YOU ARE STOPPED by a Police Officer who proceeds to run your license to discover you have been convicted of speeding on several occasions. You are a repeat offender. You look to refinance your mortgage or purchase a new home but when your credit is run it is revealed you have multiple 30 day or worse 60 day lateness on your current mortgage or your revolving debt (credit cards) on several occasions. You are a repeat offender. Your building has been cited several times for the same violation of the building code. Are you starting to see a recurring pattern here? If you answered in the affirmative this means you are somebody you know is a repeat offender. A repeat offender.
On the job boards, your company runs the same help wanted ad a couple of times per month. Sometimes you hire people from this ad while other times you don’t. You run ads with “bait” such as Management Opportunity knowing full well you are not looking to hire a manager but you do this as a method of attracting many responses to your ad. A couple of weeks later you run the exact same ad and interview even more candidates. You may hire (most likely not) or you may not hire. You are a repeat offender and a *”tire kicker” as well. A repeat offender and tire kicker to boot.
Mr. or Mrs. Candidate you consistently show up late for your interviews. You are a repeat offender. Or, Mr. or Mrs. Candidate you fail to show up for your scheduled interview without bothering to give the hiring manager the benefit of a phone call. You do this several times over. You are a repeat offender. You then send out your resume again for the same position that you did not bother to show up for or call on other occasions. You are a repeat offender. On top of that you either have a ton of chutzpah for trying to pull this one off or you are too self-centered to even realize what an exercise in futility this will turn out to be or come to grips with you own lack of maturity and respect.
Back to you Mr. or Mrs. Client. For one job opening you decide (for reasons known only to you) to engage the services of several (2-3) Contingency Recruiting Firms. Next thing you know, right before your eyes, sits the resume of the same candidate from two different recruiting firms. You then spin your wheels trying to figure out which firm “owns” the candidate. Having no other viable solution to this mess that you created you throw the “ball” back to each firm to argue it out as to who saw the candidate first and who presented the candidate first. If you are doing this now chances are you have done this before making you (you guessed it) a repeat offender. However, if you repeat this offense enough times sooner or later many firms will not want to work with you since you will have gained a reputation as a bad organization to recruit for while other firms will want a deposit upfront meaning they will want to be put on retainer.
[bctt tweet=”Can a recruiter be a repeat offender?” username=”bizmastersglobal”]
Yes, he most certainly can be. One shining example of this is the recruiter who simply downloads resumes from the internet and then tries to pass the resume off to his client in a game called “let’s pretend” I am actually recruiting this candidate. Lo and behold the client saw the resume on the same job board where the recruiter downloaded it from. Chances are he has done this time and time again but this time he got caught. He was either too lazy to do the necessary work to recruit a candidate or he was never trained properly. Word of mouth does spread quickly so the likelihood of this recruiter getting new job orders is not very high. He is very much a repeat offender and more than a bit of a bonehead in addition to being a repeat offender. Bonehead and repeat offender in tandem with each is not a good combination nor anything close to a winning one.
[bctt tweet=”Is it possible for a leader to be a repeat offender? ” username=”bizmastersglobal”]
Leaders are not immune from the repeat offender syndrome as I call it as they can make the same mistakes time and again without figuring out what they are doing wrong. Leading by dictatorship as opposed to empowerment is one example. Another is leading people in a direction you are not even sure is the proper path several times over. You are a repeat offender. Pretending you are a leader to several different groups and failing each time makes you not only a failure in the leadership department but a repeat offender as well not to mention a fraud.
Over to the micromanager who must have his hands in everything his employees do. He must know even the most unimportant detail. Before long his employees get tired of his shenanigans and start to leave. Worse than that, the company starts to lose key people. This repeat offender is also a virus that infects everybody around him. He either must be sent for counseling or other ways so that his behavior changes or he must be shown the door. Micromanaging by the way is something many leaders are guilty of that destroys their leadership mantra.
The office romance offers up the most dangerous and potentially environment destroying repeat offender. Often times the two people involved in the relationship have a hard time keeping the fact that they are an “item” from the rest of the office. I guess the gossip is more fun than being discreet by keeping their “romance” to themselves. This one gets even better. How many times has this “relationship” resulted in an “oops” (unplanned or unwanted pregnancy) only to get even more complicated when each person moves on to different members of the staff? This repeat offense can often times repeat to best friends in the office (not for long) or relatives in the office. Forget the repeat offense part just solve the problem in a responsible adult manner.
So there you have it; the saga of the repeat offender. He, she or it takes many forms and has many variations to it. Repeat offenders rarely succeed anyplace as they wear out their welcome sooner if not later. Just like the summer season repeat where you get to see your favorite episode of your favorite show a second time. When you see it three of our times over it’s just another repeat and no longer your favorite.
Writer’s note: The term tire kicker was born when somebody was looking to buy a used or new car they would inexplicably kick the tires first. A tire kicker in recruiting land can either be a candidate who is not really looking to change jobs but “kicks the tires” to see what is out there. In the same vein, a hiring organization can be “tire kickers” as well when they start putting feelers out for candidates for a position they may or may not create or have a current need for.
