am I supposed to confirm interviews the day before?

by Alison Green on July 30, 2018

A reader writes:

Over the past few years, I have noticed that when I have been notified by email for a interview, it tends to ask for me to confirm my attendance (“please email back by X date to let us know you’re able to attend”). I do this, but I don’t seem to ever get any reply back. I would feel less worried about this, but there have been at least two times when I have gone to where the interview is being held, only to find it’s been cancelled.

One time it was being held at a separate location, and no one was there. I tried to call a few times, finally getting through later that afternoon. The lady who answered the phone was very curt, telling me I should have called them the day before my interview, and because I hadn’t, it had been cancelled. (I re-read the email I got, and it only mentioned replying back to the email, nothing about calling the day before.)

As these have all been lower level roles, I assumed that just following the directions given to me was all that was needed. What’s the go, Alison? Should companies be acknowledging my confirmation? Should I be calling up?

Yeah, this is not how it is supposed to work. If you agree to an appointment at a specific day and time and both sides confirm it, there’s no rule that it’s off unless someone confirms again the day before. The assumption is generally that you’re both responsible people capable of keeping track of your commitments.

I note, too, that the person you spoke with conveniently put all the responsibility on you. Why were you the one in charge of confirming? If they still wanted to interview you and believe in this non-existent “must confirm the day before rule,” then why didn’t they try it themselves? They didn’t, because there’s no such rule, and because what she really meant was “we’re disorganized and forgot we had this appointment, and if you wanted to keep it, you should have reminded us.”

That said … irritating as this is, there’s no harm in confirming the day before, especially if more than a week has passed since the interview was originally scheduled. You shouldn’t have to, but since you’ve encountered this twice now, you might as well start doing that. I wouldn’t confirm by phone, though, since that’s going to be annoying to most people. Use email instead (but send it early in the day so the person has time to respond).

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  1. Blossom*

    If you’re going to start confirming the day before, I’d make sure to frame it as “Looking forward to meeting with you tomorrow at 2pm at xxxx; do let me know if anything’s changed”. i.e. you go unless they tell you not to. You don’t have to wonder what no reply means.

    That said, I think these people sound nuts and you probably dodged a bullet.

    1. Hey Karma, Over here.*

      And again, I would do this by email instead of calling.
      Can you imagine fielding calls from prospective employees in a functional environment? At best they’d be out of touch, an appointment is an appointment, at worst they could be assumed to be looking for that “inside edge.”
      To put the onus on LW is crap.

      2. iglwif*

        +1

        Candidates who no-show for interviews without contacting the employer are behaving poorly. (I’ve had this happen; it’s very irritating.) This employer is behaving *really* poorly, because they’re stacking victim-blaming on top of poor communication skills. Yes, LW could have asked for clarification as to format, but the employer has a lot of power in this situation (because we know it’s bad form to pester your interviewer!) and really, how hard is it to remember to give a candidate the address and tell them you are expecting them?

        1. iglwif*

          Dang, that is not the post I thought I was replying to ::face palm::

          But my point about the employer blaming the victim still stands.

      4. Letter writer*

        Letter writer here. That’s what I was thinking, but the idea to email the day before seems like a smart way to get around this. Thanks for that idea!

      1. Ozma the Grouch*

        + 1 Agreed

        No one wants to work for this person. Could you imagine what it would be like to report to them on a regular basis?

    3. Jenny*

      I can imagine OP showing up on their first day and these nutters going “Oh you never called a week before to confirm the start date you confirmed last month (which we never asked you to do)”. What other out there burdens do they put on entry level people? If something is a requirement, you say so. Otherwise you are just playing gotcha.

    4. AnnaBananna*

      Totally dodged a bullet. And frankly I have a feeling that even if she had confirmed the woman would still have found some way for it to not be her own fault. That said, since these are lower positions it might be a bit of a revolving door, interview-wise. Meaning they’re casting a wide net and thus are incredibly busy. That doesn’t excuse her but it does provide a possible reason for her ineptitude.

      I have been in charge of interviews many many times and I personally feel that once it’s on the calendar, it’s set in stone unless the candidate calls/emails and needs to reschedule. Sometimes I confirm but only if it’s been quite some time since I invited them (say, two or three weeks). I lead with the assumption that they’re organized enough not to need my help. Rightly so, in my opinion.

      If I was a dentist office – in which I will be making money off of your appointment – then yes, I would confirm the same week. But otherwise? No. You’re a grown up. There are way too many tools out there for time management to justify missing appointments. And that goes for that woman as well.

