I have never done this, but I had a potential employee do it to me. We had an appointment for an interview. I told her I worked out of my house and what the job would entail (minor office work, local delivery, personal assistant, all expenses paid). She never showed up.
When I called her to inquire, she said she drove by and didn’t think it was a legitimate employment offer, so she just ignored it.
Needless to say, if she had changed her mind, I would not have hired her if that’s the best decision she could make. I hired someone else who was very happy with the job and worked for me for several years. And I paid well above minimum wage and offered good medical coverage and workmen’s comp, even for part time work.
When I was first job hunting, I missed several interviews because I got lost. Seriously. I have no sense of direction, and could not find the places. This happened several times until I got a map and started using it, and even had to ask strangers for directions.
Fortunately, my current job is on a bus line, and I catch the bus at a stop only one major street down from my house.
I never canceled a scheduled interview but I thought I would mention that I have been hiring people for the last 30 years. I am reading every post in this thread with great interest.
In the last 18 months I have had three candidates fail to show for scheduled interviews, either in person or a phone interview. In each case, I followed up with phone calls and emails and in each case they did not answer my calls or respond to emails. I feel that no-shows are extremely unprofessional. I keep a record of all interviews, and these are on my blacklist. Another time a guy failed to show and when I called, he said he just forgot. Not impressive but I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.
I have no problem at all if someone calls to cancel, for any reason at all. Shit happens, people cancel. At least they tell me.
In addition to canceling an interview due to being offered and accepted another job, I once canceled an interview with an outfit known for sleay behavior, after deciding I wasn’t desperate enough for employment to take a chance on them.
Eons ago, I was dealing with an agency and the guy who set me up for the interview was flat-out lying on the phone with the guy he wanted me to interview with. I was really uncomfortable with the whole mess, but desperate and scared enough that I let him schedule it.
As I thought about it in the following days, I decided I didn’t want to deal with him at all, let alone go to an interview for a position I really wasn’t interested in. So I just blew it off. And I few days later, I had a real job, so from my perspective, it didn’t matter. I suppose the correct thing to do would have been to at least call, but I was young and embarrassed that I’d let him coerce me into that interview in the first place.
That was also the last time I dealt with an agency to find a job.
Me too! Had someone apply for a job, drop off her resume, etc. An interview was arranged and she no-showed. A few days later she called and apologized; she had “forgotten” and was calling to reschedule.
I explained that forgetting to show up for the interview was a really big deal to me, so no, she could not reschedule.
A few years ago I was looking for other work and arranged an interview with a city finance firm. A week before the interview they sent me a link to an online maths test that was intended to be done in advance. I looked at it and was frankly astonished at the basic level of the questions. I called through to their HR people to check that they’d given me the right link. My CV was clear and 100% accurate showing that I had a first class honours degree and verified additional training by leaders in my field plus previous positions in industry-leading companies. I’m not given to blowing my own trumpet but I did not come off the last banana-boat and my bona-fides clearly show that.
Their response? “Oh. your university is not one that we normally recruit from so we need to be sure!”
There was then a long. long gap. I asked to be put through to the hiring department and told them that I was declining the interview and that their hiring practices left a lot to be desired. It was possible that this was either an elaborate test, in which case my straight-talking response is the only professional option open to me, or that they really did have such an elitist policy which meant I would be a terrible fit for them or, worst of all, that the basic mathematics demanded by the test was all that was required of me and they did not even trust my verifiable qualifications that far.
Fuck-em.
I didn’t say that directly to them but I certainly implied it at high volume.
I have walked out of two interviews because I didn’t like the interviewers and decided I didn’t want to work there. I was polite as I could be about it but I told them why. The people that were interviewing me would be my coworkers and I simply wasn’t interested anymore. Both of their benefits packages sucked too. Interviewing is a two way street.
At a University interview (postgrad level) one of the interviewers was openly hostile toward me. It was so over-the-top that I thought he was providing me with the opportunity to defend myself, thus making me look good.
I came right back at him, blow for blow, thinking better on my feet than I ever had before because I thought it was a game we both were playing. Walking to my car, one of the other interviewers approached me. He told me I’d done well, and that the hostile guy really hated me (unnecessary to go deeper).
If I’d known he was serious, I’d have walked five minutes in and my life would have taken a remarkably different path.
I accepted an interview for a job that I liked on paper but didn’t like the commute. Two days later as I am trying to do the backwards math on what time I would have to leave my house to make it to the interview with time to park and find their office and a few spare minutes in case of snafus and the time was starting to exceed 90 minutes… I realized that if I was this stressed about getting to an 11am interview, getting to work by 9am would be miserable. So I called and cancelled. The hiring company went in to a full court press to get me to change my mind. I didn’t. Almost a year later, they came back, they’d moved a bit closer, would give me a 25% raise and let me work from home 2-3 days a week. I accepted. On my first day they said “we aren’t sure what you are going to do because the customer is delaying their migration”. I spent 7 months doing less than an hour of work per week, but not able to use the other 39 hours to do anything else, and found a new job.
Another one here who has cancelled, as professionally as possible, after accepting another offer elsewhere. Don’t blow it off or tell anybody off; burning bridges can be something you’ll come to regret even if they’re bridges to Hell.
I’m looking for a job right now. Found what sounded like a good one from the online ad. When recruiter wouldn’t answer my email I called them directly asking for info via email but he tried to pressure me to come in to do hiring paperwork and what not. Didn’t even ask for a resume. Totally sounded sketchy and still got no info except for the offer. After a quick search from indeed.com I found many reviews from former local employees totally bashing the company. There were some positive reviews but these were all by people from far out of state. These were probably seeded by the PR company, also out of state. The locals were all saying they were lied to re: pay rates, benefits, and work conditions. Also, it was literally all the way across town and travel time would be over an hour. The hours they offered would mean I would get stuck in traffic from the Air Force base both to and from work, and that would just add to commute time. So I blew it off.
I’ve accepted then turned down 3 interviews; 2 for government positions in my field (mandatory multiple week hiring process), and one for a private consulting company (as little as an over the phone 24-hour hiring process).
The basic reason was the same in each case (though circumstances varied): I’d been offered and accepted a different job in the mean time.
I once was given a job offer out of the blue one day. I got a phone call from a local college asking me if I wanted to schedule a job interview as a tech support guy for them. Completely confused I asked how they got my number and they said somebody recommended me but nobody I knew went or worked at the college and it was 50 minutes away. After getting some details turns out it was part time and the pay was just barely minimum wage. I agreed to the interview the next week because I was morbidly curious to find out who had recommended me but then promptly completely forgot about it and they never followed up.