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Comment by uberdru | Hacker News Reader

Honestly the problem is hiring teams -- they have created this whole issue. They ask for a resume and cover letter. Fine. But don't make applicants put in the work if you're not even going to provide a response, or any sort of feedback -- even when the position stays open for months. The result is that people looking for jobs have to submit huge numbers of custom cover letters, and tweaked resumes, with no feedback, all within a vacuum. Hence the feeling that they need to "pump up" their resume, just to get over the initial gate.

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Hiring manager here - the last job I posted was open for 6 weeks. We waited 2 weeks for initial applications, and it took 4 weeks to schedule interviews with our shortlist and get to an offer, including a very unfortunate 2 week holiday from someone that allowed us down.

We got 350 applications for it. We listed in the JD that remote was ok but needed to be in specific countries for us to hire. I’d guess 90% of the applicants were outside those countries. Of the remained the problem is that most of them all have the skills we’re looking for. One thing is for sure, I read every single cover letter that came through, and I’d say that the vast majority of ones that made an actual effort we interviewed.

I once casted volunteer actors for short movies. It costed me literally nothing to write: "Deadline for application is $DATE, you will hear from us within X days. You will either get a rejection or an invitation to a casting on $CASTINGDATE1 or $CASTINGDATE2."

And on the casting I personally guaranteed for a date when they will get a result. Rejections included feedback that helped candidates understand our decision and improve their craft.

This is in my opinion how you do things when you have a shred of respect for the people on the other side. Actors greatly valued how we did things.

If you can't live with the insecurity of knowing whether you're able to keep those dates, just make a pessimistic guess and add a few days on top. It is really not that hard.

The problem is - that’s unlikely to be true. If we make a miss, or the candidate(s) pull out we don’t want to re-list and re-funnel. So we keep the job open while we’re hiring. Usually we close it out once we have anyone at the final stages of 5-6 people in the interview loop.

But every job posting I’ve set up, I’ve configured an auto response template. It’s just a generic “sorry we decided to proceed with someone else” but it’s at least closure. We used to provide a few templates until someone demanded (including multiple emails to the hiring manager directly) looking for more information after we had send them a “sorry but we didn’t think your skills were a good match to the role”. It’s not perfect but at least everyone gets an answer from me.

Six months into a new role, started getting rejections from applications nearly a year ago. It feels like not a single norm from 2019 has persisted.

I hope of those 5-6, 4-5 are at least told something like "we are intending to proceed with another candidate, but we were impressed by your interview and may contact you again in the future".

That at least gives them an understanding that they are probably not going to get the job, but there's a slim chance they may be offered it in the future (although as I've said before, I'd rather be a different company's first choice than their second), rather than continuing to make them keep their life on pause because they don't know if you've already offered the job to someone else or whether you're still deliberating.

I’m not in the businesd of keeping tethers out just in case. The way we do it is leave the role open for 1-2 weeks, choose our top 10 or so, and start proceeding through initial screen, hiring manager call, panel, director call, and done. If we get to a few people at panel level, we stop reviewing new applicants, but we continue with everyone who is at panel level.

We’re open with candidates saying that we’re interviewing multiple people and that we’ll keep them updated. It’s usually 5-6 weeks _in total_ so realistically you’ll have had maximum 2 weeks where we will have said “we’ve got three candidates at the panel level, we’re speaking to next week. We’ll make a decision by friday the 31st April”. If I could wave a scheduling magic wand and get everything wrapped in a Fortnite I would.

I guess I misunderstood what you were saying. The post I replied to sounded like you told most of the candidates no, but kept the other 5-6 waiting until your chosen hire had accepted.

But this clarification makes it sound like you do actually do what I was suggesting - telling those others they weren't successful as soon as you've actually chosen one.

If you haven't finished making your selection yet, you obviously wouldn't tell the people still in the running either way. I was specifically talking about once you have made the decision and informed the successful candidate - because many companies don't bother telling the other candidates at that point just in case the candidate you chose doesn't accept the job, they still want to keep those other people live. I think it's better to tell them that you've offered the job to someone else and will only contact them again if that person doesn't acecpt.

I like your practice there but productions are known to be on a schedule in a way that many job postings are not. If you apply for positions with more turnover (e.g. manufacturing line) you’ll see more predictably timed communication.

It’s not worth a lawsuit for the reason to turn someone down. It’s also not worth hearing them argue back “yah I know JS you just asked bad question XYZ”… just not worth it

Hiring teams don’t actually have to interview every single applicant. I was a “hiring manager”(quotes because I effectively wasn’t due to my director involving himself in every decision) for a team that took 8 months to fill a role.

It wasn’t for lack of applicants but because the company as an org was acting like maybe there was an even better option amongst the remaining applicants despite finding people perfectly suited for the role.

I compared it to the family guy skit where Peter chose a mystery box over a boat saying “the mystery box could be anything, it could even be a boat!” to managers in my social circle in other companies and it resonated with them so it didn’t appear to be a rare situation.

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