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.

Comments

[jenett]

One thing I've hit is that when I'm working at home, if someone wants a call back, either I have to give out my personal cell number, or I have to do some juggling to set things up so I'm not giving out that number. (I do not need to make a ton of calls - right now it's about one every month or three. I dislike personal phone calls unless I'm expecting them, and always have my phone ringer set to silent unless I'm expecting a call")

The work voicemail is set up to say "Please email us at..." (which we'd rather do anyway, since our reply with info almost always includes some links and other stuff that makes more sense in email) but some people get super grumpy about it.

That said, when I've been job hunting, I change my voice mail to something appropriate, put in a comment about when I can return calls (something like "I am not usually able to take calls from X to y due to my work hours, please let me know a good time to try and reach you, or please email" and run from there. Last time I was job hunting, I was a librarian with significant front desk time (so couldn't step away for a personal call), and was also working weird hours. But those worked fine.)