What Do You Have Without Your Integrity?

I have been blown away this year by the lack of integrity with organizations. I have written about the candidate experience and specifically outlined what employers are doing to candidates when they go on interviews. I want to take it a step further and really talk about the integrity of employees at organizations. Lying is simply unacceptable. A polite and kind demeanor is a necessity when you are representing your company and your brand. Deceptive, corrupt employees can kill organizations. If you think uou may have one of these toxic employees, you need to get rid of them ASAP. You may or may not realize you have them. Either way, it attacks the company like a deadly virus.

I have always believed that what goes around comes around. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Isn’t that the golden rule? Isn’t that what we should all strive to be like? I wish that were the case, but it has become painfully obvious that it is not true at all!

I would like to say I pride myself in always trying to do the right thing. It isn’t easy to tell someone they didn’t get the job. It isn’t easy giving difficult and constructive feedback. I do it because I believe in my heart that people can benefit and become better and stronger when they hear tough news. I do, however, always try to be prompt with the news, kind and willing to help.

Being a recruiter is a tough job. One thing about what I do is I work around the clock. If you see me on Facebook, you will see my smile, my family, and my son playing T-ball, but what you don’t see is how incredibly hard I work. I work to make sure I cover all of my bases. I want to make sure the candidate had a good interview. I want to make sure the hiring manger has the right information. I am continually prospecting for new clients and new business. This, my friends, is not an 8-5 job. Ever.

I guess that since I treat my job this way, I expect everyone else involved in the process to treat the recruiting process this way. They don’t.

Recently I had an exclusive 90 day contract with a client and I caught them in multiple lies. The company signed 2 agreements. The first agreement was a reduced fee agreement to hire entry level sales people. The second agreement was for the higher fee and specifically outlined 3 key roles they were trying to hire. I immediately started sourcing candidates for the 3 at a higher fee while a recruiting partner was looking for the sales roles.

Interviews were being set up left and right. It appeared everything was moving swiftly. As I recruited for the key roles, there were face- to- face interviews being set up daily. Then it started to happen. The client never had any intention of hiring for the other 3 roles. They simply wanted a reduced fee for the other positions.

Candidates were being brought in and being shoved out as quickly as they were brought in to interview. Hour and a half interviews were reduced to 20 minutes. Their experiences were horrific.

Shortly after the interviewees were being rejected the recruiters were all called to an immediate “re-calibrating” meeting. The hiring manager yelled at the recruiters and let us know that she needs us to refocus 100% of our time to hiring sales people and other entry level roles which were never a part of the initial conversation.

Begrudgingly, we started looking for the other roles as well as continued to recruit for the key hires. The candidates being brought in were “not strong enough” and every candidate that walked out came out frustrated with the process. At this point, I made a mental decision that I was through with the company.

My pipeline was still full, however, and I was still dealing with the candidates I had reached out to talk about the role. One of the candidates told me that they had been contacted by another agency about the exact role with which we had the exclusive relationship! They pulled us off the search when they had the “re-calibration” meeting. They never told us they engaged another agency.

They never had any intention of hiring people at a higher rate from us and went to another agency. Do they think we are stupid? When we called them out on it they denied it profusely.

Another lie we caught them in was that they said the sales people could make 200k and after doing the math with their numbers, we proved that no one had ever even come close to making $ 150k. They backed down immediately.

Lastly, one of the candidates who made it to the final round with the CEO was re-scheduled twice (once the day of the interview) and essentially shoved out of the CEO’s office 20 minutes later after only being asked questions about what happened in 1989 on his resume.

Disgust. Candidates were hopeful about positions that were never intended to be filled. Time was wasted. Their time, my time. How do you live with yourself? How can you look yourself in the mirror? How can you run an organization with such poor leadership? How can you lie? How can you do that to a candidate?

What do you have if you don’t have integrity? That is something I don’t care to find out. If you are looking for someone to represent your company in a positive manner and will give everything we have to making sure it is a positive experience, then give us a call. If you don’t, well… Good luck.

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