Sleep Talk?

One of my favorite parts of working in and around the staffing agency is that no two days ever play out exactly the same.  Sometimes, the differences are subtle but there are many days that inspire to write blog articles.  Earlier this week, I had one of those motivational moments.

Before heading out of the office for the evening, I posted a job lead I received earlier that day as I felt I needed outside help in gathering a pool of candidates.  Dozens of resumes poured into my inbox overnight and a few folks left voice messages as well.  One candidate very enthusiastically left word that he was following up on the resume he submitted and asked me to call in the morning.  I could not find his email so I phoned him around 9:30 and told him it did not arrive overnight.  The candidate was polite but sounded a bit out of sorts.  I asked him for his email address so I could recheck my inbox and he replied that he could not remember which address he used and, since I woke him up out of bed, I was asking too many questions.  Eventually, he offered to write down my address but it never appeared.  Five hours later he called and said I gave him the wrong address.  When I repeated it to him, he admitted he probably messed it up because he went back to sleep right after our call!

There are a few big miscues to point out here.  First off, in my opinion, a candidate who is completely unemployed, but professing to be in active search mode, should not be asleep at 9:30 AM on a business day.  To me, and I am sure I will get rebuttal arguments, that is way too late to be in bed.  My guess is this person starts their search process sometime around 11:00 which is wasting close to half of the available hours to reach someone live.  Second, if you do happen to have one of those days where you just cannot get moving early, please do not tell someone on the phone that you were sleeping and they woke you up!  A better way to handle the situation would be to say you are not near your computer at the moment but will resend the email just as soon as you get back online.

Granted, most of us get lazy now and then, but no matter what, do not demonstrate this to potential employers. Put yourself into the shoes of a potential employer for a moment.  Would you seriously hire someone who gives off the impression that staying in bed is more important than regaining employment?  I don't think so!