      1. AnnaBananna*

        Oh, and I have never had anybody no-show my interviews. Just sayin’. This lady should look at her system (and a mirror).

      2. tara2*

        I was reading too quickly and thought you ended with “And that goes for women as well”. Was quite taken aback for half a second.

  2. Antilles*

    I do this, but I don’t seem to ever get any reply back.
    If you’re sending a confirmation email and not hearing any reply whatsoever, I personally would follow up with a phone call or email a couple days before, just to make sure they actually received it. Nothing long or detailed, just a quick “Just wanted to confirm we’re still on for ___, looking forward to meeting you”. You aren’t ‘wrong’ for not doing so, but it’s good practice to make sure your email didn’t get sent to spam or failed to send or just got lost in a flood of busyness.
    However, it’s critical that you keep in mind that this follow-up is NOT an opening for you to pitch yourself or ask about the job or anything like that – managers see right through that sort of thing and get irritated by it, so keep it purely short and sweet logistics.

    1. Drive it like you stole it*

      Seconded. At least that way if it fell into spam land there’s an opportunity to find out before you show up. If you get sent to voicemail and never get a follow up, well, I would still show but it would tell me something about them.

    2. MLB*

      Agreed. Different scenario but similar situation. I was applying for a badge to access our client’s location, and after I filled out all of the forms, I was sent an email with an appointment to get fingerprinted. It stated that I was to confirm the appointment via email. I did so and got a quick reply of “thanks” so I knew they got my confirmation. Had that not happened, I would have emailed again or called to verify they got my confirmation as it was something very time sensitive.

      I’ve personally never had to go through all of that for an interview, but if I was asked to confirm and never heard back, I’d be sure to verify.

    1. AvonLady Barksdale*

      Me neither, but for some reason, I’m not super shocked that this happens. Though I did once show up for the first day of an internship, only to be told that there was no internship and they forgot to call me. Oh, and I once showed up 5 minutes early to a 1pm interview and was asked to go get coffee and come back in an hour because my interviewer was still at lunch.

          1. I Wrote It in the Bathroom*

            I had an interview like that! The employer’s corporate recruiter scheduled my interview at 1pm and sent me several emails imploring me to come in early, at 12:45. I showed up at 12:40 and spent 25 minutes pacing around an empty, windowless lobby while he was not answering his cell phone, until in total desperation, I saw a landline phone hanging on a wall, picked up the receiver, and dialed zero and someone answered. “Oh, Fergus? He’s still at lunch, but don’t worry, we’ll get you right in.” Thankfully I had several more people to interview with. Fergus showed up around 2, saying that it was a lunch with the higher-ups and he couldn’t get away… what?

      2. Blue*

        Yikes. Did you stick around for that interview? That seems like a “Thanks but no thanks” situation unless you’re really desperate.

        1. AvonLady Barksdale*

          Eh, it ended up being a great interview (didn’t get the job, but it was a good process). If I hadn’t taken the afternoon completely off, I would have rescheduled. But my overall point is that this type of lack of communication from interviewers is pretty bad and frustrating. I was pretty irritated.

        2. Anonymosity*

          I would have just assumed they ran late because of some kind of meeting or emergency. Though if you’re interviewing on your lunch hour, it would be massively inconvenient.

    2. fposte*

      I’m intrigued, because I’ve encountered it a couple of times with medical appointments–they require you to respond to the reminder to keep your spot. I wonder if it’s going to be a broader movement.

      1. Jennifer Thneed*

        It used to be: if you don’t show for an appointment, they might charge you a fee. I’m guessing those fees got too common and people were too irritated. Then they called with a reminder. Now my dentist is sending me text reminders and I have to text back my reply. (At least I can choose to opt out of the text scheme.)

        I think people are getting really really flaky over the decades.

        1. Flying Fish*

          The medical office that I work in makes two calls to remind patients of their appointments and sends a portal message if the patient has an active portal. I still have about a 20% no-show/same day cancellation rate.

        2. ZK*

          I recently got FOUR reminders from my daughter’s eye doctor. Two emails, a text and finally a phone call the day before. I thought that was a bit excessive.

        4. Lavender Menace*

          I think people have always been flaky, and now we just have more systems in place to remind people and/or charge them if they don’t show up. (I mean think about it – in the past, if you were paying via cash or check, how would the doctor have charged you a no-show fee? Now that many people pay with debit cards, it’s far easier to get a card on file from folks and charge them a fee.)

