July 21, 2005 5:18 PM

Waiting for the call back
Posted by at 5:18 PM

As a career coach, I hear lots of stories from clients, one of the most common being the frustration of not hearing back from the employer after a seemingly great interview. If you've ever been in the position of wondering why you didn't get a call back, you'll find this Business Week article of interest.

Here's a sampling of plausible reasons cited in the article:

An opening existed, but after the interview was scheduled and before you arrived, it went away or you became a noncandidate. In the second case, the hiring manager may have looked again at your résumé and decided you weren't right for the job, but the recruiter was too embarrassed to cancel your meeting. After all, there will be other openings -- he might as well meet you now.

Or another candidate may have been so impressive that the hiring manager refuses to seriously consider the other applicants. This sort of thing drives human-resources people crazy, but you can't drag the manager into the interview room. So as a job candidate, you end up killing time with the interviewer, who chats and pretends to take notes -- while avoiding asking hard questions