The Nerve...

VAHokie56

So we had an interesting week so far with a new employee. I should start with his phone interview 3 weeks ago, the candidate was from India and claimed to be working in another state. He did very well on his interview answered questions quickly and did not seem to be looking them up and spoke fluent English.

Now it is not my call to make the hire , so the powers that be decided he was the man for the job and hired him without doing an on-site. 3 weeks later a guy shows up who sounds different and does not speak English as well...we thought this odd. So around his second day I take him into our lab and was describing a upcoming project he would be helping with. I told him to go ahead and console into a switch, he pulls up putty ( I attached his console cable ) and looks at me and says " do I use ssh or serial" ...red flag numero uno. I could go into all the hilarity that followed but basically this dude could not even spell cisco or network.

So its obvious they had someone else do the interview and then sent this guy in. Yes its my company's fault for not doing the onsite but the nerve these people have pulling this kind of thing amazes me. I mean did he think he would not have to do any work !? well anyways they let him go today...a waste of everyone's time now we have to interview,hire and board someone else

jdancer

It's becoming more and more common. It all comes down to doing due diligence.

You read about stories about people having other people stand in and do tests, like driver's license, SAT scores, etc, etc. Didn't surprise me it happens with telephone interviews.

networker050184

Wow that's crazy. I guess everyone learned their lesson here.

shodown

This gives a lot of foreigners a bad rap and will make people reluctant to hire them when they see foreign names on resumes.

VAHokie56

@ shodown
Certainly not the intention of my thread, I am just stating the facts. I don't really care about the race or origin of birth of the people involved What I care about is the lack of morals and respect for the working peoples time.

f0rgiv3n

That blows me away... I wouldn't have even thought people would be trying things like that. Insane... Do they think "well, I'm hired! It doesn't matter how little I know now, I'm in!"? Also makes me wonder about the guy who did the actual phone interview. How much are they paying him to be a part of this when he was technically the one who got the job, ya know?

jibbajabba

I seriously never expected people doing stuff like that .. amazing ...

Mrock4

All I have to say, is KUDOS to your company for letting him go. Many companies would unfortunately have kept him for 3 months before letting him go.

Given the amount of highly motivated people looking for new opportunities, it's not good when people like this steal a position.

Daniel333

I hate that. Happened to me a couple times, but we were able to catch them. We've since switched to Skype.

The other one is when people show up to an interview with an interpreter, that drives me crazy.

networker050184

People seriously try to interview with an interpreter? Damn....

shodown

VAHokie56 wrote: »

@ shodown
Certainly not the intention of my thread, I am just stating the facts. I don't really care about the race or origin of birth of the people involved What I care about is the lack of morals and respect for the working peoples time.

I wasn't talking about your team. You did the right correction after a bad decision was made in my opinion.

tpatt100

I don't think this has anything to do with foreigners but more about how lazy some people may have gotten with interviews. I think some businesses take too long interviewing and hiring but this is going to the extreme in the other direction. I could see this being done if you are outsourcing a project to somebody who is a self employed contractor in another state and the project is done remotely. What I mean is not meeting them face to face. But hiring somebody based only on a phone interview is just bizarre. I could see developing a favorable impression based on phone and wanting to meet them but just hiring them on the first phone call lol.

VAH probably just noticed the accent as a characteristic of this person and noticed a change in that characteristic once the "person" showed up. Because what else does he have to go off of? Never seen the person.

So his company just fell for identity fraud basically, if that is the correct term.

Kelkin

WoW and people actually get away with this?

nosoup4u

Hard to believe this happens in this day and age

VAHokie56

Kelkin wrote: »

WoW and people actually get away with this?

Hard to say how much they get away with. I left the guy alone in our lab to try and configure some simple L2 connections to a fake upstream switch (I set a fake lab up to confirm our suspicious of skill level ) and when I came back I looked at his PC and he had a Webex open with someone. So I imagine maybe that's how they try and get away with it,have someone remote in and do the work maybe even for a small fee?. When I called him out on the webex he just closed it and ignored my question...real weird.

