Ask a Manager: I Don't Want To Move To Texas

[minoanmiss]

Content advisory: recent sociopolitical news, not-so-recent lawmaking, reproductive rights and trans people legally imperiled.

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Ask a manager: Our callers hate voicemail

[purlewe]

#3 in this grouping: https://www.askamanager.org/2022/05/job-candidates-keep-ghosting-us-coworkers-sharing-a-house-and-more.html

I answer the main phone line for our division. I’ve noticed that no one wants to leave voicemails anymore. I’ll transfer the line to someone and the person will just call back to tell me they got voicemail. Okay? I tell them to leave a message and they fight me on it. They will call back multiple times instead of just leaving a voicemail. This isn’t just one or two people. This is a majority of the callers I get. Even when I let people know they might get voicemail and just to leave one (we are a smaller division with only 1-2 people handling each program) they still call back and harass me about getting a voicemail. I think they either want me to hunt the person down or make them magically appear out of thin air. Most of the time they just call back and tell me that they got a voicemail and are upset about it. I normally just say, “Well, then the best thing to do is to leave them a message and they’ll get back to you.”Then I get some more huffs and puffs and I transfer them right back to the line. Is this just how people are now or can I use different language? I sometimes offer to take a message for people and will just email the person to call them back, but I don’t like doing that because it makes me feel like I’m people’s personal assistant and that’s not the case. Yeah, people do not like voicemail anymore! It’s super interesting. A lot of people have stopped using it entirely in their personal lives, instead assuming the other person will see the missed call from them and call back, or they’ll text instead, or they’ve almost entirely cut out phone calls in their non-work life anyway so voicemail feels like a strange relic of the past. But whether or not people like it, voicemail is still very much a normal business tool — in most offices, anyway.

 

Is it possible that people think that if you take the message for them, they’ll be more likely to get a call back? A lot of people don’t listen to their voicemail as much as they used to, even at work, and it’s possible that these callers know from experience that their chances of a return call anytime soon are low. If it’s definitely not your job to pass messages on, another option would be to say, “I can give you her email address if you’d like to try emailing instead.” (And maybe pass on to someone with some power to address it that people need to deal with their voicemail messages more often.)

But if none of that solves it and people just want to tell you how much they dislike voicemail, all you can really do is what you’ve been doing. You could try adding, “I know she checks voicemail regularly so she should get back to you soon” and that might be the reassurance they need … but obviously only say that if you know it to be true.

Another Ask A Manager: Job applicants whose voicemail doesn’t work

[purlewe]

The question yesterday about people not wanting to leave voicemail got me thinking about a recent situation.

My organization recently hired a couple of people. One role was a more specialized position, and one was entry-level. In the hiring process, I made contacts to set up the interviews. In multiple instances, I ran into people’s voicemails that were not yet set up or where inboxes were full. I was really hoping to actually talk to the candidates, just to make the scheduling easier than it can be when exchanging multiple emails back and forth. And in some instances, email wasn’t as good an option, given the platform they used to apply.

I did end up sending a couple of emails / LinkedIn messages with a couple of the candidates for the more specialized role, as we had a smaller pool of candidates from which to draw. But there was a part of me that was a little miffed that someone who is actively looking for a job doesn’t try harder to make themselves available.

How far should we go to try to get in contact with candidates who have applied for jobs with us? I’m curious about the best way to approach these situations. Is it appropriate for a potential employer to text? I don’t have a “work” phone, so any texts would be coming from my personal cell, too.

Yeah, people are who job-searching should confirm that their voicemail is set up and not full, and they should check it regularly. While lots of people don’t use voicemail much anymore, it’s still a very normal business tool, and loads of employers still use it. When you’re applying to jobs, it makes no sense not to ensure your voicemail is a working option.

On your side: it’s reasonable to be a little irritated, but it still makes sense to switch to email in those cases, assuming it’s someone you want to reach. If a candidate is already borderline and you have plenty of other strong applicants who you can reach, that’s different — I could see not going the extra mile to reach someone who isn’t terribly competitive and hasn’t made themselves easy to reach. But otherwise, trying email is the way to go.

I would only text as a last resort. It doesn’t feel as unprofessional in hiring as it used to, but it’s still a less expected method of first contact about a job.