How I lost my opportunity to work for Amazon

Modern recruiting has a huge upside. With LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed and individual websites, there are countless ways to find out and apply for interesting jobs. Email means you can interact with a recruiter, privately, from work or Starbucks.

There is a cost, however, and I just experienced one. I have two email accounts. One for personal emails (purchases, friends, family) another for work-related. Earlier this year, I had a promising interview process with a company I wanted to work for. Eventually, I was offered an on-site interview. I replied with my availability, and suddenly everything went dark. I waited a week or more, and checked in. I was told the team was working on it. I waited a bit longer and checked in again, and was surprised to hear the job had been filled. I was shocked and upset, what happened to my on-site interview?

Today the mystery was solved. I was searching my personal email for a purchase, and found an interview confirmation for an on-site interview from this company. It was swept into an auto-filter I have on this email server for all exchanges with this company. I did not look for it there because all other communications took place on my work-related email account.

The good news is I now know why the job opportunity that seemed like the perfect fit, suddenly fell apart. I also have a chance to make sure my record with this company is updated so it does not appear like I skipped out on an interview. I would like to be considered for other roles, and this could have stopped any future employment.

I just regret is so easy as mistyping an email address (I assume this is what happened because I have never used my personal email in any correspondence with the recruiter) to lose a job opportunity, one that was perfect, but in the end, was not meant to be.