Sett

I was hired once in the past for a position after just a phone interview. And I am sure many people who got into the same company had pulled out that trick. The company in questions is a major US telecom with big office in central Europe.

sratakhin

Crap... I'm a foreigner as well, but I would never ask someone to do a phone interview for me.

You probably spoke with one of those H-1b bodyshop recruiters. They find people on student and h-1b visas here and promise them a quick way to employment based green cards. Basically, they hire them on their terms and "sell" them to other companies. Bodyshops do simple training and some paperwork (may be even phone interviews!). They pay their employees may be a quarter of what their clients (other companies) pay them.

I've seen ads like this on many sites. They claim that if you have any experience with computers, they can send you to a crash course in whatever and you'll be become an "expert" in just a month.

truckfit

is he phillipino?

rogue2shadow

I agree on the secondary interview (sit-in). That's insane.

inscom.brigade

I just started to apply for a job, I can't believe how many staffing agency's contact me!
Jeezez!
Then when you go check um out they look like nothing more than a $30.00 a year web page, with one guy working out of a storage unit, claiming that they are located on 245 Park Avenue, wanting your updated word .DOC resume to alter, and add their LOGO to over your email address!

Then when you send them a secure .pdf with your digital signature you never hear from them again.

edit

;and then they try to have 40% of your hourly pay!

DPG

I regularly receive a single resume multiple times with different names at the top.

bryguy

Talk about bait and switch... Do you suspect corporate espionage or just some sleazy staffing agency trying to make an easy dime?

RouteMyPacket

Ouch! I don't blame him, I blame whoever was involved in the interview/hiring process. I mean come on, this is IT..the field where 75% of the "professionals" are worthless seat warmers. A little due diligence goes a long way in weeding them out but nothing is foolproof

zrockstar

You gotta give the guy some credit though... it takes some mighty big cojones to actually show up and try to pull that off. Wow, this is pretty mind boggling though. Can you say what the size of your company is VAH? I could see this maybe working at a huge company where he could just get lost in the sea of people.

nel

wow, that is insane. The guy has some major b*lls to try that.

Only good thing is that it shows a massive flaw in your hiring process. Dont forget to fix it

paul78

Wow is right!

Thanks everyone for sharing this. I always thought that this type of behavior was exaggerated and didn't really exist. I didn't expect so many people to have come across this. It really made me give it a second thought.

DoubleNNs

paul78 wrote: »

Wow is right!

Thanks everyone for sharing this. I always thought that this type of behavior was exaggerated and didn't really exist. I didn't expect so many people to have come across this. It really made me give it a second thought.

Second thought as in you plan on giving it a try? lol

phoeneous

truckfit wrote: »

is he phillipino?

Correction, it's filipino​.

mishy

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

Ouch! I don't blame him, I blame whoever was involved in the interview/hiring process. I mean come on, this is IT..the field where 75% of the "professionals" are worthless seat warmers. A little due diligence goes a long way in weeding them out but nothing is foolproof

True true, I wouldn't blame the candidate but the recruiter, imagine I am getting a lot of calls for jobs and I have a brother not employed, I would send him in my place.

IT is hard industry to break into, I spent years stuck in this 'you need experience to work for us and where do I get the experience', I only managed to get a job after having spiced up my CV with a 1 month contract and just lasted out the month but I used that experience again from the 1 month job to get another full time where I eventually gained the necessary experience. My biggest asset was that I am a quick learner and can easily use solutions from different scenarios to the problems I experience plus I was fortunate to meet people who could help and always said what we do here is unique (softwares and apps) so we dont expect you to know it.

With my experience in the field I have now learnt to say I dont know but I am willing to learn because I now know things can get really tough on the job. Like when I spent 4 hours trying to find a problem with Exchange server and whenever I was restarting the server it would work for 2 minutes before switching off, when the person with experience came he quickly looked at the Exchange Pst and realised that it was full, deleted old emails and within 10minutes it was backup. Luckily I hadnt lied that I have worked with Exchange

Mrock4

I would argue we can blame both. The recruiter/company didn't execute due dilligence- but the candidate also acted extremely unethically. I would say the company didn't act unethically, but instead was quite lazy.

blargoe

That takes a lot of gall.