How To Find Out If You Ve Been Blacklisted

Take you lot been worried throughout your transition that "it" would take hold of up to you? Y'all've been watching over your shoulder and trembling uncontrollably at every interview. You practise your best to calm your jittery nerves, only yous're afraid the interviewer picked upwardly on some of your unease. Why are you and then nervous during the interview?

Did you lot exaggerate your experience on your résumé?

Did you tell a pocket-sized white prevarication about your qualifications?

Did y'all change your birth date to make yourself seem younger?

Did you non research a company every bit well as you wanted to, and tried to wing-it throughout the interview?

These footling white lies could cause a recruiter to blacklist you (yes, it exists), if he or she discovers you weren't being completely truthful. Even a small-scale imitation pas during an interview could cause your proper noun to be written down on a blacklist. No one wants to end up on such a listing. Being blacklisted means recruiters will non piece of work with y'all, and will ensure your résumé won't stop upwardly in front of a hiring manager. In short, finding the next job or career opportunity becomes that much more difficult.

Permit me to paint y'all another scenario:

A woman desperately wants to state a job at her dream company. She enlists the assistance of 2 recruiting firms to place her résumé in front of a hiring director. Recruiting Firm B gets the credit for submitting her résumé to the company. Recruiting House A had no idea she was using another recruiter, and was furious when they didn't get the credit, or their fee for her hire. The slighted house swore they would never piece of work with the adult female again and blacklisted her. Later, the adult female decided to take a counter-offer from her current employer. At the very last minute she turned down the position, leaving that employer in a demark. To farther make a mess of the state of affairs, Recruiting Firm B lost the fee they would have nerveless from the placement, and their relationship with their client was damaged. Firm B as well blacklisted the adult female.

Incredibly, the adult female decided she wanted another shot at her dream company. She contacted one of the recruiting firms and was met with a chilly reception. She was never called back for an interview and her calls to other recruiters were ignored. She tried to utilize for positions at other companies, but found it incredibly difficult to land a task. By burning both recruitment firms, the woman was branded as difficult to piece of work with, deceptive, and unreliable.

In the recruiting world, this woman's deportment would be considered a huge "no-no."

Why job seekers are blacklisted:

Potential job seekers can be blacklisted past recruiters for a diversity of reasons, ranging from pocket-size to major offenses. Perhaps y'all told a fiddling white prevarication, or had a accident up with your old boss, who now serves as a bad reference. Existence allow go early from a contract you had through a consulting firm is besides a reason that recruiters might blacklist you. These are bodily scenarios I've encountered equally a recruiter. The criteria for getting blacklisted generally fall into two categories:

You brand a recruiter look bad, or make them fearfulness that you will brand them look bad with a customer.
You waste product a recruiter'southward time.

Bullhorn Reach has a fantastic infographic on the major reasons why job seekers are blacklisted.

Lying and/or exaggerating experiences:Roughly 21% of job seekers lie or exaggerate their qualifications on their résumé. Lying about your qualifications, or the experience you lot have for a position can be detrimental to everyone in the long run. If someone lands a job based on skills they lied about, it would rapidly become apparent they aren't match for the job. The employee is out of a job and at present has a black mark on their résumé for lying. The employer has to expend time, free energy, and money to fill the position again. Additionally, the recruiter's reputation takes a accident with their client, the employer. When a recruiter markets a candidate, they are using the information they were provided. If information technology turns out a candidate lied, then the candidate is perceived to be untrustworthy, and that information is passed along to other recruiters.

Lying can come back to haunt you lot. Be truthful well-nigh your experience and qualifications when applying to a job

Using different recruiters to apply for the same job: Last week I touched upon how recruiters collect fees for the successful hiring of a candidate. However, just 1 recruiter can collect a fee per candidate. In other words, if a chore seeker uses 2 recruiters to state the same job, only one recruiter tin collect a fee. If a recruiter works to market a candidate to a customer, only to find out someone else did it first, they've only lost their pay. Employers don't want to fight with recruiters over fees, nor do recruiters want to fight over fees. Think well-nigh it this way, if someone at your job caused you to lose a potential chunk of income, would you want to piece of work with him or her ever again?

Also many résumé submissions: A job candidate who applies for too many open positions at i employer can discover themselves blacklisted. You may retrieve you lot're increasing your chances of landing a job, but the opposite actually occurs. Yous come off as desperate, and more interested in simply having a job, versus seeking a career and being a skillful fit for the employer. Too many résumé submissions also make you look unfocused in the optics of a recruiter. Desperate employees tin can exist hard to motivate, are disinterested in the job, and tend to quickly move on once they find a better position. No recruiter wants to make extra work for themselves by trying to find a suitable position within the company for the candidate. Nor is information technology a recruiter's task to do and so. Their only chore is to fill open up positions, non to find which job a potential employee would exist a adept lucifer for.

