How to Turn Off a Candidate, Part VI - The Disinvitation!

Almost everyone who has ever watched more than a few episodes of "Seinfeld" sooner or later starts drawing the inevitable comparisons between the show's quirkier settings and life's equally unusual events.

But sometimes the parallels are really uncanny.

In the famous "backwards episode," (aka, "the one where they go to India"), Elaine receives what she regards as a "disinvitation" to a friend's wedding.  The reasoning behind the "disinvite" stems from the fact that she receives the invitation only a few days before the actual event itself (which is in India).  Feeling deliberately snubbed, she decides to attend the wedding as a means of avenging the apparent slight.  "You mean you're going to go all the way to India just to attend a wedding out of spite?" Jerry asks.  "Yep," Elaine says.

What brought this to mind was the experience a woman I know had recently where she received what can probably only be described as a "disinterview."  Put more simply, the company asked her to "keep Tuesday morning open" for a possible interview but never actually got around to confirming either the interview or the planned time for it until after 9:00 p.m. the night before:

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Exxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: "[Name]" <[Name]@yahoo.com>
Sent: Mon, January 31, 2011 9:06:09 PM
Subject: Tomorrow

Hi.  I meant to give you a call today, but the day got the better of me…apologies.

As mentioned on Friday, mid-morning tomorrow works to meet with some of the team.  I have you starting at 10am and meeting with me, [PERSON] (who is a Marketing Manager on the [XTZ] team) and [SOMEONE] (whom you spoke with).

Please let me know if that works for you.

Thanks.

Exxxxxxxxxxxxxx


I've written before about some of the ways companies try to shift the blame to candidates for mixups regarding meetings and planned events or how they can be known to cancel interviews on the spot after someone has driven across town, but even by forgiving standards, this is another low.  You have to wonder if,  like Elaine's "disinvitation," the company is deliberately trying to dissuade the candidate from interviewing.

Suppose a candidate tried this approach and tried leaving a voice mail on someone's office machine at 9:07 the night before. "Mr. Johnson?  Suzie Q. here.  I apologize for the late notice, but I appreciate your keeping "mid morning" open for me tomorrow.  As luck would have it, I can see you at 9:00 a.m...." Chances are the candidate would not only be denied an opportunity for interviewing with Mr. Johnson, she probably wouldn't even be admitted to the building.

But leaving that aside, this candidate was apparently expected to block out her entire morning - remember she needs to allow for time to and from the location - for an interview that might or might not come through.  And on top of that she somehow was expected to be online after 9:00 p.m. to get the message that the interview would be going forward.  She would then have to make arrangements to get out of whatever professional obligations she already had scheduled for the next day (part time job, volunteering, personal commitments like child care, etc.) and get downtown for the interview.  And assuming she was able to do that, would there be an actual job waiting for her?

"No, there wouldn't," the woman told me after sharing her story. "They indicated the already had other candidates for the position, so this would simply have been another informational or pipeline interview.  In other words, even if I could have made it, you could hardly say it would have been worth it."

So what did she do?  Upon receiving the e-mail the next day - at 9:15 a.m. when she logged onto her personal e-mail from her office location - the woman sent a polite but steadfast reply advising the recruiter that the time did not work, that she had a part-time job she would need to arrange time away from (and which she indicated she had mentioned during initial conversations) but that she was still interested in possibly rescheduling for another time.  She followed up with a voice-mail that afternoon and another the next day.

She never received a reply. 

"I can't say I'm that upset," she confessed.  "Given the lack of notice that they gave and the lack of any follow-up or response, I'm not convinced it would have been a good use of my time to have tried to interview with them anyway."