“I asked what her strengths were, and she filed her nails. She bit her cuticles and spat them out on the desk.”

Flushed faces, rapid heartbeats and trembling hands with excitement are rare among people who appear at job interviews today. We live in times when more and more people realize that work is just work. It is supposed to start at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. and not a minute later. It should be simple, well-paid and not mentally burdensome. This approach can already be seen during recruitment interviews. Some candidates don’t even try to pretend they care.

“She filed her nails and bit her cuticles. Then she spat them out on the desk.”

After the pandemic, some companies decided to permanently introduce a hybrid work model and take advantage of the benefits of technology. Therefore, many recruitment interviews are still held remotely. Although this undoubtedly has its advantages, it sometimes happens that the sight of a candidate in his natural surroundings knocks the recruiter off his feet.

– I once had a candidate who was filing her nails when asked about her strengths. As soon as I spoke, she bit the cuticles and spat them out on the desk. She thought that since we were talking on camera, we couldn’t see what she was doing. Then, surprised, she sent me an e-mail complaining that we had thanked her for participating in the recruitment process. Another time, a lady appeared wearing a facial mask. Seeing my embarrassment, she explained that since she didn’t have to leave the house, she was optimizing her tasks – recalls Ania, who has been working in the HR industry for 5 years.

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She jokes that she could write a book about her experiences at this point. More and more often there are candidates who say directly that they do not care about a specific job. When asked why they would like to work in a given company, they answer without hesitation: “Because there is nothing better.” Several times she had someone ask her if she could work part-time because she wanted to look for another job in the meantime.

– They eat dinner, answer the phone. They often appear in pajamas or bathrobes. They think that since the conversation takes place at home, the same rules do not apply as they would if they came to the office, he points out. He adds that such situations occur both in the case of candidates from Generation Z, as well as millennials and boomers.

It’s hard to find a good employee

Just a few years ago, such behavior would have immediately disqualified candidates. Today, recruiters turn a blind eye because there is a shortage of specialists on the labor market. Not only is it difficult to find a good employee, but it is difficult to find an employee in general.

As Pracuj.pl points out in its report, 2023 was the year of the employee. This means that the number of jobs available was higher than the number of people looking for work. Candidates could pick and choose. They had the upper hand in negotiating the terms. Similar sentiments prevailed in other countries. In the report “Labor market, education, competences” published by PARP, we can read that as many as 77 percent declared problems with finding an employee. employers from the global market. The authors indicate that the skills that were most difficult to find were: responsibility, critical thinking, communication, cooperation and effective problem solving.