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Comment by ScottWhigham | Hacker News Reader

My first thought was, "Isn't this sort of like job hunting? It's unrealistic to expect a company advertising a job to respond to each and every resume, regardless of how much time the user put into it. For the same reason, I would guess the "Freelancer" threads would be the same way." But the more I think about it, the more I agree with you. The difference here is that these people personally reached out to you, rather than you just sending something to "hr-resumes@intel.com" or whatever. So yeah, makes sense to me.

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Why is it unrealistic to expect a company to respond to each and every resume?

I can understand a "personalized" response to be unrealistic. But at least a simple automatic e-mail saying "Thank you for applying, regretfully the position is now filled" or anything indicating "don't wait for an answer" should be the norm. Especially with a lot of large companies indicating that an answer could take up to 2 months.

This.

All it takes is an auto-responding filter. It is one of the shittiest feelings to send a resume to a company and get no response. I've done it many times, and I have had many no-responses. The feeling never got less shitty.

It's not. I founded a recruiting company around the idea that everyone should hear back. It was time consuming though. Before we automated some of the rejection functionality, it was many hours per week for an employee to reject applications one at a time.

I have been looking for a job in manufacturing and business operations for a few years now while finishing an MS of Industrial Engineering. If I was only allowed 1 response from the prospective employer, it would be the anonymous credentials of the man/woman who did get the job.

There is a learning opportunity for me to align my expectations and my credentials to the jobs I applied to. If I could identify that major road block, I could fix it. I could apply to fewer positions knowing what was appropriate or not. Everyone else could too and there would be less resume traffic overall.

Unfortunately, it's also a learning experience of those padding their resumes.

If all it took was to apply, there would definitely be an opportunity for a data market: I would create submissions for the sole purpose of getting the credential response. From there I could build a map of what the industry is hiring. With that I can sell resume coaching services. (Amongst other data sales.)

It's also a legal minefield. There are a lot of people who'll feel they might have been unfairly overlooked in favour of the candidate with the [arguably] inferior resume due to sexism/racism etc, when actually the arguably inferior candidate came recommended/cheap/first.

There are tons of reasons. I'm not trying to be rude but, IMO, not being able to see some of the reasons implies to me that you haven't done much interviewing/hiring.

The most likely reason is to stay "in charge" of your interviewing process. If Johnny sends in a resume and he is unqualified, what do you say? "Thanks, Johnny, but you are not a fit for our organization. Best of luck!" Form letter. Awesome - that makes someone feel better? Okay... Anyway, here's the problem: Johnny writes back and asks, "What is it that I could have done differently?" Do you respond? If you do, what do you say when he writes back yet again (and again and again)?

"Scott - this is the kind of guy you want to hire! He's persistent!" Oh really? So that's all it takes to get the job you are hiring for - persistence? Of course not.

"But you can take a guy like that and train him - he'll be great, I bet!" Will he? What's your proof? He's already shown you that he's trying to punch above his weight and that he's okay with that. He's already shown you that he's kind of a PIA. What makes you so optimistic about his ability to learn?

The point is that there are lots of reasons that employers don't continue the dialog, but this is a major one. No company wants to pay someone $25,000-$100,000 a year to reply to the Johnnys of the world ad infinitum. And as for companies getting interns to reply, that's just ridiculous IMO. What CEO wants interns to be in charge of replying to job applicants? That's awful. At BEST you can train them not to *#$& up a form letter.

> The most likely reason is to stay "in charge" of your interviewing process. If Johnny sends in a resume and he is unqualified, what do you say?

When I'm hiring, I respond to each and every resume. 99% of them get a canned "Thanks for applying. Unfortunately, it's not a match, but we wish you the best of luck."

Is that so hard?

My personal answer? No. It's not.

You're programmers. Write a macro. Then tap the key.

> No company wants to pay someone $25,000-$100,000 a year to reply to the Johnnys of the world ad infinitum.

First, this is ludicrous; even if you're sending thousands or tens of thousands of these letters, you can have a process that doesn't cost but a penny or two more than REVIEWING the email in the first place does.

Second, any company that can't design good processes that work well and cheaply isn't a place where I want to work.

> Is that so hard?

Yes, actually. To say that it isn't implies that either (a) you aren't doing much hiring, or (b) that the number of applicants you get is very small. For an admin position, we might get 150 applications. Of those, less than 50% will have met the stated job requirements/pre-reqs. Even if I were to automate it, how much time have I spent automating it? Maintaining it? And for each person, there's certainly a few seconds/minutes of "Let me make sure I get the name right..." And that's just one position. It is hard to do what you're saying, unless (a) you aren't doing much hiring, or (b) that the number of applicants you get are very small.

So in other words you're saying that your time is so incredibly valuable that you should be made exempt from the generally acceptable standards of behavior?

