Cellphones: Is yours working?

Growing up, my family had a rotary phone (yes, I'm dating myself a little). Then there was the phone that hung on the wall with the super long cord that would stretch halfway up the stairs and would invariably turn into a twisted mess after a stressful discussion about your latest boy crush. Then, cordless phones came along and made for a complete game-changer with the ability to hide in your room. Then…cellphones! Mobile access! Woot!

Anyway, when applying for a job, the default method for a potential employer to reach you is – wait for it – via phone. Shocker. We get your application, we call you, we discuss the details of your application. You know what's really irritating? We get your application, we call you, and… your phone is disconnected.

Yeah. Since I’m writing a post about this particular annoyance, feel free to assume this happens on a semi-regular basis.

If you're serious about finding employment, it is unequivocally important to have a working phone. We will reach out via email, but let's be honest: just about everything you don't have already have in your address book is going to go to junk/spam, and who checks that regularly? Nobody.

[Sidebar: Ok, fine. I have a thing about the junk mail piling up and understand that important things do tend to get routed to junk/spam, so I check mine at least once a week. But, I’m pretty sure that makes me one out of seven billion people on this planet.]

I had a candidate knock an interview out of the park a couple of weeks ago. The supervisor at the client site told me he had to get approval from his management before he could hire this guy. We called the guy after his interview to give him the feedback, but his phone was disconnected. Being the diligent worker I am, I texted and emailed him (just in case).

About two days later, he called to see if there was any feedback from his interview. Obviously he didn't get the text or email...sigh.

Nonetheless, we told the guy the supervisor was interested but needed to get approval from his management before moving forward. We were expecting an update in about a week and would call him as soon as the position opened up.

Guy says he’s very interested and will wait for our call.

[One week passes]

Supervisor reaches out to let us know he's good to get this guy moving on the hiring process, so I call him to give him the good news. His phone's disconnected. Great. I text. And email. Then call again the next day. And the day after that. Phone's still off. Or disconnected or whatever the case may be.

This dude just missed his chance to get hired because his phone's off. I can almost guarantee you he's going to call in about a week asking if there was any update.

Yeah, bro, I reached out several times via phone, text, and email, and you never got back to me, so I gave your job to someone else.

I can almost also guarantee that he's going to either be irritated that the position was filled or irritated that nobody called him.

Now I'm pre-irritated just thinking about how that conversation is going to go when he gets around to eventually calling me back and post-irritated because my client was anticipating on getting this guy started, and I had to go back to them and tell them I was unable to get in touch with him to get him rolling. You want a job? Maybe you should get a reliable means of someone getting in touch with you first.