16 Responses to “HR Horror Stories”

1. emmadr Says:
   August 13th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

   My gut told me not to hire this paricular person but I wanted to give them the opportunity to succeed as could see they would be good in the role…. It turned out that the individual was arrested for kiddie porn…….NIGHTMARE!!!!!

2. Phil Says:
   August 13th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

   We had one employee in a sales position who broke down and cried a few times when it came to asking two different customers to buy! The was no family crisis at home or anything like that they just got really scared when it came to the crunch!

3. george Says:
   August 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

   Not really a horror story, but more a failed judgement story:
   Having been asked to sit on a series of panels interviewing candidates for positions in my department, I twice felt that one of the unsuccessful candidates was a much stronger contender than the winner, who seemed to me, and others, to be nervous, negative and lacklustre. Certainly both of these winners had failed to shine in person, though they looked OK on paper.

   We had been overruled by more senior members of the panel, for what might have been purely political reasons.

   I was so impressed by my ‘losers’, though, that I felt that we should create an additional opening for each of them, since we needed the talent. I pushed this idea quite strongly and managed to make the powers that control the purse strings see my point on both occasions. We duly offered them similar positions, and expected great things from them.

   Both times my perceptions of eager, highly qualified (on paper), conscientious and adventurous individuals turned out to be sadly misplaced, and we acquired a couple of pieces of dead wood whose talents obviously lay only in the acting arena. Meanwhile both of the “lacklustre” individuals turned out to be excellent value – they just couldn’t control their nerves and perform in a sudden death face to face grilling by a panel of (by now rather tired) strangers.

   I now question the value of simply using an interview as the main means of making decisions like this. Just as some people are more skilled at concocting brilliant looking CVs than in providing underlying substance, there are some that can put on an academy award performance that is pure con artistry.

   The moral….? Don’t necessarily judge a book ……etc. Open a few pages at random and read a few lines in detail. And read between the lines.

4. danb Says:
   August 13th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

   One guy in our business turned out to be the classic sleaze trying it on with every girl in the office. The hard part was that everything was always done very hush hush and never full on offensive or anything like that. It was really hard to work out if it was friendly banter or something more and we did not know at first that he was chatting up every girl in the office so it was hard to manage. Luckily we managed him out in the end before we got sued or something.

5. Jrose8 Says:
   August 13th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

   Careful who you get to sit in your chair!

   We hired a lady for data entry and to answer the office in coming calls. She was OK but we were not happy with the amount of mistakes she continuosly made while entering numbers. Alas she started to have sickies! Followed by back pain. She then told us her Dad was a Chiro and that ALL our office chairs were unacceptable. We knew they weren’t perfect however, they were not shocking either. But rather than go down the hard road we upgraded the office chairs.

   It cost us $4k to upgrade the chairs. She had more sickies than someone waiting for a heart transplant, and then she finally left after 4 months beleiving she was unfairly dealt with and was suffering from stress.

   It is possbile to request a medical report just in case new applicants have a psychiatric background? I realise this is a tricky one, but it is a fair question considering the act some people can put on just to get the job! And references are getting harder to come by.

6. becjaz Says:
   August 13th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

   I once hired a massage contractor to do some corporate massage. She was well qualified and gave a really great firm massage! To test her out I put her to work in my most long-term company where previously I had done most of the massages myself and so I knew the clients very well. After the first 2 times I asked all my clients what they thought, and the general consensus was that she was fantastic at massage but they felt more stressed after the massage than before. She apparently told everyone all her problems and her life seemed to be one big drama, – she would talk angrily about her bf and other problems – and this left them really tense. So as she was a contractor I told her that I couldn’t keep hiring her services. She then went on to email all the people she had massaged within this big company to ask if someone would get her inducted into the company (and building) behind my back so she could start her own business in there in return for a free massage… Of course my long term loyal clients did forward this email on to me, and I wasn’t worried about someone who came in with no integrity for 2 weeks.

7. blackkat Says:
   August 14th, 2009 at 11:28 am

   It seems there is a whole cadre of employees out there who go from job to job on the basis of a positive reference from the former employer. The problem is the former employer is only giving them the positive reference because they are desperate to get rid of them! I recently hired a lady to help me manage databases and websites. I did the right thing and telephoned her previous boss. “Oh, she’s great!” he tells me. “Really nice, really switched on person, very computer savvy…” Well, he was right. She was a lovely person. Completely computer illiterate of course (”What does ‘double click on the icon mean?’), had to be told everything twice and she would still get it wrong. I’d given her a six month contract and at the end of that time, after she’d deleted nearly every important file we had and destroyed the website a dozen times it was time for her to go. I was so happy to see the back of her and she was such a friendly person that I gave her a glowing reference too. When a prospective employer rings I will no doubt say “oh, she’s great, really switched on…”

8. HRwisdom » Blog Archive » Good Interview Questions To Avoid Hiring Duds Says:
   August 14th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

   [...] a previous blog post, HRwisdom shared some HR horror stories about difficult employees, underperforming employees, and other staff management [...]

