Two Annoying Networking Habits

In the market at the moment and just wanted to call out a couple annoying networking habits:

1. Occasionally, because of some random connection (same school, same hometown, they like the cut of your telephonic jib), a networker will basically say a candidate can treat them like their "point man," "head of the spear," "main contact," etc. Sometimes this is HR, and sometimes this is investing side. Please, for the love of God, do not say this and then totally ghost the candidate you're saying it to. I personally always decelerate networking scope if someone straight up tells me they're going to be the preliminary point of contact. If they then can't offer me process updates (especially when *they* tell me when to check back in), or if they "promise" to introduce me to coworkers and don't, I'm a little bit up shit's creek because (1) I've held off on networking with more people in the interim (sometimes weeks or months), and (2) if I restart networking with others and they know I've talked with the point man-to-be, I can come across as overstepping my bounds.

Please don't force me into this Scylla and Charybdis, and please don't force yourself into giving off this look if you know you'll be too busy to respond over the next few weeks / months (or you just habitually are ok with ghosting). It's ok! No one asked you to be a point man! You can just be someone I had a nice phone call with that may or may not lead to anything else and we can go down our respective paths!

2. It is very unhelpful when a professional tells a candidate they want to talk, but ghost scheduling email responses, can never find a time that works because they only propose one window at a time, etc. Look, we make a lot of money in this industry. Part of that money goes to personal assistants who are very well compensated to manage our receipts, our schedules, our holiday gifts, etc. Please let them do that. No one needs you to be Superman if you truly are too swamped to provide schedule visibility or are just straight up not good at scheduling. It's ok! You're paid to cut datapacks, not schedule! Even if you have to cancel, let me at least get the initial time down with the PA and manage rescheduling with her instead of playing roulette on whether each email is going to be at the right intersection of its ordinal hierarchy within your clogged inbox and the vicissitudes of your free time.