In today's job market, where many companies have more openings to fill than suitable candidates, employers supposedly realize they must be solicitous to job seekers rather than rude or overly aggressive. With talent in short supply, they must not just find the best people to hire but convince them that they are worth working for.

Dave began a job search after graduating from business school. He not only had an M.B.A. to add to his previous nine years of marketing and public-relations experience, but, as friends and professors assured him, a burgeoning job market that favored applicants.

He sent resumes to a dozen or so Fortune 500 companies in his hometown of Washington, D.C., and several other big cities. He soon was asked to several interviews.

But on his first interview the hiring manager spent nearly half the time criticizing his one-page resume as "too short." Dave accepted the criticism gracefully, especially when the interviewer told him he thought he was a "natural fit" for a job opening at another company -- and then arranged an interview there for him.

He arrived at the second company for his interview 15 minutes early, only to be told that the human-resources manager scheduled to meet with him was running late. He waited for an hour and 15 minutes before finally talking with her.

She was openly enthusiastic about his background, he says, and asked him to return the following week for a writing test. He agreed, and when he arrived at his scheduled 4 p.m. time, his interviewer told him the test would take two hours. Fifteen minutes before the test ended, she said, she would come to the testing room to remind him of the time.

At 5:45 p.m., however, neither she nor anyone else appeared. He had already completed the test and decided to spend the remaining time checking his work. But at 6 p.m., no one came to collect the test. He waited another 15 minutes before calling the manager to tell her he had finished the test. She was not at her desk, so he left a message.

At 6:30 he ventured into the hall to find help. What he found was that the entire human-resources office was closed for the day, with most doors locked. "They forgot about me taking the test," he says. Worried that if he simply left what he had written on the computer terminal, it might easily be lost or deleted, he finally flagged down an employee who was leaving for the evening. She assured him she would deliver his test, stored on a computer disk, to the human-resources manager. Before Dave departed, he left another voice-mail message for the manager.

The Day After

The next morning, the manager called him, inquiring where he had left his test. She hadn't yet checked her voice mail and did not apologize for leaving him in the empty office. When he blurted out, "I didn't know if I was supposed to wait for you or not," she responded, "I was in a meeting until 8 p.m." The only other information she offered was that it would take 10 days to review his test.

By then he was interviewing at another company where, he says, he was treated "with respect." When he went for an interview, his interviewers were on time. They asked probing but pertinent questions and seemed genuinely interested in his background as well as what he might contribute to their company. When he e-mailed them the next day to thank them for their time and interest, they e-mailed him back, thanking him. Moreover, they got back to him on the day they said they would contact him -- with a job offer.

He accepted, "because it's a good job," he says. "But they also treated me well, which made me want to work for them." Among other things, they told him his M.B.A. enhanced his job experience, and they showed interest in his ideas and opinions about several of their projects.

Meanwhile, he has never heard from the manager who told him he was a likely hire and gave him the writing test. But he is not waiting for her call. "Who wants to work in that environment?" he asks