The Phone Screen that Wasn't

I was supposed to interview a candidate on Thursday. This isn't usually a problem, as we do interviews all the time. The fact that it was a phone interview was even less of a problem. The weird thing was: the candidate's phone was set up to reject caller id blocked numbers. Well, every phone number at InternetCompany is caller id blocked (I'm not really sure how the recruiter got in contact with him in the first place, but that's not my problem, really).

Previously, this candidate had been scheduled for three phone interviews, but because of his phone problem none of them had panned out. The last one he said that he had fixed his phone, but apparently he hadn't. Frustrated the recruiter decided to have him call us. Thus, she set up an appointment for him to call me in a conference room. Kind of inconvenient, but I can understand his preferences.

I got there early, prepared to have to wait a few minutes. Five minutes turned to ten. Then ten to fifteen. Then fifteen to twenty. No call.

I decided to try his number, and was surprised when I got through (as an aside, it rang a number of times and I was about to give up when he answered). He did answer, but apparently couldn't hear me. I got so frustrated that when he hung up I didn't try calling back. Instead I sent an email to the recruiter asking her to get things sorted out before anyone wasted any more time on him.

She replied and suggested that we just stop trying. I'll be honest, the first draft of my email to her said pretty much that, so accepting her suggestion wasn't a difficult task for me.

Ultimately, we rejected him. Let this be a lesson to you job hunters — if you want a job, make yourself available. If a company can't contact you they'll assume you aren't serious about the position and with every increase in effort their charity in your general direction decreases, a lot.