Fair warning: Recruiter William Vanderbloemen behaves like an ass

Will your future employer treat you like a slave with no personal time? If William Vanderbloemen is recruiting you, that might be a clue.

According to Business Insider, Vanderbloemen has devised a few little tests before and after job interviews to see how candidates behave:

Vanderbloemen’s company uses the text-message test [sending candidates a text at 10pm and requesting a response] after job interviews for certain roles at his own hard-charging firm or for jobs where clients expect workers to be super responsive.

Text back quickly and it might up your chances of snagging the job, at least at Vanderbloemen’s 45-person firm. . . .

[S]hoot back a text within the one-minute response time his sales and marketing teams operate by? “Then we’re like, ‘Yeah, no, he might be the same kind of crazy that we are,'” Vanderbloemen said. . . .

“For our company, particularly certain teams within our company, it’s a direct indicator to us of whether you are dysfunctional like us,” he quipped.

Vanderbloemen doesn’t just rely on the text-message test. One time, while in New York City, he got turned around and realized he didn’t have time to make it to the coffee shop where he’d planned to meet a job candidate. So he contacted the man and asked whether they could meet somewhere else. The man responded: “No, I don’t mind. I like change.”

Vanderbloemen was impressed. Now, he’ll sometimes change the location of an interview 30 minutes before it’s set to take place to see how a candidate responds.

What a schmuck.

I suppose it’s better if the mind games are transparently manipulative

Unless it’s a total freaking emergency, your employer should not text you at 10:00 at night and expect a response.

Nor should they fuck around with changing meeting locations just to see how obsequious you are.

These are power moves. They are intended, not to gauge “responsiveness,” but to see how willing you are to subjugate your personal freedom to a workplace.

Succeeding requires prioritizing ADHD over concentration and loyalty over self-respect. Not the qualities I’d prioritize in a hire, but hey, that’s just me.

I worked for many startups. I put in very long hours. But when I did that, I did it to achieve a goal we had agreed on. Which long hours I put in was up to me, and I was rewarded, not for giving up my will as a human being, but for accomplishing what the company needed.

If you are looking for a job and a recruiter behaves like this, he — and it’s most likely a he, since I’ve never seen a woman manager behave like this — is doing you a favor.

He is revealing exactly what kind of place you are going to be working, and the level of obedience that will be required.

If being the sub in a dom/sub relationship is your idea of a great workplace, you’ve found your match.

But if you have any self respect, you know it’s time to find a different opening. One where you can actually trust the management not to lie or set up silly loyalty tests just to screw with you.

You could thank Vanderbloemen for revealing his true self. But you don’t have to, I’ll do it for you. Thanks, dude. I hope you and your band of psyops gaslighters are happy together.