          Personally, I prefer the text message reminders because it means I don’t have to step out of what I’m doing to answer a call only to realize it’s just a pre-recorded message reminding me of my appointment. I’d rather just dash off a quick “Y”.

        5. Responsible adult*

          “I think people are getting really really flaky over the decades.”

          Or is it learned helplessness? You expect that your doctor, or hair salon, or interviewer will remind you rather than taking it upon yourself to put it in your calendar or whatever.

          I get text reminders for hair cuts, eye exams, etc. and it irritates the crap out of me. I made the appointment, I put in in my calendar, I don’t need to be reminded to show up. I purposely never respond to these reminders.

          1. sunshyne84*

            This takes me back to the post yesterday about the read receipts in email. My manager will send a calendar invite, then calls me and emails me several times to remind me about a meeting. Why? Maybe because I don’t send a response lol but still….

        6. MsSolo*

          You get a better rate of attrition with a reminder than you do with a late fee (though a lot of places use both). If you’ve forgotten the appointment, odds are you’ve also forgotten the late fee.
          Where I work doesn’t have late fees, but we literally halved our no show rate with text message reminders.

          I think there’s a few things going on with the rise in reminders. Firstly, we’re much more aware of people missing appointments because businesses are more open about it. Secondly, the barriers to making an appointment and the barriers to keeping it are diverging; if you couldn’t easily get to the doctors to make an appointment in person in the old days, you didn’t have an appointment to miss. Now you can overcome the first hurdle, but the challenges to attending still remain. Thirdly, changing cultural attitudes mean most people (which is to say, mostly middle class people) don’t have a stay at home spouse acting as their executive assistant for all things home-related any more, and have to remember it themselves.

          (second and third combine to show a class element in appointment keeping, which is really interesting to me because of where I work, and trying to get people to access help before things reach emergency levels – there’s a reason you get this sharp social divide between appointment places and drop in places, whether that’s health clinics or hairdressers, which means you often get a social divide in the level of service being offered)

      2. Thursday Next*

        I’ve been encountering this ever more frequently with medical appointments. There have been been ones where I’ve received reminders via phone requesting confirmation via phone *and* a text reminder requesting confirmation after a day or two. I’ll admit I do find the multiple confirmation requests a bit annoying.

        1. fposte*

          I just opted out of the text ones after I got five reminders, two text and three phone, for a single appointment. (Ironically, for a doctor who notoriously always runs late. But he’s a great doctor.)

      3. What's with today, today?*

        My husband is an attorney. People blow their appointments all the time. He sends reminder emails. If the person doesn’t respond, he figures they won’t show up. Most of the time he’s right.

  4. MissDisplaced*

    These companies sound ridiculous. Especially if you confirmed by replying to their email. I mean, what? They don’t read their own emails? If they had a change of location the onus is on THEM to call you and tell you of the location change, not the other way around. And, these are probably the same type of companies that complain if you DO call to confirm the interview too and say you’re bugging them! (Can’t please ’em either way.) I think I’d take some of this as a red flag it may be a bad company if they can’t get their shit together to schedule interviews.

    1. TootsNYC*

      also–if they asked you to confirm by replying to the email, then why didn’t they look for a reply to their email?!?!?

    2. MissDisplaced*

      If course, if you feel anything is unclear or confusing you can call. I’ve had confusion with time zones, holidays and that type of thing. But generally I think calling JUST as confirmation is kind of weird.

  5. hbc*

    This is one where you’ll probably find some weirdos who think it’s a rule or necessary, but the vast majority of employers who have their act together are going to be annoyed if you do anything that requires a response from them.

    I mean, if I sent a clear-as-crystal email saying “The interview is at 9:00am on Tuesday the 31st at 123 Main Street, use the main entrance and ask for me at the front desk,” I’m not going to be thrilled to get an email today that says “Are we still on for tomorrow?” But if you think some stuff might have been left hanging or ambiguous (no address given, did you have the same interpretation of “next Tuesday”, etc), a confirmation with no response required is okay: “Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow at 9:00 at 123 Main St.”

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Right, definitely don’t say “are we still on for tomorrow?” That would look pretty bad. It’s just “Just wanted to confirm our interview tomorrow at 9 a.m. at XYZ. Looking forward to it!”

      1. AvonLady Barksdale*

        I got an email like that once, but from the opposite side. An employer set up a lunch interview with me, I responded affirmatively with something like, ‘That would be great, thank you! See you Wednesday the Umpteenth at Posh Place”. It was in my calendar, all ready to go. The day before, the employer wrote to ME asking if we were still on for the next day. I got a bit weirded out. I mean, I said yes, it was confirmed… and he’s doubting me or something? It was kind of unsettling. But of course, I responded quickly with, “Absolutely, looking forward to meeting you,” or whatever.

