I saw over 3,000 applications made over the last 2-3 years. Tailored resumes. Cover letters. This wasn't some LinkedIn "quick apply", these were direct "Fill out the form" on our website. Not a single one of these applications got read.
Surely this would basically immediately backfire as people would presume a rejection and not apply when you actually wanted to hire. Why would you do this?
The last time I did ran the job search, I needed a spreadsheet to keep track of things. When a recruiter reaches out to me, I'm going to see if their company is in there, and what my notes say about my last experience with them.
If anything I'd only remember postings I actually interviewed and was rejected for. Which is sadly a small enough number to keep in my head.
Well that's exactly why I apply multiple times.
Had an example last year. I applied once, got rejected, coincidentally met someone at that same company and team later in the week. They sent me a referral, and then boom, recruiter call the next day. My resume was the same. It's just the referral pile got me visiable.
I'm pretty convinced even pre-AI that there are so many times when I'm simply not seen. Getting no response or an automated response just tells me these days "okay, I didn't make it to a human. Maybe next time" instead of "welp, I'm not good enough right now".
Also note that those kinds of companies are pretty big with hundreds of roles for software. The hiring culture between each team may as well make it a few dozen companies. I'm not trying to re-apply (on purpose) to a small group of a a few dozen after one rejection from the exact same role.
Additionally, it take a single lazily-managed spreadsheet to identify this dysfunction. Surely any positive effect from doing this would be muted (again, likely into the negative) because the company doesn't want to hire you.
In my experience, it's because they didn't actually see you (or they were never hiring anyone to begin with. Hence the article). If I don't get to a step where I speak to a human, I don't really count it as a rejection. Just a filtering.
Rejection implies that my skillset was not fit to the role, or that someone else was better than me and selected. Definitely not the vibes I get in this current market.
Are we supposed to simply assume that nobody ever reads any application we send in? I don't see how this works out anyway but negatively for the company. If I don't hear back from you, I'll just assume you don't want to hire me. There's no semantic difference in my mind between this and sending me a note that you've read and rejected my resume—especially in an industry where it's normal to simply ghost someone rather than issue a formal rejection.
I see we're talking in circles. I'll drop the conversation.
But if you're taking my "assumption" as an absolute, I don't know what to say. An assumption based on this precise slice of time. Not something that will always be true in all contexts. It's not even always true in this context.
>There's no semantic difference in my mind between this and sending me a note that you've read and rejected my resume
Bots don't send hand written notes. They can, but the costs are a much higher margin than an auto reject email.
You're pretty close to what my main point is, though. Bots aren't an automatic bad, but there feels to be zero effort on the recruiting end this day to try and get quality candidates. That lack of care means I shouldn't spend any energy regarding their (lack of) feedback if all I'm getting back is slop. So I'll just spin the AI roulette again.
Take care.
I've never read a cover letter that I found valuable for hiring anyone, though. And I'm sure mine were never of any actual value either.
cheers
IMO it's too disheartening to put effort into such personal writing without the awareness of some kind of direct value or benefit, since chances are it's going straight into the void.
I rolled my eyes.
Although this might be sound advice, it's not the reality of a lot of people looking for work.
Yes, they might do this for the few months, but after what 6 months+ of no or canned responses (even though you have ALL the skills they want) it gets tiresome and you just say F-it, copy-paste a canned cover letter.
Remember I have lots of more interesting things to do than read your application. When we are hiring (like many we are not today) I take time to do the process, but I really want to be doing the more interesting work.
Enticing job seekers to waste their very precious time is not ethical.
Edit: fix double negative.
(I don't think you intended that)
Well those are 3000 resumes that won't be resubmitted when you actually want to hire. Many of those resumes will belong to people who since found work. Weeding through that would be a nightmare, so you'd have to toss it and write it off as a loss.
Or you could just post jobs when you're actually interested in hiring and turn it off when you have enough applications to process. Super interested candidates can always cold email.
And maybe next round they do apply again. I sure don't remember when I last was applying who I applied for except some big names that ... yeah I'd submit it again if I was looking.
I don't like the system, but I don't think they're hurt by it.