Think Human Nature When on the Hunt

Does it all go back to the instinctual hunt?

I met my long-time friend (whom I consider to be very business savvy) for a pedicure the other day, and she said she was waiting a few hours to email a company back about setting up a Skype interview for the following day, because she “wanted to play a lil hard to get.” I was floored. Although this concept was far from new to me in the dating world, I had never really thought of doing that in the job search process. I’ve always heard business people stand behind the whole first come, first served perspective on things. (Isn’t that the kind of promptness a company would want out of an employee?) But she explained that she didn’t want to come off as desperate. She wanted to come off as a desirable candidate who has “options.”

I set out to do a little research and found this BNET article. In it, CC Holland agrees that “playing hard-to-get is still the right approach. If you don’t respect yourself, how can you expect a potential employer to respect you?” This is true. They had already been beating around the bush with my friend, and she was annoyed by it. She was sick of the ways companies were treating her in the job search.

This aspect of human nature does seem to carry over from dating into the workplace. We want what we can’t have or what seems more desired—like the hot playerish guy that all the girls swoon over, even though he’s an a-hole.

I’ve written posts in which I’ve compared a job interview to a first date, but my friend’s perspective was a new concept to me. In this economy, it seems backwards to play hard to get when there are dozens of other people vying for the position. But maybe she is right. As of today, she did make it past the first round of interviews and into the final pool of applicants.

What do you think? Have you played hard to get with an employer?

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