        I worked for him for a while and completely understand why he did that, but at the time, it was kind of baffling.

      3. Mimmy*

        Wouldn’t “Just wanted to confirm our interview tomorrow…” still require a response? At least with phone confirmations, e.g. for doctors appointments, the person being called will say “yes, I will be there”. (But then again, when a doctor’s office leaves a voice mail, there’s no obligation to call back….I suppose that email is the same way. Yes, I should know better….)

    2. Jenny*

      I agree. My organization hires annually, so I have multiple interviews scheduled a day during hiring time. If they signed up for a slot and we sent them our standard “here is where you go and what to bring” emails I do not expect extra. That would be an extra burden on our already slammed hiring coordinator.

    3. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

      Right? and as a member of the interviewing team, I’d be more than puzzled (and probably upset to lose a candidate if they sounded good) to first get a meeting invite for an interview, and then, at five pm the day before, a cancellation because “candidate did not call us on the phone today to confirm, so we have no choice but to cancel”.

  6. Jenny*

    M organization in now way requires confirmation the day before and I have never, ever had an issue with an interview that I had scheduled not going forward, confirmed or no. That organization sounds like they were sloppy and unprofessional and bizarrely tried to foist blame on OP. I guess this is a sign of a bullet dodged, but I am annoyed on OP’s behalf. That is some kind of nerve on them to waste someone’s time like that and then try to blame them. Shame on them.

    1. The New Wanderer*

      It’s not clear whether it was the organization as a whole or the person the OP spoke to. If that person was also in charge of scheduling, she may have lashed out because she realized that *she* dropped the ball on scheduling an interviewer, and conveniently blamed it on OP not calling to confirm (vs her not reading the OP’s emailed reply).

      Still a bad sign, if the gatekeeper drops balls and lashes out instead of fixing the problem.

  8. sigh*

    The ONLY time as both interviewer and interviewee that I’ve done a day before confirmation was when inclement weather was coming our way, and offices were at risk of being shut down.

    1. rldk*

      This is what I was thinking – that happened to me earlier this year when a huge windstorm came through the city. I woke up to the Dangerous Weather Alert and immediately emailed my interviewer asking if their office was following suit with 90% of the city and closing for the day.
      But if no emergencies arise? Of course I’d expect that our scheduled interview is still on!

  9. Justin*

    This is basically Richard Lewis and Larry David trying to have lunch.

    But yeah, this company is being unreasonable and you may have dodged a bullet, but can’t hurt to reach out for future occasions.

    1. sap*

      Hahah, yes! I can imagine Larry David asking all the friends whose fault it was that poor Richard Lewis was sitting alone at the restaurant for two hours.

  10. Old and Grumpy*

    I am not surprised if companies start asking for some sort of confirmation – giving the increasing number of applicants that are ghosting scheduled interviews. That being said, the response to their request for confirmation should be more than enough. But, to get nasty like the one did? Nope, no how, good company to avoid.

    1. Katie*

      I’ve recently been having the opposite experience (much like OP) where I’ve been given a time for a phone interview, only to have the interviewer completely blow me off. And then when I follow up, I get totally ghosted. I expect I won’t hear back from lots of places after I’ve applied, but to get ghosted by people who enthusiastically reach out to me and tell me I seem like a strong candidate for the job? Not only that, but they go to the trouble of saying exactly when they will call me? It’s happened about 4x in a row now and I’m getting SO discouraged that this is a new normal for some people. (At the same time, it seems like a pretty clear indicator that I didn’t want to work there anyway.)

      1. Jennifer Thneed*

        Four times with the same place? Or four different places? If the former, I’d be reluctant to say that it’s a norm for some people, but maybe it’s a norm for that person or company.

        (Me, I’d be pretty irritated and would decline to re-schedule if it was the same place each time. But I’ve got a pretty low bar for irritation this week.)

        1. Katie*

          Four different places. Having been on the hiring end, I know life gets busy and you may not have time to interview everyone who’s qualified. But when you say, “I’ll give you a call tomorrow at 11″…you should do it, or at least call later to follow-up in some regard–even if all you do is say that you already hired another person.

          And I hate to point it out, but it’s only been men who have done this to me across the board, so that pattern adds an extra layer of dismissal.

