Phone Follow-up: Job Seeking in a Perfect World

If there’s one thing I’d wish for you as a job seeker, it’d be that whenever you called the organization where you’ve either applied or are thinking of applying, you’d be met with kindness by whoever answers the phone that day.

You’d hear a friendly voice giving the name of the place and asking how they can help you.

You’d then say something along the lines of, “Hi, my name’s ___  ____. I recently applied for the junior accounting position and haven’t heard anything since I got an automatic reply that my application had been received. I’m wondering if the hiring committee has any timeline about when I might hear if I’ll be called in for an interview. Could you put me on with someone who could give me this information?”

The voice would then reply pleasantly, “Sure, I can. Let me see if _____ _____ in HR is available. If not, you’ll come back to me, and if that happens I’ll find someone else there who can help you, okay?”

This is what’d happen in my perfect job seeking world.

The Black Hole 

Yet that’s not the way it hardly ever goes. I know, because I’ve been that person calling to find out what’s going with a hiring process after not getting any response to my labor-intensive application – sometimes after having sent it into the black hole of a recruiting website. Which is, by the way, the worst thing for anyone applying for a job.

I’ve been at various times barked at, shut down mid-sentence and transferred without a word to the wrong department.  But more often, I’ve just been met with what I’d describe as a suddenly odd tone, an almost suspicious one that implies there’s something a bit wrong and pushy about my calling to follow up my attempt to get a job at this workplace.

I exaggerate, I know. And being oversensitive when you’re looking for work is bound to cause you a lot of unnecessary grief.

It’s not you, it’s me

Of course, it helps if I try to not to take whatever frosty response I get personally. Telling myself that maybe this person is having a bad day either at home or at work. Maybe this person is looking for a new job him-/herself. Who knows?

But once or twice I’ve gotten that friendly voice on the other end of the line which, without hesitation, offers to help me out, even answering my questions then and there instead of sending me along to someone else. This action puts a good dent in my deflective applicant shield that I normally put on before making this type of phone call.

It can happen to you

It happened to me just the other day, perfect!

Maybe it’ll happen to you, too, the next time you make this kind of call?

Hope so, because you need all the encouragement you can get when looking for the job you want and deserve!