• leave a phone number and the voicemail is full
  • leave a phone number and the message says, “this number cannot take any messages… try again later”
  • don’t put a phone number on their resume (… and then wonder why they are not getting calls)
  • put their phone number at the bottom of the resume
  • don’t realizing that anyone looking at the resume is looking at 150 others and if they don’t see a way of reaching them…immediately…. they call someone else
  • don’t respond to an email or voicemail immediately from a prospective employer
  • have “Google voice” answer their phone requiring the caller to identify themselves….and not being able to do it
  • don’t remember at all who they sent their resume to so that when someone calls them they have no idea who it might be (how bright does that appear?)
  • having a cockamamie email address that is not easy to use
  • have resumes that don’t tell what their company does, what they did and how well they did it (realizing that if an employer can’t detect what the person does in 10 to 15 seconds, they’ll move on to the next interview)
  • lie …once, twice, three times or more on their resume
  • have their LinkedIn profile and resume mismatched
  • have unprepared references
  • can’t find their references
  • don’t have any references

Employers and interviewing authorities:

  • who never let candidates know how or where they stand
  • who publish job opportunities that they never really intend to fill
  • whose advertisement becomes a “black hole”
  • who advertise that the candidate needs to have “good written and verbal communications skills”
  • who tell you they are strongly considering you and then never call you
  • who hire people they ‘like’ over people who are most qualified
  • who rely on a resume instead of interviewing to determine the quality of a candidate’s ability to do the job
  • who keep postponing a hiring decision because they are “afraid of making a mistake”
  • who are inconsistent in their interviewing process
  • who believe that the only “good” candidates are the ones they know
  • who interview out of “fear of loss” rather than “vision of gain”
  • who focus more on “why they shouldn’t hire you” rather than on “why they should hire you”
  • who don’t tell you where you stand as a candidate relative to others
  • who simply blow you off