9. drdrdr Says:
   August 16th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

   We were hiring operators for a site which was well away from public transport, so we did two things. We asked the candidates to come back multiple times (so that they got used to the distance and inconvenience) and we asked for their drivers licence number. One candidate left that field blank on the application, so when he turned up we asked for his licence and he said “Oh, I’ve left it at home.” When he came back for the next step, we asked again, and he said “Oh, I must have lost it.” After that, we decided we wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. I rang and said “Listen mate, if you want this job, you come in now as a special trip and bring your licence.” To which he replied “I can’t because I lost it – it was taken away from me by the police, but I don’t need your job now anyway because I have landed another job driving for a truck for a cross-Melbourne courier company!”

10. Cory Heuston-Richardson Says:
    August 20th, 2009 at 8:09 am

    I work for an IT consulting firm whom delivers software testing services. When we don’t have the right skills or resources available, we tend to hit the contract market to obtain the necessary skills. As its highly competitive, there tends to be a high level of upselling being done to resumes to add that little bit of edge to secure the work.
    We interviewed a guy the other day whom on paper looked pretty good and had the required skills we were looking for. During the interview, when we were just gualifying his capabilities we found that he didn’t have any of the skills (at the level he had indicated), but had sat next to a person whom did, so the skills must have brushed off. With his whole resume needing to be reconfirmed, I said to him ‘it’s better to have this in there, than not too”, and he agreed. Not only did this show that people will do anything to obtain work, but also an unethical element.

11. maxpower Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 12:30 am

    I once worked in a bank. There were a lot of young people working there, and a strong after work socialising culture. For some reason the big night out tended to be Thursday rather than Friday night.
    After a particularly big Thursday night, a colleague of mine turned up for work on Friday when he probably should have stayed home. After a couple of ‘cures’ at lunch time on the Friday, he proceeded to fall asleep in the office toilets with the cubicle door open and his trousers aroud his ankles.
    He might have gotten away with it were it not for the snoring. Classic really. I still have the photos.

12. HRwisdom » Blog Archive » Thanks from HRwisdom Says:
    September 4th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    [...] A quick thank you to the HRwisdom community members for their recent contribution to the HRwisdom blog on HR Horror Stories. [...]

13. HRwisdom » Blog Archive » How to predict future performance of job candidates Says:
    September 14th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    [...] you read some of HRwisdom member HR horror stories, you probably laughed and squirmed at the same [...]

14. gillian Says:
    September 22nd, 2009 at 8:39 am

    my story relates to the actual recruiting stage. i had ten candidates apply for the one position – tradesperson’s assistant. while most of the applicants had obviously tried hard to present themselves in the best light, and were also at least a little nervous, there was one notable exception. this partiuclar young man arrived sporting a very noticeable black eye. no word of apology nor explanation was forthcoming, and so the interview was conducted and the candidate left. i did the usual reference checks, and one of the referees told me that this person had let him down before – he had used this referee’s good name to his own advantage, and subsequently turned out to be a dishonourable worker, thereby damaging this person’s reputation. basically he suggested that i should definitely not employ him! naturally given the candidate’s appearance, and non-explanation for the black eye [i mean, he could have walked into a door?]i had pretty much decided against him anyway! i think instinct is very important and should be adhered to!

15. Ava Says:
    December 22nd, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Thou shalt not confuse reply with forward…

    A very funny horror story I heard recently was about an employee from a marketing company who received an email from a client, then forwarded it to a colleague with some extremely derogatory and offensive remarks aimed at the client. An email was promptly received from the client, asking them to cancel his account immediately and that all the networking groups he was involved in would receive a copy.
    Sure enough, thousands of emails were despatched forwith as follows: “To all business people on my data base,
    this is no joke, be wary of what marketing groups you align and trust to be supportive of your business.”
    The employee was sacked.
    The moral of the story – Thou shalt not confuse reply with forward
    Ava – http://www.edgecommunication.com.au/services

16. boss guest chairs Says:
    April 2nd, 2010 at 8:04 pm

    This is an affecting point of view on this topic. I am glad you shared your thoughts and I find myself agreeing. I appreciate your coherent writing and the effort you have put into this piece. Thanks for the good work and good luck with the blog, I greatly look forward to more updates.

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