New hire quits on first day after being issued a work laptop, HR suspects…

An HR professional recently shared a baffling first-day encounter with a new hire. After waiting two long months for a top candidate to join, the entire recruitment process collapsed within hours over a single piece of hardware: the company laptop. HR claimed the hire wanted to use his personal laptop instead of the one provided the company. She explained that she thinks it was because he didn’t resign from his current position and was moonlighting with the second job.An HR’s tweet about a new joinee quitting on the first day has prompted a series of social media responses. (Representative image). (Unsplash)“I hired someone for a role. Waited 2 months for him to resume. Day 1, onboarding started and the moment I mentioned he would be assigned a work laptop, his whole mood changed. He tried to talk me into using his personal laptop instead. I told him it’s not our practice. He accepted, collected the laptop and carried on with his onboarding,” the Nigeria-based HR professional tweeted.Also Read: Ahmedabad CEO hires candidate despite career gap, explains why: ‘Her English is almost zero’She shared, “ close of work, he stopped my office to keep the laptop and said he came with his own and couldn’t carry both home. I collected it and bade him goode. That evening, I got a text that he wouldn’t be joining. Someone I waited 2 months for.”The HR continued, “From my observation? He didn’t resign from his current job. The company laptop would have blown his cover. He couldn’t run two jobs with two different laptops sitting on his desk.”The story was shared the professional in response to a tweet asking, “What could make a candidate accept an offer, resume and not show up again after the first day?”How did social media react?An individual commented, “There are some people who can run four jobs on one laptop, and you would never know. They just know how to do hidden stuff that you can’t find out any fishy movement. That guy wasn’t that experienced.” Another added, “I have a company laptop. I do my freelance and outside work on it. My company does not seem to care and has never confronted me about it. Because I am doing their job very well regardless.”Also Read: Job seeker gets rejected after four rounds of interviews despite CEO’s praise: ‘You are a runner-up’A third expressed, “That’s really crazy. That’s why it’s important to do background checks before sending an offer, because many of them have plans. It’s unfair that many people don’t have jobs at all, while some overfed people use HRs to play.”A fourth wrote, “This is wild. The moment company tools become a problem, it usually means there’s something to hide. But it also says something about today’s job market; people are juggling roles because they don’t feel secure. Trust goes both ways.”(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)