For the first time in a few weeks, Sydney received some much needed rain this week. El Nino playing havoc with our weather again! What is remarkable, however, is how a little bit of weather changes the behaviour of job seekers. It seems a little bit of rain, or indeed gloriously good beach weather, automatically leads to an increase in the number of people who simply don’t show up for a scheduled interview. Being inconsiderate enough to not show up can at times be exacerbated by some breathtakingly brazen ‘untruths’.

The best example of this is “oh you didn’t get my message?” In the 21 Century, there are about a hundred way to make contact with anyone, at any time, so it’s nearly impossible to miss a message.

Every call is logged and message recorded. Gone are the days of floating pieces of paper scribbled on by a colleague left somewhere on a desk. What many of these job seekers also do not realise is that their applications, calls and emails to a recruiters’ office (and I mean both internal corporate recruiters and external agency recruiters) are recorded in some way on a data base, to ensure that their contact is not overlooked. If you contact the recruiter in the future, they will be able to see your past contact (or lack thereof), which could possibly affect your job search.

So missing that appointment because the weather is just so good you want to go to the beach and not calling your recruiter, may very well affect your chances of securing that dream job. Big data. Big impact.