      2. Fergus*

        I had a person speak to me on the phone for about 90 min. Then an unperson I think for 2 hrs then write me and say I did not have the skill set. Then he contacted me a few months later that he liked my resume and wanted to speak. I blocked the dumbass.

  11. Linzava*

    There is a section on glassdoor where you can say you encountered weird interview issues, even if you dont work there. During my last job hunting stint, the iffy jobs were the only ones who pulled this kinda stuff.

    You can bet on the fact that if you ended up working there, everything would be your fault. I wouldn’t change my behavior because of a few bad companies, I’d just see it for the measuring stick it is and be happy they revealed their dysfunction before I wasted an hour.

  12. Cucumberzucchini*

    I don’t like to confirm interviews with candidates that have already been arranged. If a potential candidate can’t remember to come in without being reminded I probably don’t want to hire that person. However if a candidate reached out to me confirm the day before that would be fine, but unnecessary.

    1. Jennifer Thneed*

      The problem, of course, is that emails still do go astray. Maybe they end up in your spam folder but maybe they just never arrived, or will arrive in a week. It does still happen.

      (I agree that I wouldn’t be sending extra confirmation like “we’re still on for tomorrow, right?” I’ll do that with friends but in a business setting it seems odd.)

      1. Annoyed*

        If the company is sending an email requesting that the interviewee reply via email then the company needs to make sure they have something set up so that confirmation emails do NOT go astray (i.e. spam).

        1. Jennifer Thneed*

          Sure! And maybe their email to YOU went astray, right? (And I’m also talking about cases where the email just disappears and is never delivered, or possibly it vacations in Romania for awhile and then gets delivered. I really have seen both of these happen.)

          1. Annoyed*

            That’s a good point. As an obsessive “check the spam folder…just in case” type I didn’t really think about it going the other way…or to Romania. (Seriously?) LOL

    2. Antilles*

      Do you respond to the initial confirmation email though?
      It’s not about “a reminder” as much as “you asked me to confirm Thursday at noon, so I did…but you didn’t respond at all, so I have no idea if you got my confirmation or it got trapped in spam / failed to send / whatever”.
      Especially since this has happened twice to OP – if it was once, I’d just write it off, but after the second time, I’d be wondering if there was something about my gmail account that was triggering companies’ spam filters.

      1. MLB*

        I can’t speak for the OP, but in the past, I usually arrange an interview over the phone, and then they send me an email confirmation of what was discussed. There’s no need for me to respond or for the interviewer to reach out a second time. Sending emails back and forth is a huge waste of time, and asking the interviewee to confirm the date and time if you’ve discussed it on the phone is ridiculous and unnecessary. Like OP said, you pick a date and time and unless something changes, no communication is needed.

        1. Antilles*

          Right, but that’s a different thing from the interviewer asking OP to confirm the time, then not responding. Basically, there’s three steps involved here:
          1.) Interviewer proposes meeting on Thursday at noon.
          2.) OP confirms they can be there at that time.
          3.) Interviewer verifies that “message received, see you then”.
          In your phone call scenario, Steps 1 and 2 happen over the phone in the same conversation. The email from Interviewer->OP is just the verification step.
          In OP’s scenario, it sounds like this *isn’t* happening over the phone. Instead, over the phone, they agree to meet, but the interviewer needs to check his calendar first or whatever. So the interviewer sends an initial email with a proposed time (Step 1). OP responds that the time works (Step 2)…and then the interviewer doesn’t reply back with Step 3 where the interviewer confirms “got your email, see you then”. Due to the lack of response, it’s not actually clear whether the company got the email or it got lost in the ether somewhere. Or, in the worst case scenario, the interviewer didn’t get the email and takes the lack of response as a lack of interest.

    3. Fergus*

      Only time I do that if the Washington DC metro area is possibly getting hit with a blizzard.

    4. always in email jail*

      I’m with you, I’m not going to remind them because… well… if they can’t even remember their own interview I’m not interested. BUT if I offered an interview time/place and they responded they were available, I would definitely reply “Great, we’ll see you then!” so that they know I got their response. I wouldn’t be too put off if someone reached out (via email) to confirm, depending on how it was worded.

  13. Guacamole Bob*

    Yeah, if it’s been more than a week since you set up the interview it seems fine to send a confirmation email the day before.

