Unfortunately.tech – a collection of rejection letters
unfortunately.tech
unfortunately.tech
No. One thing that's worse is they schedule a follow-up call, then blow off the call. Happened to me.
But it's especially bad when you've already gone through most of the application process beforehand. Being ghosted after a job application? Annoying, but possibly understandable if the demand was really high. Being ghosted after going through multiple interviews, a coding test and everyone basically implying you've got the job in the bag?
Now that's awful. If someone's spent hours/days/weeks of their time going through all these steps, you at least owe it to yourself to tell them if they've got the role or not. Even just saying 'Sorry you don't have the job, we chose another candidate' is better than radio silence after all that wasted time.
What do you think this is attributable to? Is it that technology has shortened our attention spans so much that we no longer encode the memories of recent experiences?
1) People are becoming super averse to conflict and, by extension, confrontation. I think it's for myriad reasons. Not wanting to deal with the possibly-negative response; being accused of something; the other party exacting some form of retribution; and so on. I think the perception is that if one party says "[not-preferred reply]," the other party feels maligned instead of just that "it didn't work out."
2) Along the same lines, I think not saying "no" is also seen as responsibility shifting. "Well, I didn't tell them 'yes' so they'll figure it out soon enough." And then the ghosted party is then held as being responsible for their own feelings. "Not my problem you felt bad that [a possible employer | an acquaintance | some other interaction] never called you back. Those are your feelings, not [mine | ours]."
It was devastating at the time but, in retrospect, it would have been a wrong turn for me personally and professionally. And
and thanks.
I got one today. It's okay: I got the message. I'm already gainfully employed elsewhere. You didn't need to send me a little reminder that I'm not good enough for your cool kids' club.
If we've never spoken before then it's really not necessary to send me a form-rejection. I'm not holding my breath.
I suggest that few companies will object to you asking about their timeframe for decisions, or (once that has expired) asking for feedback. Some companies won't be set up to provide it, which is unfortunate, but I suspect many will.
Its interesting that there is an article on the front page [0] right now singing the praises of Ghost (ironically named in this case) which does exactly the opposite.
From their careers page [1]:
> Unfortunately due to the volume of submissions that come in whenever we open a position we aren't able to respond to every single application, but if yours is successful - you'll hear back from us within around a week.
Applied for a job, 12 hours later received a personal email from HR citing a) their appreciation for my skillset b) why I am not a fit for their current role c) their request to keep my details on file for future opportunities.
signed off by a guy with his mobile and email in case I wanted further information.
It was the most professional interaction I've had during a job application process.
I called back a number of times and left messages with his staff as he was quite often at meetings elsewhere in the region.
After some time, I managed to actually speak to the manager in question and during our conversation, he stated that I should have known that I was unsuccessful due to getting no feedback or calls or letters from him.
I made it quite clear to him that I had, in the past, been in the position of interviewer and that it was considered highly unprofessional for applicants to not be notified that they were unsuccessful. If they had put in the effort to apply then it was appropriate to put in the effort to respond to those applications.
What was funny was finding a rejection letter hand delivered to my mail box a couple of hours later. As I had other contacts within the organisation, which he didn't know about, I made enquires as to his general level of competence. He was not a people person and in that regard I was happy not to have been successful. If I got the story right, the successful applicant didn't last much over a year under his gentle management style anyway.
As has been noted elsewhere in these comments, the way a company responds or doesn't respond affects how they are viewed by applicants and it does affect their reputation.
The reason company ghost-ed candidates is because they want to keep them as an option.
Say that they don't get a "good" candidate, they have those "lesser" candidate as backup in case they need someone fast.
So yea ... hug of death. Wasn't expecting it to get any attention at all (but that begs the question, why did I submit??).
Anyway, this is an idea I've been sitting on for a while and finally got around to doing something with it. Nothing fancy (this is the first personal project that I've "deployed", and would really appreciate any sort of feedback).
I think it's interesting to look at how companies write rejection letters. It's also a bit cathartic -- I'm finishing up uni and starting to look for work, having a collection of rejection letters makes me feel better about receiving them.
I look forward to reading the rejection letters at a later date.
[0] http://grammarist.com/rhetoric/begging-the-question-fallacy/
Looks like the website rejected me :(
Contrast that with Slack & TwitchTV. Companies where I got rejected after taking their pre-screen homework test even after spending a few hours on their test & submitting a correct working solution. No feedback provided even after request. Wish there was a repository of companies which expect applicants to waste a bunch of time without even providing feedback. Will know to avoid those in the future.
"Marge: [sifting through mail] Aww. A rejection letter from the New Yorker subscription department."
* Disrupt ${thing}
* Solve a clearly defined problem
* Harvest personal data for a variety of ethically questionable reasons.
* Distributed transactions ledgers (NOTE: Blockchain only)
Recognizing imperfection can be more helpful than consuming perfection.