It does and does not surprise me when I get in contact with recruiters in the US who are unprepared to communicate in other means than phone calls.
It
does not surprise me in the sense that they are typically inward-looking and don't consider the outside world, i.e. not the US; it
does surprise me to hear, as I have, things like "I'm not set up for Skype", or have people struggle to get online for a call, headsets, etc.
What I do get is "Call me any time", which strikes me as ignorant of the logistics and borderline insensitive, as if they are the only person I am talking to, or, that I should bear the cost and not their firm calling me - yes I benefit but that is their work arguably part of their operating expenses.
The sheer volume of calls and people to speak with required to get the ball rolling on role makes it prohibitively expensive to do via traditional telecom methods.
Yes I know there is a paid Skype alternative but that does not address the issue and again puts the onus on the candidate when there are decades-old simple and free alternatives.
So, about those alternatives, one of a few purposes for this thread - I have had calls with recruiters using
Google Hangouts (with limited success, the call quality was good for me but poor for the other side, and we switched to Skype).
Facetime and
iChat are nother alternatives but I think these requires Apple products and/or accounts.
So my questions for
alternative VoIP tools as well as approaches or techniques to make it easier for Luddite or technophobe or simply unaccommodating people on the other end of the contact.
What other apps have you used, how well do they work, and how do you get others to use them? Specifically but not limited to the context of non-family / non-family contacts.
A simple search pulls these up:
http://www.informationweek.com/software ... e_number=3
http://beebom.com/skype-alternatives-2014/
http://www.ubergizmo.com/articles/skype-alternatives/
Ape Shall Not Kill Ape.