A friend of mine is searching for jobs right now, which can be a demoralizing experience made worse by events like the one he described to me this week. A recruiter scheduled an online interview for my friend with the manager making the hire. But the manager neither accepted nor declined the scheduling request. So the recruiter’s recommended solution was to show up online anyway just in case the manager arrived.
What message does that send to an applicant? How does that make someone more likely to accept a future job with the company, which is ostensibly the purpose of good recruiting? And most importantly, how would that recruiter—and the manager—feel if the same thing happened to their significant other, son or daughter, or best friend?
My guess is that they would not be so casual about devaluing someone’s time if they knew the someone whose time was being devalued.
The college or job application, the online chat with tech support, the phone call to customer service–there’s always a human being on each side of those exchanges. The more they treat each other like the humans they are, the better the experience, and likely the outcome, will be.