I’ll set the stage because this sort of scenario is endemic in our times. The dreaded over-promise followed by the under-delivery. You have completed what in your mind was a very positive and confidence boosting interview. You feel like you have it in the bag and it is Friday afternoon. The Hiring Manager (HM) has told you they will get back to you on Monday.
You spend the weekend very upbeat, maybe celebrate with friends. You got this!
Then sure enough Monday passes and you wake up invigorated and anxiously make sure your phone is charged at 100% all day just in case it doesn’t decide to magically drain itself and die when the call comes. Your job is calling, you know it!
Noon. No call yet, ok. No time to panic. You make yourself a baloney sandwich with your eyes on your phone the whole time waiting for that call.
4pm, getting a little bit nervous. Should you call? Did the HM die in zamboni accident on a hockey rink over the weekend? WTF is going on? You continue to wait.
8pm, you are contemplating if you should have a couple of drinks to ease your nerves, but on the off chance your job calls, you don’t want to be tipsy. You pace. You maybe fold some origami and rearrange your spice cabinet never letting your fully charged phone out of your site.
11:30pm. Should you sleep? What kind of hours does this HM keep? “Ok” you tell yourself, “I will give HM until 11:59…No! 12:01am in case his / her clock is slow.” The call doesn’t come.
You eventually sleep and are a bit miffed and anxious. What happened? Why didn’t you get the job? Why didn’t the call come. You replay the interview in your head wondering if you misheard and contemplate replaying the entire Monday again on Tuesday or maybe you should call the HM and check up.
Inevitably you will call and hear something like “oh, yeah, x event came up” or “we need to complete this before making the hire” or “i was sick yesterday and had to have an emergency appendectomy and I’ll call you Wednesday.”
Wednesday, rinse…repeat.
So what are you to surmise from this situation? Honestly, I can’t tell you for sure, but there are potential pros and cons which I will lay out.
First, the cons:
1) The HM is afraid of telling you to your face you are rejected for some reason and is giving you the runaround. There are people like this and they suck. It is much better to be truthful then to expose that you have no backbone. Then again, who would want to work for such a spineless little twerp like this anyway?
2) The place or the HM is a dysfunctional clusterfuck. Fire drills rule the day.
3) Someone overruled your HM with a buddy hire. Nixed for the CEO’s niece who probably has no experience. Your HM thought that they would be able to make a hire and nepotism rules the day. Again, you may have dodged a bullet.
4) Some pre-employment thing did not check out. Your reference didn’t check out or maybe you failed a drug test. I have an entry here on references, which you should check out. I don’t have anything on drug tests, except don’t do drugs, or at least don’t do drugs during a job search.
5) The HM forgot or is lazy. Ugh. This is unfortunately common these days.
Now the potential pros:
1) Shit happens. The Hiring Manager went hiking and got stuck in a bear trap over the weekend. After sawing off their own foot and hobbling on their bloody nub through 4 feet of snow for 2 miles carrying their detached foot in their backpack to safety and then getting it reattached on Monday, the HM gets your voicemail on Tuesday and apologetically calls you back. HM’s have a life too!
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2) The place or the HM is a dysfunctional clusterfuck. What? That’s a con. No, it can be a pro. Maybe you are going to get the job because they need someone like you to clean the shit up. If your HM is overwhelmed it is likely because he / she needs help and they need to make a hire. The HM’s first priority may be on Monday to react to an unforeseen emergency or meet some deadline. Maybe HM is working 16 hour days and needs relief but is trying to stay afloat and make a hire. This is honestly the most probable scenario, next to the bear trap in #1 of course.
3) The employer is being diligent. Maybe they could not reach all of your references yet. Diligence is not a bad trait.
So, not hearing back doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t get the job. If you called back and were not explicitly told “no” then there is still a chance. However, it is good to continue to keep your options open and keep applying for other jobs until your job calls.