Understandably, we are not always available to take a call. That’s probably a good thing considering how our reliance on our smartphones has increased more than ever in recent years. Not everyone is physically glued to their phone – and that’s great! What I’d like to point out however, is that it’s extremely important to have a message bank set up on your phone so you receive important messages, particularly if you are in the job market. What’s more important, is that you record a voicemail greeting that reflects your professionalism. I have literally left thousands messages in my career and here are the most frustrating greetings:

1. No message bank/voicemail at all

Number one has to be, without a doubt, that awful auto generated voice you hear on the other line telling you “hmmmmm, it appears that the person you are trying to call does not have an active voicemail number”. Please, set up your message bank. It’s helping both of us out.

2. “Please leave a short, 10 second message after the tone” Voice to text

Does this even work? How many of you have started talking as fast as you can to fit all of your message in, only to be interrupted mid-sentence with “Your voicemail will be converted to text”. Great.

3. You’ve reached this number, but who is it?

“The number you have dialled **** *** *** is unavailable. Please leave a message after the beep”. Thanks for letting me know the dialled number. However, how can you confirm that it’s the right person?

4. “Hey it’s me, you know what to do”

Don’t even get me started. Who’s me? What am I doing? Just set a normal greeting where you tell me your name that you’re unavailable and if I leave a message you will get back to me! Simple!

5. Press # and then this number and then that number

You start this process off thinking that it’s going to be quicker. To leave a message all you have to do is press #, but then it starts repeating your number ever so slowly and then you’ve got to press 1 to send your number and it just goes on and on. Probably would have been quicker if I just said my number in the voice message instead of trying to ‘send it’.

6. ‘’Beep’’ wait what?

Is this really your voicemail, I wasn’t ready when it just went ‘beep’. I will leave a message but it will it reach anyone?