Asking for an email of a job spec

[Canopus]

If somebody phones at a very inconvenient moment offering you a job, and you tell them that you want the job but kindly ask them to send you an email of the details.

 

1. Is this bad etiquette?

 

2. Are they likely to send you an email?

[pearl]

I'm a bit confused Canopus.

If you've applied for the job do you not already have the details?

[Canopus]

Not always. Examples are speculative applications, or companies that match positions to CVs.

[pearl]

Oh right. Then no I would think its perfectly ok to ask for more details, wouldnt do to accept a job without knowing what you're getting into.

Has this happened then?

[baddad]

Hi Canopus -

 

From the info you've given it's difficult to comment, but generally no, it's not impolite/bad etiquette and there's no reason why they shouldn't agree and send the e-mail...

A couple of additional thoughts, though... years ago when I was repping I used to get speculative calls from recruitment agencies all the time. If one of their clients was looking for a rep in, say, the electronics industry they would just use the phone book to contact every company in a similar field, pose as customers and ask for the contact details of the rep covering the area of interest to their client. They'd then contact all of them, give them a bit of BS about being recommended by a customer and see what interest they got... they'd then shortlist from any of the reps who were 'interested in a move'... it's an incredibly lazy/poor form of recruitment, but it works short term.

In that sort of scenario the company probably wouldn't necessarily follow up, because they'd probably 'hook' enough of a representative sample without doing so. The reason they didn't follow up would not be a reflection on 'poor etiquette', just a good indication that their 'recruitment' methods were second rate.

The only other scenario I can think of where the situation could be misread is one where the call was very inconvenient and that led to a situation where the circumstances weren't fully explained. I've certainly had 'emergency' situations with (i.e.) ben in the past where I've had to pretty much hang up on callers with very little explanation offered. Some people can be too self-important to realise how that might happen...

Don't know if that helps at all but...

 

L&P

 

BD

[mossgrove]

In my experience agancies very rarely ring people to offer jobs. They are usually trawling through their list of jobs looking for applicants, in which case they should be perfectly happy to send you the job spec and it is perfectly normal to ask.

 

Was the 'job offer' in a direct phone call or an email/answerphone message? Another thing that some agencies do is phone round to make sure their database is up to date when business is quiet. Sometimes people are reluctant to return calls etc, simply to keep the agency database up to date so they leave an answerphone message or send an email saying that there is a job you might be interested in to make sure you will get in touch. They cannot send details of the job when you ask because the job never existed. It is VERY annoying when you are looking for a job and this happens. I hope this makes sense!

 

Simon

[Canopus]

It was a university that did this. They agreed to send an email and I ensured they had the correct email address.