No shows, false references, failed drug screens and resumes that can be most charitably described as creative fiction are common recruiting misadventures. Here are two more true stories to add to the list of hiring hi jinx. Tongue in CheekHR Professional Marc and his boss invested valuable time interviewing qualified candidates for a front office executive assistant's position that required—among other skills—fielding phone calls. After narrowing the prospects down to four choices, Marc put in more time performing the necessary drug-screens, background and reference checks. Then he spent additional time conducting four final interviews before he offered the job to the person who seemed perfectly suited. He told her to report to work Monday morning 8AM, bright and early.
Check that TongueReaching the end of an extensive job interview for a small engineering firm, the Human Resources person asked the young Engineer fresh out of college, “And what starting salary were you looking for?"
The interviewer nodded and said, “Well, what would you say to a complete relocation package, plus six weeks vacation, sixteen paid holidays, full medical and dental coverage, a company matching retirement fund for 50% of your salary, and a company car leased every two years-say, a red Corvette?" The Engineer sat up straight and said, "Wow! Are you kidding?" And the interviewer replied, "Yeah, but you started it.”
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Quote of the Day"A man's mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions." -Oliver Wendell Holmes Great Inventions of the 20th Century: Tupperware
Earl Silas Tupper was born in 1907 in Berlin, New Hampshire. Tupper's first contact with plastic grew from his job at the DuPont Chemical Company which had been developing plastic before World War II. Eager to work with the new material, yet too poor to buy refined plastic, Tupper asked if he could purchase any left-over substance. His supervisor at DuPont gave him a black, inflexible piece of polyethylene slag, a waste product of the oil refining process. Tupper purified the slag and molded it to create light-weight, non-breakable containers, cups, bowls, and plates. He later designed liquid-proof, air-tight lids by duplicating the lid of a paint can, except in reverse. Tupper founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in 1938, and in 1946, he introduced Tupper Plastics to hardware and department stores. Tupperware was not welcome at first. Consumers were confused as to how to operate the lids. Store sales lagged. In the late forties, home demonstrations of the products proved enormously successful, indicating to Tupper the potential power of direct demonstrations. By 1951, he had pulled all merchandise off store shelves and channeled it solely through direct home sales. Tupper hired Brownie Wise, a charismatic single mother and one of his first direct sellers, to design the Tupperware direct selling system. The concept grew to be a household phenomenon, the Tupperware Party. Today, a Tupperware demonstration begins approximately every two seconds some place in the world with yearly net sales exceeding $1.2 billion. |
The new employee showed up on time, holding a compress to her mouth, unable to speak. It turned out she had decided over the weekend to have her tongue pierced. With the shiny metal stud inserted in her now swelling tongue she attempted to answer incoming customer calls: “Tank eww for ca-wing, oww may I elp eww. Ow.” Needless to say she lasted all of thirty minutes before Marc had to send her home. Then there he was on the phone, filling in for her while desperately calling the other three candidates to offer one of them the job.
The bright-eyed Engineer candidate confidently replied, "I’d like $175,000 or more a year,depending on the benefits package."