Chad is a good kid. I will admit that he does not have much experience as a recruiter, two years to be exact. However, as a recruiter, for goodness sakes he ought to know better than to make the following mistake. Here is what happened.
For three days we arranged a telephone interview for 2pm on Friday. The hiring authority was going to call him and they were supposed to speak for a half-hour. I do not believe half-hour interviews are sufficient, inevitably people get down to the end of the interview and they need to cut the meeting short. Half hour interviews do not allow for enough time to gather detailed information for both the candidate and the client.
I normally instruct candidates to allow at least 45 minutes for the interview, even if it is scheduled for thirty minutes. I’m going to take responsibility for this incident I’m about to explain, because I did not cover this with Chad. Now, it’s easy to say, “He should know better” and he should, but it’s still my job to cover all the details.
So, guess what happens? Unbelievably, Chad schedules another interview at 2:30 PM. My hiring authority was 10 minutes late to the interview, so didn’t get on the phone with Chad until 2:10 PM and Chad tells him that he has a hard stop at 2:30 PM for another interview. I couldn’t believe it. And Chad is a recruiter. He should know to never schedule back-to-back interviews for half-hour.
When I asked him about what happened, he said that when the hiring authority heard they had a hard stop at 2:30 PM he mumbled something like, “Well, I’ll just get back with Tony and maybe we will reschedule.”
My dad used to say, “A wise man learns by mistakes, but are wiser person learns by others mistakes.” Please learn by this mistake. Do not schedule video or telephone interviews back to back, especially 30 minute sessions. It hardly ever works out and you risk the chance of losing a client.
