Idiots Need Not Apply

It is true that for every good job opening there are a great number of candidates. At the top end are those fully qualified candidates who are considered "turnkey" prospects, candidates who can walk in the door and start doing the job well right off the bat.

Fortunately for prospective job hunters, most of these candidates are already working in careers they love.

Just below this elite group are those candidates who have most of the qualifications for the position but will require a bit of a learning curve to become fully productive. These are the candidates who have all the skills and good experience but lack knowledge of the specific sector.

And one more rung down are the "climbers" who have some skill and little experience but have great potential. This group includes students coming into the workplace and employees who want to make the move into management.

Now we have finally reached the bottom of the heap - the lair of the idiot.

Over the years I have met more than my fair share and I have learned something from each encounter in the idiocracy. "What lessons can be learned from an idiot?", you might well ask.

Plenty.

I was trying to fill a job vacancy for a Marketing Communications job in my division and received a resume from a window washer. He explained in his cover letter that the only reason he wanted to make such a radical career change was that he was worried he might get skin cancer.

There was a candidate who responded to our questions with single word answers. While I did respect his sense of brevity, communications jobs usually require people who can actually communicate.

And then there was the "dressed for success" candidate who wore a clearly visible and obscenely worded tee shirt under his white dress shirt. Or the candidate who changed into a pair of bedroom slippers in the reception area so that he could be more "comfortable" during the interview.

I found the fuzzy bunny slippers kind of distracting.

There were those candidates who distinguished themselves with their mastery of the English language. This included the candidate who greeted me with a resounding "dude" and a strange kind of handshake. Another unsuccessful candidate liberally sprinkled four letter words throughout his answers.

A friend likes to tell about a candidate she was interviewing who answered his cell phone in the middle of the interview and asked her to step out of the room because it was an important call.

I had one who insisted on tape recording the entire interview, "just in case".

These are extreme examples but they are all too numerous among job seekers today. And still idiots manage to slip by. Unfortunately many of us work with them everyday.

Luckily we can weed out most of the idiots and undesirables long before they get in the door because of their bad grammar, spelling or by the delusional statements they make in their resumes or cover letters.

And thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space and browsing tools such as Google, we have a new source of intelligence about potential candidates. After I have met with a candidate that I am impressed with, and might offer a job to, I Google their name to see what interesting information comes up.

That's how I found the website of a well qualified candidate who liked to share information about creative bong making.

So the next time you are considering posting those pictures from last weekend's drunken party on your Facebook page, remember that they will be visible to your current and future employers for a long time. And if you've ever tried to cancel a Facebook account you'll know what I mean.

If you want to win my respect, and possibly the job, come through the door well groomed, well spoken, well qualified and with a good attitude because we've got a sign on the door that reads, "Idiots Need Not Apply".