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One of the reasons you’re probably thinking of contacting a Recruitment Agency like ours in the first place is so that you can avoid taking on a toxic or ‘vampire’ candidate as your next employee. We’re sure you know the kinds of people we mean. They look promising and charming on their CV or in the interview room, but once they’re actually on your payroll, they begin to damage your company in all manner of ways. How Can One Define A ‘Toxic’ Employee? We’re sure you’ve heard some horror stories down the years about toxic employees – or had to deal with a few yourself. Perhaps a former worker of yours was so lazy that you had to place their desk near your office, so that you could keep an eye on whether they were actually working? Or maybe a fellow business owner or HR manager of yours took on someone who constantly mistreated colleagues and contributed to a strained atmosphere in the office? None of this, though, quite touches on how one can define a toxic employee. Such an employee may be best defined as someone who doesn’t fit the company culture, resists doing the job that they’re employed to do, and damages morale among their co-workers. There’s a difference, though, between a toxic employee and someone who is merely incompetent at their job. For someone to be the former rather than the latter, their toxic behaviour needs to be intentional. Furthermore, a toxic employee is contagious – their attitude spreads, potentially infecting your wider organisation. The Best Ways To Spot A Toxic Worker Or Candidate It isn’t always easy to predict who will be toxic as an employee. Nonetheless, there are certain commonly-observed signs among such workers that we would urge you to look out for. It might be that the candidate in question doesn’t include any former bosses among their references, and gives strange reasons for this, such as all of their past bosses having retired, died, left the company or changed their phone number. Or maybe job descriptions and dates don’t match across their CV and LinkedIn profiles, or they seem more interested in tangential aspects of the role than in its core duties? Toxic candidates can also often be guilty of dismissive attitudes towards past or current colleagues or clients. None of these signs, of course, guarantee that a given employee will be toxic. They do, though, give you good reason to be very cautious. Think, today, about the current candidates you have for your vacancies, and whether they could have a toxic influence in your own workplace. If you do have concerns, get in touch with Webrecruit to benefit from the hands-on and informed expertise of a truly Leading Recruitment Agency.
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