Clients Not showing up for telephone interviews....Is that a thing now?

[northernladuk]

How is the actions of one busy person a reflection on an entire client?

[WTFH]

We don’t know if it is 3 different clients, or the same one 3 times. We also don’t know how good or bad the agent is at communicating. Do people cancel phone calls? Yes, it happens. As such, yes it is “a thing that sometimes happens”.
Is it “a thing that happens all the time”? No.
Are all clients evil? No.
Are all clients acting in a way to deliberately hurt the feelings of an individual contractor? No.

[Lance]

What a pile of complete tosh.

Quite.


I've been telephone interviewing people for roles and forgot a couple of times.
It's not polite, nor brilliantly organised, but there are factors involved.

1) It's a telephone interview and is quite often a 15 minute chat to understand if this is a person you want to shortlist. You might quite a few to do and you're also busy. One meeting drags on and you miss a telephone interview.
2) Quite often you've already made your mind up about a person but someone wants you to do a phone interview before the next stage. This makes the phone interview not that important and hence likely to be bumped in favour of something more pressing.

Sounds like some people are pretty thin-skinned to be honest. Especially if it's for a contract role.

[Lance]

Well put.

One would expect the client to normally be organised enough someone realises the interview cannot take place and inform the agent/contractor in advance, so the later that is picked up (if at all) the louder the alarm bell rings. You can learn a lot about the client prior and during an interview, and are under no obligation to continue pursuing a contract with them until that contract has been agreed and 'signed'.

Why?

They (the contractor) are just another supplier. If something more important comes up the supplier can wait. If they can't wait then so be it.

[psychocandy]

Happened to me once. I arranged a telephone interview for my lunch break, and the client never called me. Half way through the afternoon I got a call from the agent saying the client was ready for me now and could I take it. The agent was livid that I couldn't just duck out of work for half an hour to take the call, as apparently was the client. Never heard from them again.

Yeh I've had that too. Got the call eventually two hours later than planned so I didn't answer it. Then agent called and I spoke to them and they were well off I didnt take the call.

I know its a buyer market and all but sometimes I think, lets be fair here, would you like it if I took the gig then disappeared in the middle of the day for a phone interview for someone else like you're expecting me to do?

(Then again one client, NLUK will be pleased to here this, offered me gig then when I said I wasn't available for about a week - it was coming to end of contract - asked me if I'd please pull a sickie at current client to get away earlier).

[uk contractor]

Happened to me from Investment Banking end clients several times. Only 1 of them turned into a role as well the other 3 were time wasters without budget sign off just seeing who was available if they could get the head count increase budget.

[northernladuk]

Yeh I've had that too. Got the call eventually two hours later than planned so I didn't answer it. Then agent called and I spoke to them and they were well off I didnt take the call.

I know its a buyer market and all but sometimes I think, lets be fair here, would you like it if I took the gig then disappeared in the middle of the day for a phone interview for someone else like you're expecting me to do?

(Then again one client, NLUK will be pleased to here this, offered me gig then when I said I wasn't available for about a week - it was coming to end of contract - asked me if I'd please pull a sickie at current client to get away earlier).

Speaking of lack of professionalism,.......

FTFY

And you are talking about agents here. This thread isn't about agents. But why let some facts ruin a good (cough) story.

[pauldee]

Yeh I've had that too. Got the call eventually two hours later than planned so I didn't answer it. Then agent called and I spoke to them and they were well off I didnt take the call.

I know its a buyer market and all but sometimes I think, lets be fair here, would you like it if I took the gig then disappeared in the middle of the day for a phone interview for someone else like you're expecting me to do?

(Then again one client, NLUK will be pleased to here this, offered me gig then when I said I wasn't available for about a week - it was coming to end of contract - asked me if I'd please pull a sickie at current client to get away earlier).

I think you, like me, weren't just throwing you toys out of the pram. I arranged my call at lunchtime for a good reason - it was the only time I could make it. The reason I didn't take the later call was because it was impossible, not because I was making a point.

[washed up contractor]

Hi everyone,

I wondering if anyone has had the experience of applying for a role, speaking to an agent being asked to attend a telephone interview only to the interviewer standing them up.

I just had this happen to me last week for a with a contract for a consultancy.

The senior consultant contact me and apologised and then said they would sort that a new time....that didn't appear.

This has happened to me 3 times.

I've been contracting a quite a long time, but even this lack of professionalism even surprised me.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Something similar happened with me once with Yorkshire Electricity. The Test Manager couldnt be arsed to turn up, could you Nina and instead, a couple of people turned up and just told me I had got the job and we spent 30 minutes talking about cars, football and proper ale.

Really it was an insight to how hopeless Nina was because she couldnt manage to strike a match never mind manage a test release. Nina wasnt there on my first day but kindly left a note telling me she had left some project docs to read.

After 2 weeks doing nothing but reading, I told Nina I really needed to get involved with the programme instead of just reading. Nina didnt like that.

Not suprisingly, Nina didnt renew me (not that I was going to accept anyway) or 3 other people despite telling them she would.

What really amazed me was the fact that not only was Nina renewed herself but has been back to YE a few times since. She obviously has impressed someone I guess.

[Hobosapien]

How is the actions of one busy person a reflection on an entire client?

Why?

Sorry, forgot to get back to you, you know how it is, rushed off my feet with more important things. I've decided not to continue with this conversation as my focus has changed. If you feel aggrieved having wasted any time waiting for my response, it is what it is, just one of those things, accept it and move on.