Scheduling Under Email Deliverability Risk: 72-Hour Action Plan and Escalation

Scenario

You must schedule a critical Data Scientist technical screen within five business days. A senior stakeholder intermittently claims not to receive your emails. You do not have IT/admin privileges and HR has not engaged yet.

Assume today is Wednesday, Oct 29, 2025, and the interview must be held by Wednesday, Nov 5, 2025.

Task

Describe, step by step:

1. A 72-hour plan to restore reliable communication and secure a confirmed meeting time, including at least two redundant channels (e.g., alternate sender address via Outlook/colleague, calendar holds with RSVP requests, LinkedIn InMail, a third-party scheduler) and how you time your follow-ups.
2. How you would verify end-to-end deliverability without read receipts, including seeded test inboxes, unique tracking tokens in the subject/body, and prearranged acknowledgments.
3. The escalation path and a decision matrix for when to switch providers/channels, involve HR, or move to a live call, including guardrails for professionalism and compliance.
4. Exact subject lines and header tweaks you would try to reduce spam risk, plus a cadence that avoids rate limiting.
5. How you will document attempts, define SLAs, assign owners, and keep the candidate experience intact.
6. If, on the Friday before the planned interview, you learn the position is filled, how you salvage the relationship and convert the interaction into future opportunities.

Specify concrete success metrics and dates.