WorkWise BlogTip: Fatal flaw is sometimes personality

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Amy Brownstein (brownsteinpr.wordpress.com) has a client who specializes in IT recruiting. He coaches his candidates conscientiously to keep them from landing in the cyber-circular file. However, despite his efforts, he’s encountered the occasional candidate with initially promising signs who then self-destructs. Where’s the fatal flaw? Sometimes it’s personality.

A client asked for a technical writer. The recruiter found one who, on the basis of her resume, appeared sterling. He was sold on its good content. The potential employer was sold, too. Her references checked. All signs were “go.” Or so it seemed. Then her enthusiasm wrecked her campaign.

Impressive up-front, she didn’t carry through. “She sent what was supposed to be a nice gesture to the hiring manager and to me,” Brownstein recalls the recruiter saying, “an emailed thank-you letter. But it was riddled with grammatical and spelling errors.” The job required technical writing, a slightly different kind of writing, but writing is writing. The slip-up was fatal.

P.S. Consider this, too. Was the candidate asleep at the wheel or did she need glasses? Brownstein mentions that the woman’s computer must have had spell-check and auto-correct features. Too much enthusiasm plus too little attention to work meant no job.