‘You’re an idiot and super unreliable’: Recruiter threatens to tank career of job candidate to cover up their own mistake

It’s hard enough to get a job in this world without the people who are supposed to help you doing their best to burn that bridge down and destroy your self-esteem. Especially over something that was their fault to begin with.

Ahmad Accino, a video engineer by trade, went viral on X (formerly Twitter) for a thread titled “I just experienced a recruiter horror story today.” Sure enough, Ahmad’s experience proved so nightmarish that it went viral on TikTok too, with a little help from user Nikki Mack.

As backed up by screenshots of the exchange, Ahmad revealed that he was all set to attend a job interviewer at 5pm ET when, half an hour before, his recruiter, Jordan Zmick of Think Recruiting, texted him to ask why did he not show at the interview. As Ahmad knew he was definitely on time, as per information Zmick himself had given him, he explained this in his reply — only for Zmick to go from passive aggressive to nuclear meltdown in an instant.

“You’re an idiot and super unreliable,” Zmick yelled in text form. “It’s no wonder you didn’t finish college.” (This isn’t the point, but Ahmad is currently studying and is about to finish college). The rowdy recruiter continued: “I won’t work with you again and will do my best to make sure other recruiters and companies know the same.” He then claims that he sent Ahmad the interview details multiple times — Ahmad stresses that he received literally one email about it.

With his shockingly unprofessional behavior exposed to the entire internet, you can probably guess what happened next? Yes, Zmick finally reached out to apologize… but in the most half-hearted way possible. Never admitting he made the mistake with the timing mix-up, Zmick instead claims that he had the flu at the time and implied that his medication was to blame for why he “acted impulsively and rudely.”

Urgh, so, OK, the guy isn’t repentant, but surely his employers will get wind of this and fire him, right? Unfortunately, there’s just one problem with that — Zmick runs his own recruiting business. Ahmad found this out the hard way after he wrote an email to complain about Zmick’s conduct, only for that email to go straight into Zmick’s own inbox.

With Ahmad sharing his story on X and Nikki spreading the word on TikTok, it’s no surprise that many more people came forward to admit that they had worked with Zmick too and found him to be just as unpleasant. Some of the stories told to Ahmad, that he then passed to Nikki, include how Zmick once got fired and then “swore off the CEO” on his way out, berated someone with calls and texts when they said they didn’t like his company, and when someone informed him an interview hadn’t gone well he told them “I wouldn’t have hired you either.”

With the recruiter in question heading up his own company, there’s not too much more the power of social media can do here. His fate rests in his own hands, so let’s just hope Mr. Zmick learns some valuable lessons from this whole viral experience, improves his conduct in future, and learns to take accountability for his mistakes. Unless he’s just had one long cold throughout his entire career, in which case he should probably go see a doctor.