Hiring managers who have years of experience interviewing job candidates are reporting a sad decline in applicant behavior.
This observation comes from an “interview etiquette” survey on Vault.com, a career resource site.
The survey found that about six in 10 hiring managers are not impressed with what they’re seeing.
Given the host of “how to ace an interview” advice books, Web sites and career resource offices at colleges and universities, the survey results are dismaying.
About four in 10 of the 105 hiring managers who responded to the survey said they’ve heard job candidates use profanity during an interview.
About one in five has seen applicants bring children along to the interview.
(In case you’re in doubt: These are bad things.)
Also wrong but common: answering or checking cell phones during an interview, and bringing food along and eating it during the interview.
Hirers also mentioned some tacky stuff like nose picking, which, we hope, doesn’t happen very often.
The single most common mistake by job applicants, though, was dressing inappropriately. That generally meant wearing clothes that were too casual for the occasion.
To be fair, Vault.com turned the tables by surveying job applicants as well.
More than half of the 1,647 workers in the survey said interviewers interrupted their sessions to take phone calls.
I often hear from disillusioned job hunters who say their interviewers were condescending or rude, or asked questions that were illegal according to nondiscrimination laws.
But the No. 1 complaint on the Vault survey dovetails with what I hear a lot: Job hunters consider it the height of rudeness when they don’t hear anything from the employer after an interview.
In the survey, about seven out of 10 job hunters said they hadn’t heard back from an employer after an interview.
On the flip side, only one in 10 hiring managers admitted to blowing off candidates rather than sending rejection letters — a curious dichotomy.
It seems both sides of the interview process could benefit from a manners check.
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