Recruiters have exposed the wild excuses jobseekers have used to get out of attending interviews. While the unbelievable excuses (like mourning a dead fish) might seem comical, a workplace expert said the growing trend could have “dangerous” consequences.
Roxanne Calder, founder of leading recruitment agency EST10, said she’s heard every excuse under the sun from workers wanting to get out of interviews or not show up for their first day of work.
“The list is endless. The car crash one is a classic, so is the grandmother one saying they have died. We’ve had one candidate that happened 10 times with,” Calder told Yahoo Finance.
“We’ve had someone where their fish died and they were too emotional to come in because they had to flush it. Literally, they said we have to flush it down the toilet and it’s too upsetting.”
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Other candidates have blamed the weather for not fronting up, with one claiming it was “too nice a day and too sunny” and another saying: “It’s raining, I don’t want to come in, I’m scared lighting will strike.”
Calder said the excuses always came via text or email, never phone call, and were “frustrating” for recruiters who had spent time screening candidates before bringing them in for an interview.
“Typically it’s not because they’re not interested, it’s because they can’t be bothered. They’ve lost interest and it’s too much effort,” Calder said.
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Recruiters share wild stories
A number of recruiters have shared the ridiculous excuses they have received from job candidates on LinkedIn.
One recruiter said a candidate had claimed to be in a car crash so would be unable to attend an interview. But it was a carbon copy of a text the candidate had sent previously.
“A candidate used the exact same message to cancel an interview an hour before. The first time I believed it, second time was just disappointing,” she said.
“As a candidate, please just be honest if you don’t want to attend an interview … We don’t mind if you don’t want to attend or are not interested in the role, you can be honest with us about it.”
Another said one of their candidates had their “grandmother pass away three times in a row”.
“I have heard some of the wildest excuses! I always think it’s shocking that people would rather say a family member has died than just tell us a few days before that they’ve changed their mind,” another recruiter added.
Even if the excuses are a lie, Calder said it could be a “gift” to get a message from a candidate at all rather than being ghosted.
“It’s actually a luxury to get these excuses, even though they’re terrible excuses, because it’s more common just for people not to show up for interviews or not to show up on their first day,” she said.
She recommended candidates “be honest” and call up the recruiter to cancel.
‘Dangerous’ standard to set
Calder said the trend of jobseekers making up excuses to get out of interviews or jobs had “got worse” for a number of reasons, including the abundance of jobs available post-pandemic.
“People are also fatigued from COVID and they’re also fatigued from the economy, high cost of living, all of those things. I think that’s where some of that apathy comes in,” she told Yahoo Finance.
Calder said this could set a grim precedent for our overall attitude towards work.
“It’s dangerous because the more people that act like that and the more we accept it and think it’s OK, then the more it becomes the new standard,” she said.
“That’s the part that I worry about. I don’t think it’s healthy because it creeps into other things if we think that’s OK.”
Calder gave the example of the recent viral photo of people working from the beach in bikinis, along with the worker who stole an office chair after quitting her job.
“Everything else starts to be blurred and we need some structure, we need some structure, we need some manners,” she said.
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