The process of getting a job has a lot of moving parts. Consequently, most of these moving parts are extremely time sensitive. As a recruiter for The Melanie Andersen Agency’s fashion division, one obstacle I often face is response time from my creative candidates. As a creative, it goes without saying that you are on tight deadlines, busy and not necessarily at your desk all of the time. However, once you are engaged with a company regarding a potential job, you need to be on the ball or it may jeopardize your chances.
Clients can be pretty unpredictable in their response time, but they have the freedom to do so, they are the ones who are deciding whether or not to give an offer. I’ve had a search that I worked on for 6 months, where the client was moving at a snails pace, and then the final stages happened so fast my head was spinning. This is how it goes, and the most important thing is to be on top of making sure your recruiter or potential future employer has all the information they need from you in a timely manner.
In my experience, I have had to practically stalk some candidates on a daily basis to make sure they were giving me the information and documents I needed. It wasn’t because they felt lukewarm about the job, because they eventually accepted the offer, it’s just an issue of prioritization. At the end of the day, you are at a point where you want to change jobs so that should be a priority, and not on the backburner, since you could lose the opportunity because of a reason that was preventable.
My suggestion would be to answer emails as quickly as possible, even if you can’t do what is asked of you right that second. Acknowledge receipt and give a timeline of when you can have the information back to the recruiter or employer. Please bear in mind that absolutely no longer than 24 hours should pass from the moment something is asked of you to the moment you complete it. As recruiters, we abide by the same rule. When a client wants something from our candidate, we check in with the client after 24 hours, even if we have nothing to give them. In the age of smartphones where we all get our emails directly to our phones, this is something which shouldn’t be too hard to fix, but the payoff is significant in terms of giving you the best chances possible of landing your dream job!