Inconsiderate Recruiter.

In My Humble Opinion
21

There is no company switchboard, no operator I can get, and no online directory. The only publicly available phone number for this company is the sales department. The only way to contact anything resembling “HR” online is by submitting an application, and I’ve already done that, in person, at the job fair I attended. I believe the recruiters for this company work from home. The email address on the woman’s business card is comcast.net, and I believe the phone number I’ve been calling is a cell phone.

I know it sounds suspicious, and I’ve even had paranoid thoughts like “What if she doesn’t even work for the company? What if this is some kind of elaborate scam?” But that doesn’t make sense for several reasons. I have no reason to believe she’s not legit.

22

I’d be calling sales and asking for the number for HR… or perhaps I’d make some pretext calls and wind up talking to the department I wanted to work for…
What can they do? Fire you?

23

No company has a publicly accessible on-line directory - that is just an invitation for headhunters to try to steal employees. Sales should have one. Almost everyone feels overworked - they should be happy to help someone try to get a job there.

Do they have a web presence? It’s very odd for a recruiter to be using a personal email account. Either the company doesn’t have one (even odder) or something fishy is going on. I’m hooked by this mystery now!

24

Oh, something fishy is going on, there’s no question about that. The company is holding another job fair tomorrow, and I’m going. If the Amazing Disappearing Recruiter is there, I can look her in the face and ask for a straight answer. If she’s not, I can start all over again with somebody else.

25

So…did you find the Amazing Disappearing Recruiter? I’m curious to hear the end of the story.

26

Oh yeah… Hi everybody! :o

On Friday, I drove about sixty miles to the recruiting event, and I got there at precisely the time that one of the info sessions was about to start. And they weren’t there. I asked at the front desk (it was being held in a hotel) and they told me the company had packed up their recruiters and left long ago. Needless to say, I was furious.

So when I got home, I emailed the Amazing Disappearing Recruiter (thanks, a35362) again, asking bluntly if I was going to be offered a job, and to let me know if she was no longer with the company so I could get my application to somebody else. Four days go by, no response.

Now at that point, most people would have probably given up. But now it was personal to me. I felt disregarded, and I was determined that someone was going to look me in the eye and tell me what was going on.

So I went to yet another recruiting event, this one on Wednesday. And she was there! She hasn’t been fired, nor has she quit, nor has she been in a coma for two weeks. So she walks up to me, all smiles, and says “Hey! Nice to see you again!”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I was hoping you hear from you. You said you’d call me.”

“Oh yeah, I got your emails and voicemail. I’ll talk to you after the presentation.”

So I sit through the hour-long presentation (again) and when it was over, I went up to talk to her. She said she’d been traveling all over the place, and didn’t even get to check her voicemail or email for a while. But anyway, she had me sign a form saying that I accept the job offer, and told me I’d start training in about two months (pending drug test and criminal background check).

So it sounds pretty definite, although I’m afraid to get my hopes up in case the whole thing evaporates into thin air again. I still think it’s pretty weird that she was so casual about not getting back to me for two weeks. I understand that she was busy, but some of the emails I have from her consist of one line. Why couldn’t she send a one-line email saying “Hey, I’m still working on your application, I’ll get back to you in a week or two”? It would have saved me two long trips!

27

It puzzles me mightily when people don’t return calls, or show up for appointments, or otherwise live up to their obligations. It puzzles me, but at least it doesn’t disappoint me anymore, because I don’t really count on people like I used to. Assholes. And they’re always so fucking blithe about it too.

Congratulations on your new job, cuauhtemoc.

28

Thanks, Dung Beetle.

But let me just add that the next day, she emailed me the application forms and asked me to fill them out again, because she misplaced the ones I had given her when we met.

So, would I have ever heard from her again if I didn’t physically track her down like that? And more importantly, should I plan on actually having this job in a few months? Someone from the company is supposed to contact me within the next couple of weeks to schedule the drug test and training. I’m half expecting that nobody will call me, and I’ll be back where I started.

29

She lost your forms?!?! This woman sounds like a big-time flake.

Personally I wouldn’t be counting on this job to work out.

30

Well, if it doesn’t work out, I will be writing to complain to the company. I’d be very interested to know how they feel about being represented by someone who can’t be bothered to return emails or phone calls for two weeks, and then loses people’s forms.

But I hope it works out.

31

I wouldn’t be too worried about it, honestly. The company I work for is growing extremely quickly and so they’re trying to hire several hundred people this year. The result is that our HR recruiters act like complete flakes half the time. The first day at the company, I was at orientation with another new hire and we both related how our contact with HR was crappy at best. I was offered the job on Monday and they said “we’ll get the written offer out today and overnight it to you!” I got the written offer the following Saturday. For orientation, they wanted to get me a packet of information about a week in advance. After several calls and emails, I finally got it emailed to me approximately 48 hours before my start date (it came in at noon on a Saturday). Nearly everyone else I know on my team dealt with the same thing.

But once you’re past HR, everything smooths out. Needless to say, they don’t have the best rep amongst our employees.

32

Thanks, interface2x, that gives me hope. This particular company is also growing very quickly right now, so maybe they’re in a similar situation.

33

Yeah, it’s likely that HR is just overworked. The thing that made me feel okay about the whole situation was that I knew that once I started, I’d never have to deal with the recruiters again. It’s worked out well so far. Good luck!