It’s a nice change to be able to be a critic of someone else for a change… and I’m talking potential-employer-wise.

What happened was that I applied online for several positions at a high profile systems engineering company. I have a contact there who is supposedly is able to get my foot in the door for an interview (doesn’t exactly guarantee me a job, but at least I can try to get it). It was about 2-3 weeks before I get a call from a recruiter from the company. I wasn’t around to get it—I’m in Florida and they left a message at home in Maryland.

That was about a week ago. I left two messages the following day… but then I tried to call back several times since then (almost 2-3 times a day) and only get the answering machine. So, I’m like… huh? Why call and leave a message and not try to get back to me since then when I’ve already returned the call?

Today I called and finally reached the recruiter. Long story short: he was calling to let me know that the position has already been filled. Ooookay. I guess that’s better than not getting a response at all. I’m as courteous as possible and thank him for keeping me updated (even though I had to keep calling to get an answer). I call back later upon the realization that I applied for several other positions and was wondering if he had any updates on those.

“I’m real sorry, but I’m actually busy to be able to look at that right now.”

Uh. That doesn’t really give me a good impression of your company if you don’t take the time and efforts of your applicants seriously enough. OK. I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt. At first I was real upset that all I got from applying and following up was a “Sorry, position has been filled and we can’t look at your other applications right now.” But I can forgive that if they are truly busy… and if the guy really is serious about eventually getting back to me and help me out (although he did not make any assuring promises). I mean, the conversation to me sounded like I’m an afterthought and that they didn’t really think I was worth much looking into.

blah. We’ll see.

Tags: Job Hunt