Not So Great HR

[Miss Fatale]

I got a voicemail yesterday for a job I applied for last week. I'm very interested in this job, but the message left something to be desired:

"Hi, this is Jane with X Company calling about the Y position. I'll call back later today or tomorrow."

That was it. No last name. No department. No number (though I had it because this was my cell). No additional info such as "we'd like to schedule you for a phone/in-person interview."

I called back later in the day, but was quite embarrassed when I reached the receptionist.

"Jane who?" the receptionist asked.

"Uhh...." was all I could say.

"There's a Jane Smith in HR," the receptionist helpfully supplied. I said that was probably it and left a message.

This morning, Jane called me again; I answered this time. "Do you have a few minutes for a phone interview?" she asked.

I did, though I was unprepared. If she'd said that in the message. . . .

I asked when I might hear if they wanted to bring me in for an in-person interview, and Jane said, "I don't know, the hiring manager is very busy."

Oh, okay.

I don't think my phone interview went very well anyway, so I won't worry about it. But sheesh.

[evilhomer]

I had a message like that not so long ago, it went something like "Hi Jason, it's Karen, give me a call at ###". The "Hi Jason" was in a tone not only like she knew me, but like we were good friends, but that didn't bother me so much as the fact that I had no idea who she was. I was quite displeased to find out that she's a real estate agent seeing if I wanted to sell my house. If you're going to cold call telemarket, friendly is good, acting like you're an existing friend, not so good.

You'd certainly expect more from an HR person though, the whole lead by example thing. On a similar note, I recently had to do a reconfiguration in one company's HR dept to put some separation between a few combatents. Apparently, there was a seething hatred among the four girls causing shouting matches and leaving some worried that it's going to lead to physical violence. Considering that interpersonal skills and playing well with others is the first thing an HR person looks for, this was rather amusing.