Get Your Household On Board

Here is a bit of how my day went today recruiting candidates:

Call #1, reached a voice mail, the message was rude and indicated that they didn’t want to accept calls from anyone they didn’t know personally.

Call #2, reached a spouse who took a message, and after identifying himself as the spouse, proceeded to ask me many questions, including “what would she be doing in this job?”, and “what is the address of the location – I want to be sure it is within commuting distance from both our home and the kids’ school”. Not exactly appropriate for the person who is NOT the candidate.

Call #3, reached a very young child, who, in setting the phone down to get a pencil, hung up on me. I redialed the number, hoping to get to the voice mail this time, and instead a gentleman answered the phone. After leaving a message, he asked me “where is this job? Because if this job isn’t here, then he’s not interested, and I’m not giving him the message.” Wow – this person didn’t even identify himself – I had no idea if I was dealing with a family member or a babysitter!

Call #4, left a voice message at the home number, and a few hours later received a call back from the candidate’s wife who informed me that her husband was not interested in that job – it wasn’t going to pay enough. Funny, I had received an email from the candidate within an hour of leaving the message that confirmed he was interested in the position and wanted to proceed with the client interview process! I politely thanked the spouse for her concern and explained that I wasn’t at liberty to discuss much of the job with her at this point, and then emailed the candidate that I had received a phone call from his wife – perhaps he should check with her first?

Well, those calls weren’t all in row, but this type of “message leaving” with household members does occur on a regular basis. When you are conducting a professional job search and provide a home phone number for communication, make sure your entire household is on board with your search, and understands the etiquette of taking a message and the fact that job details are discussed between candidate and recruiter and/or hiring manager – not with the spouse or other household members.