As a hiring manager, I tried to have my recruiting managers or sourcers handle the notification of bad news whenever possible, but I made the mistake of doing so myself a few times and will never do it again. While certainly most people either don't reply or simply provide an extremely rude e-mail response upon the no-offer status, I've had a decent share of stalkers. The behavior has varied from:

- Women crying.

- Men telling me I was going to starve their family to poverty if they don't get this job.

- Men harassing me repeatedly.

It goes on. Admittedly, even back then (~2005/2006) I was too easy to contact (phone number in resume online), but dealing with the no-offer responses from candidates was by far the most stressful thing I've ever done related to hiring, and I have the utmost respect for the usually young folks in recruiting who have to deal with it on a daily basis. I personally found the, "we may have to let you go if your performance does not improve" conversations easier.

So, yeah, the comments responding to this post make it sound like all kittens and baby smiles if you give the, "no hire" mail, but it's pretty far from that in reality.