’Hiring horror story’: Mumbai entrepreneur called a ’b**ch’, says ’appalled by audacity of candidate’

Mumbai-based entrepreneur and the founder of Grump Senain Sawant has shared an alarming incident that happened while she was interviewing a GenZ candidate online. The interview, which was necessitated because of lack of information on the candidate's CV, had ended with an “off” tone, said Sawant. But what was really jolting were the text messages that followed.

The job aspirant verbally abused her during exchange of messages on WhatsApp.

In a detailed LinkedIn post, the Grump founder shared that the company had been struggling to hire the “right people” for a couple of months. There were either people with less experience and extremely high expectations, or people who are just not ready to put in the work, despite the company being willing to give them an honest shot and train them, to work their way up to their ideal position.

But this one candidate crossed a “different line”.

Sawant said she had scheduled a video interview with this candidate who applied for the role of a social media executive. However, their CV did not have enough information for an immediate hire, and therefore, the founder scheduled a call to see whether they had the potential to be an Executive or could be trained as an intern for a couple of months first.

The call too, began in an unusual way. The camera of the candidate was shut for the “video interview”. On asking why, Sawant was told that they don't own a computer, and were using a phone, whose software wasn't up to date, and therefore, the camera wasn't working.

“They joined the call with the camera off, said they don't own a computer and something about ios update not allowing video calls. I responded with, 'how do you usually work?', to which they replied, ‘My previous company gave us a laptop, but if one is needed, I can arrange’,” Sawant said.

The Grump founder then asked the candidate to join at a time when they can turn the video on, “since this an interview and I need to see who I'm speaking with”.

“They said ‘Fine’ and cut the call.”

Sawant noted that “their tone was off from the start”. “They weren't audible to begin with and it seemed like they were out in public from the amount of noise in the background.”

She then shared screenshots of a series of text messages of what followed, after they re-scheduled the interview.

In the messages, Sawant pointed out that it was “clearly mentioned” in the calendar invite that it would be a video interview and that she has not heard of an iOS update that does not allow video calls, as the candidate had claimed.

The candidate got defensive, and according to the screenshot, said they applied for the role of a social media executive and not for an internship.

"Your resume speaks otherwise. All the best," Sawant replied.

To this, the candidate said they are "okay skipping this one", adding that they had a year of work experience.

"With all due respect, don't be a bi**h. The arrogance you speak with," the candidate said in their next set of messages.

Surprised and shocked at the same time, Sawant responded: "Excuse me?"

Continuing in her LinkedIn post, Sawant said the younger generation is in clear need of strong guidance.

“As a young entrepreneur myself, I am appalled by the audacity of this candidate to think it is okay to call the company founder, or anyone in a hiring position for that matter, a Bi***.”