Are you on a headhunter’s blacklist?

If you’ve done one or more of the things below, you might have placed yourself on the blacklist (or “graylist”, if it wasn’t that bad) of one or more headhunters and therefore burnt a bridge that you might not have even had yet to start with.

You or your wife, husband, bff, girlfriend, partner sent your application from their email account.

You were really late to your interview.

You sent your application from an unprofessional email account that should have remained private. E.g. flower_girl69@… or bear71@… michael.007@…

You did not cancel your interview and did not bother show up. And to make matters worse: now you pretend to not hear your phone anymore.

You mentioned in your motivation letter how much money you’d like to earn.

You start an argument trying to convince the recruiter that you DO fit the job requirements – when you clearly don’t.

You keep calling your recruiter every two days to inquire about the status of the recruitment process. How annoying.

Your application documents are unprofessional beyond recognition. AND YOU REALLY LIKE WRITING EVERYTHING WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON.

You immediately start talking about your divorce proceedings (and financial problems).

You try to use emotional blackmail that immediately backfires (obviously), “My family of six desperately needs me to find a job.”

You are IT illiterate. And although you already know that you don’t test your PC and Skype for the video conference.

You ask your friends to be your reference.

You are overly self-confident. Arrogant. A walking drama queen. You truly believe that for some reason your shit smells better. Huh?

You comment every post of candidate-seeking headhunters, “Yes, I’m interested. This is my number: XXXX”.

You – an experienced, elegant, professional, competent manager – openly share on your wall on LinkedIN with hundreds of people that “I’d like to officially let you know that I’m looking for a job. I’m looking for a company where I can develop my skills. The company should be honest and stable.” Really?!

And although you might now be sitting thinking, “Nobody – especially experienced managers – in their right mind would do that.” Allow us to ensure you: Yes, they would. Don’t be one of them.

The above are actually only a small selection of behaviour we have experienced or observed first hand only in 2014!