Turned Down for a Job at Groupon Over a Year After Applying | Hacker News Reader

Turned Down for a Job at Groupon Over a Year After Applying

bennesvig.com

66 pointsbennesvig34 comments

I had the opposite awkwardness: I was "hired" at a company 8 months after I interviewed.

Needless to say I instantly "quit." Somehow they didn't see a problem with waiting that long, which further informed my aversion to working there. :)

I know someone who went through 9 months and 7 interviews (including flights to Chicago and other regional offices) with Cisco for a director-level position, and finally got turned down.

Some companies are simply amazing at how inefficient their HR is.

I met a manager at a major bank who had taken a year from application to being hired. He was happy enough, he said sometimes these things just take a long time before the right opportunity comes up. By applying you get yourself in the queue and meet the relevant people. If you're looking for somewhere to work for potentially 5+ years delaying the start by a few months isn't great, but nor is it the end of the world.

Bluntly put, decent behavior is to have a 1-3 day turnaround on this sort of thing.

I sort of have a 2 week rule: if you can't send some sort of ACK in two weeks to me, your processes are sufficiently lousy that you've downgraded your desirability in my eyes; further, based on my experience, you're probably not going to respond after 2 weeks if you haven't, anyway.

At my current company, I think I completed the entire hiring round from my initial inquiry to hire in under 1 week. IMO, that's how it should be done!

A response with a 1 year lag is asking to be mocked on the Internet.

What about a place like Google? Would you make an exception for them? The most desirable employers are generally so overwhelmed with resumes they just can't do prompt follow ups.

There really shouldn't be exceptions regarding respectful behavior and courtesy.

Not really. If Google can't have someone in HR who can at least send back in under 2 weeks a template mail that goes "Thanks, but no thanks", or "Thanks, we're interested, we'll get back to you real soon now", I'd be very disappointed.

I agree. If a company has posted a job listing, they are expecting me to take time in preparing a relevant and thoughtful application to them (rather than some generic recycled crap that goes to everyone).

In that case please have the decency to reply to my correspondence both on receipt and later with a decision.

Why should I be arsed to waste my precious time preparing my application if the company can't be arsed to write back either way.

Of course for an unsolicited application it's a different matter. It would be unfair to expect them to reply to every application they didn't ask for in the first place.

Look at the email headers. Maybe it was stuck in an smtp queue? (You laugh but I've seen mail recently delayed by 6 months. It still happens.) :)

I absolutely HATE when companies don't reply to applications. I don't understand how or why they take so long, especially when the entire system has become streamlined with things like Jobvite.

A hasty rejection or progression is much appreciated. Mutual respect; showing a little bit goes a long way. Maybe its just me, but I guess I have a bit of an ego and a chip on my shoulder when companies (which I spend time researching and applying to) totally brush me off or don't reply after initial emails.

Ah you must be young -- expecting mutual respect from tech recruiters.

Companies may have to talk to five other people before they can decide whether to progress or reject your application. Those five discussions might take time to arrange and complete. Companies may have liked you enough to consider you for the position but if you're third in line, you need to wait for the first and second people to reject or accept the position, which may take a few days each time. Or a great application may come in half way through the process.

I agree with you that companies should keep you updated, but sometimes these things take time.

Recruiter here. I get back to everyone that applies, or at least try to. Current recruiting software doesn't have a good solution for dealing with all the different use cases that delay the hiring process. Combine that with high volumes of job applications and it becomes a real pain.

"If you can’t respond in a reasonable time, then don’t respond at all."

I disagree with that. It was their fault for not notifying you earlier, but I don't see how it is better to say nothing.

When I see that I did something wrong in the past, I try to apologize, even though the situation is far in the past (and even though it's sometimes hard and/or embarrassing).

Yeah... You're not talking about a form letter, though. I think the real point is that if they don't get back to you for a year, they should at least have someone write "Hey, sorry about that" by hand.

Look at it from a different perspective. Is Groupon now going back to old applicants because they're having trouble recruiting new talent? Groupon hasn't exactly been a cinderella in the news lately with their phony accounting metrics and questionable concerns about the viability of their business. Perhaps they have outgrown their employment base. Hard to imagine considering above 9% unemployment but just a thought.

I have to think it can't be that bad a place to work; they at least have a good sense of humor. April Fools' before last they did this awesome parody of Gilt: http://www.groupoupon.com/

HR was using an automated system that sent boilerplate e-mails. Nothing to see here, move along...

Yeah, that's the standard JobVite rejection message. I've usually gotten them within a week or two of an interview, though.

When I achieve world domination, failure to follow up with candidates in a reasonable time will be punishable by summary execution.

I find it hard to put into words how infuriating this behavior is.

My hate is reserved for excited HR types who volunteer a deadline for a reply and then not only don't keep it, never respond. Compounded if one of their colleagues (i.e., another on-staff recruiter at the same company) writes a month or two later to ask if you're interested in the same job.

I've had people tell me they do that because they 'want you to ask for the job.' ... Seriously? Coming to the interview, doing well, and showing interest wasn't enough? I now have to also expect you not to keep your word?

Forget that. If someone says they'll do something and then doesn't, that's a direct mark against their trustworthyness. Why would I want to work there?

I have had a similar experience when applying for a graduate job in a satellite comms. company in London. I got a call literally eight months later, thanking me for my application and that its being considered. They claimed I would have an answer within the next month. They never called me back and I found a much better job in the mean time; out of courtesy gave them a ring to let them know I am not interested in the position (this is t+1 year since applying) - they told me a decision had not been met yet and were even 'angry' on me leading them on and not cancelling the application earlier.

Similar experience with a certain agency - got a rejection letter months after I applied (because I didn't bother taking their coding test - which was a flash based test when I was applying for a non-flash position), followed by an email asking me for my updated resume not even a week later - both from the same HR person.

My own experiences have shown me that the bigger the company, the more convoluted and delayed the hiring process. I've had the resume-interview-hire cycle happen the span of a few days at smaller firms. More recently, a larger company called me to offer me a position some three months after my interview, and the position offered wasn't even what I had interviewed for.

The only reasonable way to get hired by a big company is to have someone on the inside who can short circuit the process on your behalf. Last time I worked for a big company, the only person I dealt with was my future boss and he managed to circumvent the standard HR process and sneak me in through the back door.

Okay, I learned in an HR course that the HR job is composed of mainly 2 parts

(1) Quantitative, which includes stuff like payroll management, leave management, hiring (paper work part of it) and firing, etc ...

(2) Qualitative, which focus on 2 things, recruitment and motivation

It becomes obvious to me day after day that HR rarely does (2) correctly if at all

Of course an HR course would tell you that. In reality, HR is concerned with 2 things:

* Keeping the company from getting sued

* Everything else you said

The first bullet is about about 80% of their time.

Probably has everything to do with their recent acquisition of their primary development contracter.

Super quick rejections is all that great either as it would show that they didn't really take a close look at your blog, cv, cover letter, etc.

Did you go in to interview or are you expecting a reply when you email jobs@groupon.com?

I just got one from Facebook today. Must be at least 6 months old.

I think he got his math wrong. Maybe he want 5/26/10?

He corrected his typo.

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