In my experience, all recruiters run about 5 minutes late. I’ve come to expect it and that’s fine. (They also all start with the same question: Is this still a good time? Well, I blocked it on my calendar just for you, so …)
However, we all have those days where there are back to back meetings and I imagine the life of a recruiter is often back to back calls, where they run over, or where you’re digging for the right contact information at the last minute. However, today, I had an actual hiring manager ghost me for an interview.
It was for a contract role and the third-party recruiter had set up the interview. I was there, ready, prepped, hair and makeup done, sitting on the Teams call for 15 minutes. At 15 minutes, I pinged the recruiter who then chased down the client. I dropped off the call after 20 minutes, because I had a hard stop due to a coaching client of my own.
Apparently the hiring manager had been pulled into another meeting. I get that. But I could have potentially sat there for 30 minutes, ready to go, with no one reaching out to me. If I hadn’t reached out to the 3rd party recruiter, would anyone have reached out to me?
I’ll talk a lot about the Candidate Experience, because I truly believe it is something that has fallen by the wayside. Companies do not particularly seem to care about the impression they are making on the candidate. Companies forget - we are interviewing them too. This is not just a one way street.
I recently had a recruiter who emailed me when she thought she was going to be 2 minutes late. 2 minutes! She checked in with me throughout the interview process and when I didn’t get the role, she didn’t send an automated rejection email. She sent a personal note and called me. I later sent her a thank you note because while the outcome was disappointing for me, working with her was a great experience and she was a great representative of her company.
As for today’s interview? It’s rescheduled for next week, but the red flags are already flying. 🚩