took the call during the interview and had a screaming match with her boyfriend right in front me. Needless to say, she didn’t get the job. —Joshua Weiss, CEO of TeliApp Corporation.

3. Attack of the job seeker

“A job-seeker waited by the CEO’s car, and when the CEO got in the car, [the candidate] started knocking on the window.” —Simmons of Netshare

4. The Handshake

“While in the restroom washing my hands I noticed someone walk out of the bathroom stall without washing his hands, ‘Gross,’ I thought. I went back to my office and the receptionist rang to inform me my 1:30 appointment was in the lobby. Low and behold my 1:30 was the person from the bathroom. I met the candidate at the front and sure enough he reached out to shake my hand. I told him that I had arthritis, so I was unable to shake his hand.” —Chris Lawson, CEO, Eli Daniel Group.

5. Nasty surprise

“A guy shows up 40 minutes early for an interview, obviously crazy nervous. 30 minutes later, me and my team greet the guy, and you could tell by the fantastic handshake the nerves were still there, and this may not go well. Motioned him to the board room to do the interview, we sat down and before I had even asked the first question, he had barfed all over the table. Funny thing was he was one of the better applicants, so he did get a call back.” —50_MillionYearTrip, via Reddit

6. Because he’s smart

“This guy came in and I asked him why he wanted to job. He said, ‘well I really just wanted something super easy where I could kind of do nothing. I mean you guys don’t look like you work very hard. Also there are some hot chicks that work here and I’d like to get to know them.’ I asked him what made him think that the job was easy and he replied, ‘the thing is, I’m really f*cking smart.’

I literally looked around to see if I was on some candid camera show.” —Tj08, via Reddit

7. High in the interview

“I was hiring at a university-neighborhood store, and most employees were college students. This one guy showed up three hours late. I interviewed him anyway, because it just seemed easier at that point, and I didn’t mind killing a few minutes. In the interview, he said that he didn’t care about anything other than playing tennis. And shortly afterwards I realized that he was crazy high. Didn’t get the job.” —Rocket00000, via Reddit

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