Senior executives at Hewlett-Packard have suggested that women will apply for a job when they meet most, if not all, of the requirements of a job posting, while men are comfortable applying at much lower levels of qualification. Fess up: did you embellish a little? (A lot?)
It could be internal red tape and emails that haven’t connected. If you think the interview went great and were expecting the offer, trust your gut. …Or was it HR that was supposed to follow-up? Did anyone in HR send out an email to clarify? Gary, could you touch base and find out where we are? These situations happen easily in a busy company environment. Once the hiring manager has decided they would like to extend an offer to you, that manager needs to contact HR. It could also be that internal communication has been unclear. Once the manager returns, they’ll trudge through all the email from the last few weeks, until they get to the swath of HR messages that say, “We still need a decision on this person!” It’s super-convenient for the manager, but it’s not so convenient for you, since you have no way of knowing about the travel. Perhaps they squeezed in your interview just before going on vacation. Maybe this was an inconvenient time for your soon-to-be supervisor.