A better strategy is to boil your submissions downwardly to three positions, max. The positions should closely match upwards with your qualifications, because you desire to appear interested and focused.

Being hard to reach: Making it hard for a recruiter yous're working with to achieve you past phone can be a huge turnoff. A recruiter may call you during working hours, or while you're at home, but if you're actively seeking to change employers y'all have to go back to them inside a reasonable time. Recruiters are extremely busy with multiple candidates, and don't have much patience for playing phone tag. If they make a reasonable effort to contact you, and their calls are never returned, they will move on to the next candidate. A adept rule of pollex is to telephone call a recruiter back inside an hour (or less) of a missed call. They are more flexible with working candidates, only they'll demand to make sure that if they practice the work of arranging an interview for you during work hours, that you'll be able to brand it. Reassure them by finding away to brand a call piece of work. Likewise, yous may decline besides many jobs. It is your prerogative to pick and choose which opportunities to pursue, but if a recruiter believes that your criteria are unreasonable and y'all say no to four or 5 opportunities in a row that seem to exist suitable, they won't bother with y'all side by side time around.

Also many calls per week: You lot can exist proactive, and follow up with a recruiter to show them yous're interested in the position. In that location is a "good" frequency and a "bad" frequency when it comes to calling recruiters. It is possible to be overly-eager or outright aggressive. The Bullhorn survey reveals that 11% of recruiters have had task seekers follow up with them almost a position multiple times each week. Co-ordinate to the same survey, 43% of those recruiters have blacklisted a candidate because of those multiple calls. Getting numerous calls per solar day or week from a candidate is extremely annoying, particularly if a recruiter has already responded to them virtually their status. It'south not much different from if you were disturbed each day at work past multiple calls from telemarketers. Information technology can be a major turn off, and can make a person never desire to work with you once more.

Limiting your inquiries to once a week tin fulfill the need to know nearly your status without annoying a recruiter. A piddling patience goes a long fashion.

Being unprepared for an interview: Your recruiter has finally gotten you in front of a hiring manager, and you're completely unprepared for the interview. A failure to inquire questions, non bringing more than ane copy of a résumé, showing up belatedly, being overly nervous, and non know much most the visitor are many factors that go into a bad interview. A bad interview is a waste of time for everyone involved. You don't get the job, the hiring manager has wasted his or her fourth dimension, and the recruiter potentially adds y'all to a blacklist if information technology was more than a fluke.

An interview is your time to shine. Thoroughly researching a visitor, practicing before an interview, and projecting self-conviction are skillful ways to conduct a great interview, and to leave a peachy impression on a hiring director. Self-confidence may sound like something yous industry, but it's more like a byproduct of being prepared. This includes non just agreement the company's needs, but how to articulate how your qualifications and skills fill their needs. Good impressions mean you'll be able to obtain a referral from a recruiter or a hiring manager, or you may be considered for another job opening in the future.

Rejecting a job offer: You aced the interview, and you were offered the position within the company. You have the details of your salary, a contract, and a beginning date finalized. At the VERY last moment y'all make up one's mind to reject the job offering. At present the company that hired you is in a bind. They were expecting you lot to work for them, now that have to scramble and discover a new candidate for the task. The recruiter who vouched for you is now out of a commission fee. Such a movement makes a candidate unreliable, and is by and large a major headache for all of the involved parties. A candidate who tin can't commit to his or her obligations, or is indecisive at the very end of the hiring process is not the blazon of person a recruiter (or anyone for that matter) would desire to work with in the future.

Being unprofessional and/or disrespectful: This last topic covers a broad range of bug. You could come up off as unprofessional in an interview if yous evidence upward tardily. At the interview y'all may be dressed as well casually, or you may be negative well-nigh your previous employer. Unprofessionalism could evidence up before yous even get to the interview procedure. For example, a recruiter could wait up your online presence and find less than savory information about you on your social media outlets. Or perhaps you lot talked to a recruiter at a task networking event, and a joke came off as unprofessional. Joann Southward. Lublin writes most a number of cases where chore seekers take landed in the bad graces of recruiters in her Wall Street Journal article, "How a Black Marking Can Derail a Chore Search."

You could have a genuine, merely very emotional reaction to a task rejection, such as anger or sadness. That's uncomfortable and a recruiter volition fear you'll break downwards in front of their client. They won't consider submitting your résumé to hiring director again. Even if you lot are rejected for a chore, yous can still build a relationship with a recruiter. This could come in the form of a future opening with the company, or even a good referral. Even if a recruiter is unprofessional to you, it is in your best interest to remain professional person and calm. They still have the power to blacklist you, and word of mouth can travel quickly.

