A few years back I had a long back and forth (and productive) email exchange with an older engineer (in his 50s, like I was at the time) on a matter of a particular old computer. He lives in a former soviet state. At some point he mentioned job prospects in his country are limited and was willing to relocate. He had excellent English and as a fellow nerd who loves getting into the low level details, I thought he might be a fit at my large & successful US-based company that has offices all over the world. I said I'd be happy to forward his resume to my employer.

A few weeks later HR contacted me: Uh, that was really painfully awkward. The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting. The prospective employee went on a rant and said he had never been so disrespected, and it made a terrible impression of how unprofessional my company was by being so cavalier by using his first name.

Needless to say that was the end of the interview process, and I never heard from the guy again. Even if he was a technical fit, the cultural fit was off the charts wrong.