Many people in life are dishonest, and they think they are being honest.
Lets take recruiters. They ask you to have a certain number of years with a skill. Then you start to tell them what your skill is they say you don’t have enough, when they haven’t listened and gotten to know you.
When we judge others prematurely we lose on a great opportunity. Now some recruiters will say, you either have six years of experience or you don’t. Lets analyze this.
If you have six years of low quality, low engagement how does that make you better than someone who has high quality, high engagement of the subject and less years? We have seen that the biggest companies are moving away from college degrees. They understand that the number of years of study is not correlated with the competence and ability of the employee.
What if you have six years of high quality, high engagement but you are lazy? Plenty of people have the knowledge and skills and don’t use them. Isn’t character just as important as skills? In fact I would argue that someone of character gains skills and uses them, because that is who they are. In my career I haven’t known everything in every job that I have worked, but I have learned it quickly and mastered it. Why are you looking at employees as static things?
Now in an environment where there are many people looking for work companies waste their time and resources looking for the unicorn. What a stupid thing this is. If someone can do the majority of the work and is passionate and intelligent then hire them. The lost productivity of not hiring someone can not be balanced by a perfect candidate.
It is not honest when you don’t discuss your assumptions with the person you are making assumptions on. It just shows that you are a lazy recruiter. Recruiters by default have to find red flags to get rid of people. However they also have to give an opportunity for someone to show who they are. Text messages don’t do it. A phone call is really the best way to get a sense of who someone is.
It is dishonest to reject someone before you give them a chance to answer your question. Don’t do it recruiters. They will never consider you or work for that company again.