Sometimes, I —or other people I know— send an email someone —or a team— in an professional setting and never get an answer.
- How should that situation be handled?
- Should I double down after a couple of days and try to force an answer? Either trying to contact by phone or sending a second email?
- Isn't considered impolite and unprofessional not to answer emails, even if it's with a quick-one-phrase answers?
I swear to god that I always try to be as polite as concise and polite as possible, and my language skills allow me.
Last time case scenario:
I sent an email to the posters of a position I'm interested in about some questions I have, and if could make them over the phone. I thought phone was easier, quicker and less dry. In the position's post was clearly stated that you can contact them to ask questions.
After two days, I was able to get the phone of one of them by other channels and contact him over the phone to have a nice and short conversation about the position. Anyhow, the other one never replied to my questions.
Wouldn't have been more professional to just answer with a quick "I'm sorry. I'm busy now. Contact me in a couple of days." or something like that?
Some additional info:
Cultural Differences
I'm a South European living in the Nordics, and although I've seen this behavior all around, I think it's specially strong here in the up North. I'm not saying that in the south everyone is really polite and answer swiftly to all the emails, but I don't know.
For me the impression is I'm receiving is, you are not important enough to lose 30' of my time on answering. And I mention just answering because I want to think that at least they read them.
English Skills
Sometimes I also think that Nordic people, specially Finns, are shy about their English skills —even when those are really good— and they delay as much as possible talk or write in English. However, I've come across with behavior also in the US, where of course, English is not a problem.
PS/ As someone has pointed out my question has been partially answered here: What is appropriate email follow-up etiquette after no response?, but I'm more focus on the professionalism of the lack of response, than in the methodology to finally get an answer.