(I've spent 20+ years in the tech biz. I've probably hired a few hundred people myself. I've never been "too busy" to live up to the bare minimum professional standards of behavior. To me this smells less like being too busy - and more like being too arrogant.)

Time to hire a recruiter. His/Her job would be to be a point of contact, responding to candidates and filtering them, even with the help of talenbuddy or the likes.

Did you miss this line from the parent's post?

    But at least a simple automatic e-mail saying "Thank you for applying, regretfully the position is now filled" or anything indicating "don't wait for an answer" should be the norm.

Your argument is that its better to be rude and not even send out an auto-reply because of the possibility that they will reply and want more information. But who cares? If the auto-respond email says "We'll get back to you if we are interested" then the conversation is over for the time being. It is then not rude to ignore any subsequent emails from the job applicant.

Let me frame this another way. Sometimes I find that Gmail doesn't always deliver my mail. It's rare, but it happens. A simple auto-reply can give people the peace of mind that they are at least being considered.

> Johnny writes back and asks, "What is it that I could have done differently?" Do you respond?

You respond back and say "Unfortunately, due to the high number of responses we received, we're unable to go into detail as to why we moved forward with some applicants and not others. We wish you the best in the future." Further responses go straight to the trash (unless they stand out enough to be placed on the never-hire-these-people-ever list).

I'm not trying to be rude but, IMO, not being able to see some of the reasons implies to me that you haven't done much interviewing/hiring.

I don't think you are rude and you are right I haven't done a lot of hiring but I have done numerous interviews along the years and applied dozens of times. As a matter of fact I am currently applying right now.

I understand your point about the personalized response saying explicitely "you are not fit for our organization" or even more "you lack this and that". It could be opening a door to a "negociation" and lead to a lot of lost time. And when you have dozens or hundreds or applicants it really is not possible.

But this kind of response goes a long way from a simple "the position has been filled" when it has been filled, even if it is a month afterwards. This helps the candidate to understand that the company is not interested in his application anymore.

In my opinion it shows a lot from the company and does not cost "that" much of time it the process is automated (and I think it should be for the majority of cases).

I think you're overestimating what applicants are expecting here. Obviously a form rejection opens up a lot of problems, but a form acknowledgement doesn't share those issues. Something as simple as "Thank you for your resume, we will review it and contact you if it appears that we may have a position suitable for you." Stress on the "will review" so that it's clear the applicant hasn't been considered yet, favorably or otherwise.

In particular, I consider this worthwhile for resumes submitted at various career fairs. The process employed there frequently comes down to handing over a paper resume and being told "Thank you for your resume, we'll digitize it and put it into our system." This is far from reassuring, particularly after the first few times you get clear proof that your resume was never digitized at all. A form note simply acknowledging the submission provides your applicants with confidence that their resume is truly in your possession and a better feeling than applying to a black hole.

I think more companies could do with having an intern or assistant to help handle these kinds of things. No, you don't want your $1K/hour CEO manually replying to 150 emails, but having someone who represents the company simply acknowledge your existence goes a long way towards good will.

It's the same with client relationships: we may be neck-deep in server fires at the moment, and know there's no way we'll be able to fix something today, let alone before the end of the week, but simply having someone reply "Yes, we'll handle this, and I'll take care of following up with the development team for you and get back with you shortly" goes a long, long way to putting a client at ease.

No, you don't want your $1K/hour CEO manually replying to 150 emails

Isn't it a fundamental startup-culture tenet that the CEO should be a "whatever needs to be done" actor within the company?

Yes, in so far as he needs to be that actor -to keep the creatives from having to context switch.-

To borrow Spolsky's yacht analogy, the captain has 40 people running around below deck to ensure that the engine keeps running, the beds get made, and the meals show up on time. You don't want your customers (your developers and your designers) to have to think about anything besides where they want to go and what to have for lunch.

But it'd be a pretty inefficient boat captain who tried to rebuild the engine and cook a 5-star meal at the same time.

I don't think rebuilding the engine and 5-star cookery are apt analogies for replying to emails spurred by the company's own inquiries.

> Isn't it a fundamental startup-culture tenet that the CEO should be a "whatever needs to be done" actor within the company?

I think you're taking this too far.

your statement is true if they have nothing else to do.

However, if the company needs money and the choice is between your CEO fundraising or answering emails then I'd rather have my CEO fundraising.

There are only so many hours in a day and you can't expect your CEO to do all tasks that no one else wants to do.

> I think more companies could do with having an intern

Is this allowed in the US? In several European countries, legislation on interns is very strict: they need to have a specific project to work on, that is not part of the day-to-day functions of the host company. This is to stop companies depressing the wage market by using unprotected interns instead of salaried workers.

So you can take an intern to design and launch a new recruitment process, or other "project" work, but not just to offload recurring tasks.

You can't substitute a cheaper intern for a full time employee in the US for the same reasons you state. It's even questionable to have interns working on anything that adds to the bottom line of your business.

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