Ways to Make Your Job Offer Disappear

One would think that given the current state of the economy, finding good candidates and getting them on board would be easy. On the contrary, we have found increasing difficulties in getting people from the offer stage to starting employment. In the last 3 months we've had pulled job offers for the following reasons:

Positive drug test
Come on folks, HR people consider this a rudimentary intelligence test. Don't mess this up. Regardless of your feelings about drug use, you need to be able to pass a drug test. It's extremely common in the hiring process.

Issues with criminal offenses
Two different ones in this category. One was someone who ran from the cops on his motorcycle, thinking if he went fast enough they'd let him go. Yes, that is actually what he told us. He's obviously never watched a single episode of COPS. The 2nd person had a fairly recent DUI. His job would have involved driving to visit customers. We passed on hiring him.

Lying about education
On his resume and application, a candidate indicated he had a B.S. from XYZ University. When the background check was done, it showed he attended for 3 months! That's it. He admitted to lying when questioned about it, but what choice did he have? Part of his offer letter stated he had to provide a transcript before he could start. I'm wondering how he was planning for us to not notice the gaping discrepancy.

Since you've seen some big no-no's, what should you do?
1. Staying away from drugs is a good start.

2. Be upfront about any issues that may come to light during a background check such as criminal convictions. Taking the offensive gives you the opportunity to tell your side of the story (and it had best be truthful, see next point) upfront. Employers don't like surprises in this area.

3. Be honest. A white lie is a lie. Many times simply not telling the truth on your application will immediately remove you from consideration. More and more companies do background checks. Tell the truth, you should be doing that anyway.

4. Be responsive to requests. Our offer letter lists the items that must be completed before you start. It's pretty standard stuff: pass drug test, provide references, send us an official transcript. There may be a few others depending on the position. When you receive this list, work on it immediately. "But I don't start for 2 weeks" you might say. I repeat, DO IT NOW. First, things take time. It may take several days to receive the results from drug tests; we've seen transcripts take weeks (we actually once had someone drive to the school to get a copy, and the school was pretty far away). It's YOUR problem if things are delayed. We are quite serious. If they aren't in our hands,  you don't start. Also, when you put off getting these things done, we start to get concerned. Has the person changed his or her mind? When you wait until the last minute to drug test, we figure you have a reason to wait, and that doesn't give us a warm fuzzy.

Summary: The job market is tough. Treat the offer process properly so that you can make the successful transition from candidate to employee.