Sitters, as a homeowner, I would love your opinion.
We have an open sit for a two week time period over Christmas and have received two applications. Both look very qualified and like they could be a good fit so we set up a Zoom meeting with each of them. We met the first applicant last night and would like to choose them. Should I continue meeting the other applicant tonight or just cancel and tell her we found someone else right away? Is it better to meet the second applicant and then decline?
Obviously, it isn’t anything personal with her because we haven’t even met her yet. We just had a great connection with the first applicant.
We did tell the first applicant that we were meeting with someone else tonight.
If you know with absolute certainty you want to pick the first person, it is best to cancel the call with the other. It is a waste of your time and the sitter’s. Also, once a HO asks for a chat, that suggests the sitter is seriously in the running, and for this reason, they may hold off on applying for listings with overlapping dates. In this case, doing the call anyway, knowing you aren’t going to pick them, will just delay them in finding another opportunity.
After 14 years of sitting, this scenario happened to me a couple of months ago. The HO responded to my application with an extremely warm message and a request to set up a phone call for the following day. There was no indication that she was speaking to others.
We had a long call and she then said she was speaking to others but would get back to me.
Feeling deflated I discussed this with Mr Itchyfeet. By the time I had finished the tail, I received a decline message, 10 minutes after she put the phone down.
I was extremely angry with the HO for wasting my time. You don’t want your second sitter to feel the same about you.
As a sitter I’d appreciate being told b3fore the video call. I would be perfectly happy though if you wanted to go ahead and do one anyway in case you were interested in me sitting on another occasion.
The OP has already stated clearly above that she cancelled the Zoom call with the second applicant and confirmed the first sitter who she had already spoken with.
It is so important for people to read the full topic posts before criticizing someone who has come on for advice, TAKEN that advice and pursued the correct path, which the OP has done. The topic might be useful for others going forward but in this case, the OP did everything right so I kinda hope this should be the end of it???
I asked because I had the same situation last year, and I let the second person know we had found someone and canceled the Zoom call. In fact, I do understand basic manners and, as everyone here has said, felt that it would be a waste of her time. Well, she was angry with me and read me the riot act for not at least following through to meet her. So, this is why I asked a group of sitters to confirm that was probably a unique reaction and not the norm.