How recruiters blacklist task candidates:

Recruiters may or may non keep an bodily blacklist for chore candidates. The list can be in the form of an internal document, or carmine flag on a candidate's profile. Other times, recruiters may simply brand a mental note of a candidate they wish to never do business with again. Recruiters don't live and piece of work in a bubble. They connect and network with other recruiters, hiring managers and career coaches on a regular basis. Going dorsum to Lublin'south Wall Street Periodical piece, the opening chestnut is about a software developer who was well qualified for a position, but had terrible presentation skills. The recruiter pointed the software developer out to an 60 minutes official and a career bus. When the man inquired near relevant openings for a chore, the recruiter replied he had been checking, simply didn't find any openings. The recruiter and then quietly told the pair that he "would never submit him to any clients." That twenty-four hour period, the software developer landed on ii blacklists. The recruiting earth is especially minor. Recruiters bump into their competition all the fourth dimension. When recruiters want to advance their own career, they sometimes get to the competition, which means that the contest is rife with erstwhile colleagues.

The master point of blacklists is to raise red flags confronting the liars and misfits. Oof. Information technology'southward true, but it hurts, and this is also something that happens. Someone can evidence up on a blacklist for not presenting well, having a funny smell, wearing loud clothing, or an annoying laugh. Liars can damage the reputation of a recruiter, and tin can wreak havoc on an employer if they are non qualified for the position. Or a candidate tin be unreliable or unprofessional. Sometimes candidates are put on blacklists for good reasons, such every bit lying near qualifications. Other times, seemingly small infractions can land a candidate on a blacklist, such as joke told in poor taste at an interview or networking event. Or peradventure a erstwhile dominate doesn't like you and adds yous to a blacklist. Either manner, being on a blacklist can negatively bear on your career. Information technology can make information technology more difficult to land a position, merely we've helped good people through these things.

The negative impacts on your job transition:

Again, it can be difficult to navigate a task transition with any strikes against you, but non impossible. Good people tin can recover from being blacklisted.

Being on a recruiter's blacklist means that he or she won't frontward your résumé to a hiring director. You may be highly qualified for a position, passionate about your job, and ready to make a divergence at a visitor. None of that matters, if you're labeled as unpresentable or unemployable. You lot won't get interviews for positions, and you could find your career stalled. If you're employed, you may be stuck at your current employer for much longer than y'all want to be. The inability to change jobs means that you won't be able to improve your bacon or compensation. Employees who change jobs tin earn ten% to 20% more than than someone who stays at their current job for more than two years.

If you're currently unemployed, the results of being on a blacklist are even worse. It can take you much longer to state a new task. A task that could normally have weeks or a few months, could exist delayed by years thanks to a blackness marker on your file, if you attempt to confront the job search by yourself. The continued loss of income is devastating for your personal and professional person life. No one wants to accept to burn down through unemployment compensation, or savings just to survive.

Being on a blacklist doesn't have to be a permanent predicament. First, you have to find out if you're on a blacklist. A career coach could assist you detect if you've been blacklisted, or a recruiter you have a relationship with could also help. Other times, yous may immediately know if you lot've fallen into a recruiter's bad graces.

Recruiters are reasonable people, and reaching out to make amends can go a long fashion in getting yourself removed from a blacklist. You can refer people in your network to recruiters equally a favor to them. You lot tin can treat them to lunch, come across them in person, and apologize for the offense. The important part is to get off of a recruiter'due south blacklist in one case you're on information technology IF you tin. If you tin can't, you volition have to state a job without recruiters, which people do all the time, especially with our assistance. Of grade, the all-time way to avoid the blacklist is to be your best self at all times and understand the powerful affect your deportment and words tin take.

[Writer update: This postal service has generated a lot of bully conversation, and many have voiced a lot of frustration about how recruiters don't seem to phone call dorsum. In response to this demand, I have written a report specifically designed to assistance y'all get recruiters to make Y'all a priority. Every bit always, feedback is welcomed.]

Karen Huller, author of Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-precipitous Career Focus: Pinpoint Your Purpose and Passion in 30 Days , is founder of Ballsy Careering, a career management firm specializing in the income-optimizing power of social media and personal branding, as well as JoMo Rise, LLC, a workflow gamification company that turns work into productive play. While the bulk of her 20 years of professional experience has been within the recruiting and employment industry, her publications, presentations and coaching also draw from feel in performance, broadcasting, marketing and sales.

Karen was one of the first LinkedIn trainers and is known widely for her ability to identify new trends in hiring and personal marketing. She is a Certified Professional Résumé Author with a Bachelor of Fine art in Communication Studies and Theater from Ursinus College and is an Adjunct Professor of Career Management and Professional Development at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business organisation.

Epic Careering offers both ane-on-one branding and coaching every bit well as DIY tools to accommodate the needs and budgets of task seekers.