A thank you email to someone you're already in an email conversation with is not at all unreasonable, but expecting people to hunt down your email address just to send you a thank you, is downright weird.
"To be clear, a thank-you note does not ensure someone will be a successful hire. But using the thank-you email as a barrier to entry has proved beneficial, at least at my company." the author says. Blatantly ignorant towards all the genius they've lost in their broken process. "The handful of times we've moved forward with a candidate despite not receiving a thank you, we've been ghosted, or the offer we make is ultimately rejected." The author says, because changing the strategy for a handful of cases out of thousands is definitely really scientific and stuff. "As a hiring manager, you should always expect a thank-you email, and you should never make an offer to someone who neglected to send one." as the last quote just showing the pure entitlement the author suffers...
That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me happy to be in Software, people who bring trouble usually don't get promoted into responsibility...
Perhaps this is selecting for desperate job hunters who send thank you notes.
That's entirely plausible. I mean, you're probably <insert arbitrary percentage here> more likely to not turn an offer down, even if it's below the cost-of-living for the area in question, if you're willing to go to those lengths, yeah?
Their solution to the problem of having offers turned down seems to be not to investigate why but to just hire the people most willing to take them... I mean, they found a loop-hole but to quote the Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole."
> makes me happy to be in Software
This might well be the one detail that makes the difference here. In software, and many other industries, this would be stupid and counterproductive, but in journalism, polite but invasive persistence might actually be a relevant character trait.
It would really be a different situation. But this is not about looking for a specific trait which is tied to a job.
Unfortunately all that they achieve with this strategy is locking out people who are "not like us". It all boils down to different cultures different rules, in Germany sending a thank you note to a business contact over a non disclosed communication channel would be perceived as very unprofessional or creepy.
It's the step right before adding your business contacts on facebook uninvited... So if your goal is to avoid hiring German people, the strategy is probably great.
(Taking the German example here because we Germans are very sensitive with data and privacy. The rule could also be exchanged for any other different no hire rule, overall what you achieve with such rules, is simply locking out a group of people, but those are people who could help your business succeed.)