    I was an EA for a nonprofit director in a community-facing role, and it was common for him to have several one-on-one or 3-person coffee or lunch meetings a week. I got in the habit of emailing everyone 24-48 hours ahead of time to confirm, and it saved a lot of headaches. 80-90% of the time the person either didn’t write back or just confirmed, but it was also common for people to say “oh, could we make it 10:30 instead of 10?” or “oops – I thought you meant the Starbucks on Main, not the one on First,” or whatever, and sometimes people had totally forgotten and we were able to reschedule. A lot of these meetings were with execs who had assistants managing most of their work stuff but were managing their own calendars for volunteer/community stuff, or who had had assistants for long careers but were now retired, so it may have been a flakier than usual group, but confirming saved my boss a lot of hassle.

    It shouldn’t be necessary for interviews and other standard business meetings, but people do screw up and sending the email has little downside.

    1. Anonymosity*

      My salon’s point-of-sale system sends automatic texts two days before an appointment. You have to reply C to confirm. Time is money!

  14. Bea*

    The companies suck.

    The process I’ve seen and used is to email an interview request, receive a response with dates and times available, respond with a date and time that falls into their availability and request a confirmation that is acceptable. Then respond to their confirmation with a “I look forward to meeting you.” Then no loose ties hanging.

    I would find it awkward and unprofessional to call to confirm an interview the day before. These people sound like they’re difficult to work with let alone for.

  15. I Wrote It in the Bathroom*

    Honestly, this reminds me of a non-interview-related situation that I had many years ago, when a coworker invited myself and my family over to his house for Thanksgiving. I thanked him, told him we’d come, then called him a few days in advance to confirm that we were still on and to get the time, address and whatnot. He said “Ohh… (pause) Because you did not call to tell us you were coming (after telling him to his face that we were coming), we decided you guys couldn’t make it (and I could not possibly pick up the phone or email you and ask, so just had to go with my best guess) and we accepted an invitation from someone else and won’t be home that evening!” Looking at it almost 20 years later, I strongly suspect that he either forgot that he’d invited us and made plans to go to someone else’s house, or he liked the idea of going to someone else’s house so much that he accepted on the spot and then was “oh wait, didn’t we invite those guys? oh well, maybe they forgot.” I’d bet money that something like that happened with that place OP had an interview with. They forgot she was coming and the interviewer either took the day off or scheduled something else at that same time. They probably didn’t remember about OP until she called, at which point they were, “we cannot very well tell her we screwed up, how can we make it her fault? oh, right, tell her she hadn’t called to confirm 24 hours in advance”.

  16. MagicToilet*

    In the last year, I’ve found interview scheduling to be much less sacred than it used to be. Interviewers will be late, completely forget about it, need to reschedule last minute; or I send times to the recruiter when I’m available (per the recruiter’s request) and get no response for days until I check back in (and have to give new times at that point).

    I have had so many “on the fly” and interviews at unexpected times, now, that I just try to get in the mindset that it’s the default. I admit it’s sharpened my elevator pitch, but I wonder how many job prospects I could have landed if I’d had just a few moments to get as prepared for an interview as one should.

    There’s too much pressure on recruiters, even in-house, that they don’t have the time to do a careful job any more.

  17. Justin*

    I might disagree with Alison that there’s no harm in sending a confirmation email the day before, it might make you seem out of touch

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      I get confirmation emails from candidates pretty regularly. People do it because they get anxious about interviews. Any experienced hiring manager/HR person is going to be used to it.

  18. Lauren*

    There are so many things interviewers do that aren’t the norm that burn my toast. Say they will get back to you and they NEVER do, call and expect you to take a phone interview right NOW, surprise you with a multi-person, multi-hour interview for a support staff position, don’t read your resume, take calls in the middle of the interview, and now expect you to confirm when you’ve already confirmed! Honestly. The worst ever.

    1. Jennifer Thneed*

      I keep waiting for a chance to walk out of an interview because the interviewer took a phone call. Hasn’t happened yet, which is actually good, right?

      If they glance at the phone, apologize to me, tell the caller “I’ll have to get back to you in 30 minutes” and hang up, and then apologize to me again, it’s all good. It’s a little shitty but these things happen. But if they half-heartedly apologize and chat for awhile? No thanks! I don’t want that in anyone I deal with regularly. Certainly not in my boss; absolutely not in an interviewer.

  19. Thornus67*

    Ugh, I had a scheduled preliminary phone screen interview scheduled a few weeks back. HR person called me to set it up. She asked for a time two days later. I said that worked. She sent a confirmation e-mail (which didn’t ask me to confirm). She didn’t call at the scheduled time. I sent a follow-up e-mail about fifteen minutes after the scheduled time, tried the number after about 30 minutes, and never heard back even when reaching out a couple of days later.

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