We haven’t seen this trend yet, but I suspect it may show up on our front stoop at some point. From The Career News (sorry, no link) comes this abridged story from MSNBC.com:
The first step to acing the interview: Show up! I know this sounds obvious, but apparently not to everyone. “It happens all the time lately,” says Emmanuel Conde, director of recruitment for Alliant Technologies, an information-technology staffing firm that estimates about 50 percent of entry-level IT professionals they try to place don’t show up for interviews. Among senior level folks, about 20 percent skip it.
The no-show phenomenon is a growing problem for many recruiters and hiring managers, and it’s pervasive in a host of industries from high tech to health care. Career experts believe an increasingly tight labor market and the deterioration of common courtesy is contributing to the trend, but it may also be that job applicants are also being treated as commodities today.
“Companies get thousands of resumes, and no human being can read them all. So everyone is a cog in a wheel, a commodity,” says Seth Godin, author of “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).”
Nonetheless, not showing up can come back to haunt you. You’ll risk being labeled unreliable, and word could get out that you flake out.
It has been a while since I last read “flake out” in any text. Funny to see it here.