Job applicant gets scheduled for an interview in 4 hours... a year after applying: 'Today at 2:00 p.m.'

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Apr 30, 2024 6:00 PM EDT

These days, it's not unusual to hear back from a job you applied to months ago asking if you're still interested in that first-round interview, and—hey, things happen and there are any number of reasons why the hiring process for the position you applied to might have gotten delayed.

Sometimes, hiring gets sidelined in favor of more pressing concerns that the management team is dealing with. Sometimes, there is not quite as much room in the budget as management thought there was. Maybe they had already had a candidate or internal promotion in mind, and things didn't work out as planned. Even then, it's not unusual for hiring managers to keep candidates' applications on hand for subsequent hiring rounds of the same role.

Still, you might find it strange to suddenly receive an email out of the blue a full year after you had first applied, inviting you to sit down for an interview for that role with no other explanation on offer. You might find it even stranger still when that interview is scheduled that very same day… a mere four hours after the interview had been sent.