This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I lost my job recently when the small company I worked for went under. I have a little savings buffer, but needless to say, I am job hunting vigorously. I usually put in two to three applications a day and I spend hours trying to write thoughtful and personalized cover letters, so I do research the companies I am applying to.
Recently I received a call back from a job that I had applied for over two weeks before (so a lot of applications in the meantime). The manager asked if I could talk briefly and wanted to know what about their mission/vision interested me in the job and why I thought I would be a good fit. I gave some vague answers, but she kept pushing for more specifics and referenced the job ad.
I honestly couldn’t remember exactly what this company did. I work in a general field that a lot of very different companies hire (think HR or accounting). I eventually admitted that I didn’t remember her specific company’s product, but once she said it, it all came flooding back and I was able to give some specific examples from my research like their commitment to being green that I found appealing.
However, it was clear from her tone and follow-up questions that I had completely sunk my chances. I never heard back. Is the expectation that I memorize every job posting/company mission statement indefinitely in case I hear from them? Could I have asked for a scheduled phone call at a later time so I could refresh my memory? I’m just so overwhelmed with this entire process.
Agggh, this is so irritating.
It’s utterly unrealistic to expect you to remember details off-the-cuff about a job you applied to weeks before while you’re in the middle of an active job search and have applied to a bunch of other jobs since then.
It’s also perfectly reasonable for an interviewer to want to know what about the job interested you.
But the way to reconcile those two things is to schedule phone interviews in advance so you have time to prepare, rather than calling you up with no warning, peppering you with questions, and judging you when you might not even recall exactly what job it is.
Calling people up for spontaneous phone interviews without warning is a bad practice for a whole host of other reasons too — they might be catching you while you’re working for your current job, or supervising a child, or at the grocery store, or napping, or at a loud family clambake, or otherwise distracted and not at your best.
And the only reason for doing it this way rather than scheduling the call in advance is that interviewers like yours believe it’s easier for them. This way they don’t need to contact you to arrange a time to talk, wait to hear back, hold spots on their calendar meanwhile, and then wait for the scheduled time to come around. They can skip all that and just call you. I’d argue it’s not really easier for them in the long-run — because getting people who aren’t prepared means they’re not getting an accurate picture of a lot of their candidates. But they don’t want to have to deal with scheduling.
When you get one of these unscheduled phone interviews, you do have the option of saying something like, “I’m not in a place right now where it’s easy to talk. Could I call you back in 20 minutes, or could we reschedule for another time?” The risk in doing that is that the later call might not ever happen — because some interviewers who operate like this just won’t bother; they stop screening people once they’ve talked with X number of reasonably qualified candidates and don’t get back to others who thought they were still in the mix. And of course, the fear of that creates exactly this situation where interviewers don’t get pushback on the practice so they keep doing it, thus annoying everyone else in the process. (Which doesn’t mean you can’t do it! I recommend doing it. Just be aware of that potential risk.)