HR nightmares series: the middleman date messup
What happened and how to prevent this in future
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Scheduling a call with a person is easy. You can directly contact a person and arrange anything. However, what about scheduling a call with a person through a middleman?
Today or yesterday?
A recruitment agency is looking for a candidate for an abroad company (yes, they are still looking because of their aggressive conversations). Time difference between me and the company is huge.
A known fact is making arrangements via a middleman can be problematic. You cannot be sure that person on the other side got all your words correctly and you get their words correctly as well.
I thought the hiring manager (HR) would organize everything well because she took this responsibility to arrange the meeting. But, I was wrong.
We had a conversation on Wednesday about the future interview. HR ignored some of my messages, responded out of order and wrote to me unnecessary things.
On Thursday morning I got a redirected or copied message from a guy with a specific time of an interview and a question. I answered this question and booked the time in my calendar on Friday.
Because HR was always randomly referring to Friday in our back and forth messages, I thought the interview would be on Friday, not today.
The icing on the cake was a warning from HR that there were many candidates who confused the time and missed an interview. Very strange warning. This was a red flag.
And the cherry on top is this guy was waiting for me for 30 minutes on Thursday.
Truly, I have never faced a similar situation before.
The call was cancelled.
I did not clarify the date. I assume this was my problem.
And HR misinformed me about the date and talked to me unprofessionally. Perhaps, she decided to behave like that because I did not share my personal contacts with her as she insistently asked me.
Advice for scheduling calls
I always recommend creating a timetable in Calendly and sharing the link. It prevents you from being late or confusing the time, date etc. You receive a notification about the meeting and the other person receives the same message.
However, in this case, HR ignored my invitation to Calendly. I just got a dry impolite message: “Your task is to be on time”. If I was her, I would confirm the date and time, rather than respond with something negative in return.
Confirm the call on the same day when a call is scheduled.
Reflecting upon what happened this time and many other problems with scheduling calls I wrote several questions that you should ask to eliminate any problems.
Besides the basic questions (like how long the call will take, the questions that will be discussed, do we have the interview today/tomorrow, etc.) here are some other takeaway questions:
- What language will be spoken in the interview?
- Who will attend the interview and their position in the company (cause HR can write only a director which means nothing)?
- Will it be a video or audio call?
- Do you have my portfolio?
This situation boils down to an idea that you should confirm interviews yourself, ask about the basics of an interview yourself, and HRs can be incompetent. For many years, I have met only two hiring managers who confirmed a call themselves and at the same time were polite and professional.