Rachel, this person went cold on me

Dear Rachel,
This is so strange. I was up for a job and thought I had it. I really connected with the woman who was the key decision-maker. I was supposed to call her last Tuesday about whether I had the job. I called and left a message. No return call. I called the next day and again no return call. She had always been there and prompt to return calls in the past. I am totally confused. What should I make of this? What should I do? Sign me Buffaloed in New York

Dear Buffaloed,
That is weird, but having said that let me say that such things happen a lot in our modern media world.

Maybe we should blame technology. It has led to change upon change upon change, leaving us all a little off balance.

I also think it has muddled the management process.

Our decision-making process is muddier, for lack of a better term.

Who’s in charge? That’s a harder question to answer than it was even 10 years ago.

What I am getting to here is that you may have thought you were about to be offered the job, and she may have thought she was about to offer you that job, but then something likely happened.

Maybe she was told at the last minute that the position had been eliminated or that someone else had been hired to fill it without her knowledge.

Obviously, she’s not returning your calls because she either doesn’t know what to say or she knows what she has to say but just can’t screw up the will to pick up the phone and dial your number.

You can certainly relate to that. Anyone could.

What should you do?

Some would advise storming the fort, so to speak, marching right over to her office and demanding an answer.

I would not.

I would send her a nice note expressing your interest in working for her agency. Note that you have not heard back from her and assume that the hiring process is on hold. Tell her you enjoyed meeting her and would like to talk again if things should change.

My reasoning: You have no control over this issue and you can make better use of your time applying elsewhere.

That just makes sense. That job may eventually come through, or it might not, but in the meantime you’ll be out advancing your cause, and you could well end up with a far better job.

When it comes to looking for jobs, we all tend to pull the shades down on our prospects, going for the sure things, the comfortable positions, when we should be doing quite the opposite.

We should be expanding our reach.

Opportunity doesn’t knock. You have to go find it.

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