Recruiter swears at candidate. Gutter press outraged.
Posted by Mitch on 13th December 2011
Many of you will have already seen the story about senior recruiter Gary Chaplin telling a candidate who had emailed his CV to some 4,000 recruitment agencies to “fuck-off”.
The Daily Mail and The Sun in particular seemed to be cheerleading the righteous indignation of the masses – however they did (unlike me) replace all or some of the letters in the swear word with asterisks, which further reinforces their burgeoning status as the protectors of our moral sensibilities.
To ramp-up the recession-fuelled pitchforking, they referred to Gary Chaplin as a “£200K a year recruitment consultant” because as we now know, the amount of money someone earns has a direct correlation to how much we hate them when they do something wrong.
I wonder if a recruiter with a wife, two kids and a second hand Ford Fiesta earning £37K a year placing bricklayers would have attracted the same criticism?
What does surprise me about this story is how delicate the tabloid press are when it comes to censoring swear words.
Is reading ‘f**k’ any less offensive than reading ‘fuck’?
Is having this word entering your consciousness actually capable of causing you genuine offence?
I reckon most people have been told to fuck-off hundreds of times during their lives and as a result have become desensitised to the term. In fact I’d go as far as to suggest that calling someone stupid is more offensive than telling them to fuck off.
But the tabloid press, as always, prefer to play the shock-jock role of focusing on the four-letter stuff.
I’m a little surprised they didn’t accuse him of snorting cocaine off the buttocks of some Spearmint Rhino employees and setting fire to a few homeless people.
Thinking about it, given that the name of the candidate is Manos Katsampoukas, it would have been in keeping with The Mail’s long and prestigious track record of xenophobia if they’d championed Gary as a hero for standing firm against the tide of foreigners coming over here and stealing our jobs.
More seriously, the aspect of this story that I found most troubling is that Gary chose to deliver his rant to the candidate under the name of another recruiter – yet the press seemed to make very little of this. If I had Gary in an interview, that is the part of the story I’d want to get to the bottom of the most. And yes, I would potentially consider hiring Gary.
His earnings alone suggest he’s reasonably good at what he does and having exchanged one or two comments with him on Twitter and having read an article about his views on social media, he came across reasonably well.
OK, so he put in an email what 80% of us have said in our heads on those occasions when we get dumb job applications from candidates. We’re all human.
But using a fake name? That’s what troubles me the most.
Anyway, fuck The Daily Mail and The Sun.
Comments
By Dan Hunter on Tuesday, 13 December 2011Hi Mitch,
I tend to agree with you, what he did was stupid but i’d still potentially hire him. He’s obviously doing something right!
And using a fake name, didnt he send the email form his work account? How on earth can he use a fake name?! None of this makes any sense…
Im going to fuck off and get back to work now.
Dan
By Recruiting Animal on Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Maybe I’m sheltered but I’m not used to have people tell me to fuck off and I get mad when they do. Tho this candidate had it coming.
By ICT Resourcer on Saturday, 15 December 2012
Reading “f**k” has more impact than reading “fuck” because the person insulting is making the insulted work harder at reading..
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