(no subject)

[msmemory_archive]

Has it become unfashionable for employers to send "thanks but no thanks" letters to unsuccessful job applicants?

Comments

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

Yes. The only time I've ever been told no, rather than just never hearing from them again, was when I went through an agency.

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

It's unfortunate. How can they expect potential employees to respect them if they won't respect others?

[dreda.livejournal.com]

It would appear so, which I find really vexing.

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Yes, apparently it has.

Between A. and I, we sent out maybe 100 letters last year. If we got 10-15 back, that's a lot.

Maybe another 10 were interviews were we were later told no.

There are places that I don't even know if they got the letters.

I had two resumes returned because the places don't keep them on file. Well, that's what one said. The other just sent it back.

But I am not bitter.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

Was it ever fashionable? It would be nice, yes, but I can't remember it being more common than not.

[nazrynn.livejournal.com]

More often than not I had to follow-up call and pester HR at various companies to confirm the status of the application, and based on the reply, would follow up _Again_ unless a letter got to me first. And 9.5 times out of 10, that just doesn't happen. It seems less confrontational to just ignore the application, and not even bother communicating with the applicant that the job position has either been filled, or the candidate doesn't qualify.
***********
The most irritating case of failure to say "no thanks" came from a Korean company up in Hartford that specialized in archery equipment.

I got a tersely worded reply that they are ONLY looking for Korean people who spoke Korean, and the rest of the letter wasn't just blunt, but insulting. I wiped the memory of what specifically was said in there, but I was tempted to write a reply until I realized nothing I said in answer would change their behavior.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's not even fashionable to contact them in any way anymore, from what I've seen.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Of the interviews I had when looking for my Grown Up Job, one we agreed that the answer was no before we even started (She looked at my resume, raised an eyebrow, told me the salary and I went, "ah." She said, "So, no?" I said, "'fraid so." So we had a lovely chat), one never called me back, one ditthered on an answer for four months (sending a letter at three months that they were still dithering) before sending a letter syaing no, thank you, and this one.

Those were all government positions.

[johno.livejournal.com]

I actually perfer to be told that we've just hit a deal blocker during the interview.

Am I missing a expensive to aquire required skill.
Am I asking to much salary.
Grooming requirements.*



*Yes indeed, one company had a no facial hair requirement. At the time I had really back acne scars that had not yet faded which I was very selfconcious of and had a beard to hide them.

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Been there, done that, about 20 years ago. I had several interviews one day -- I'm a phamacist -- mostly with independent pharmacies, and one with a (now defunct) local chain. Now, the indies were and are mom-'n-pop, handshake situations, and the mode was and is to dress for the interview like you'd dress for work. So I wore a dress shirt and tie, sweater, no jacket. The chain guys just went on and on over the fact that I wasn't wearing a suit jacket. Not one question about my professional qualifications. Zero. Needless to say, after a bit of this I just played the rest of the interview for laughs, just wondering how long it was gonna last and how many more suits they would call into the room. Turns out it was well over an hour, and eventually I was talking to four members of senior management. They were just stark raving obsessed about my lack of sport-jacket-tude. Oh, and they didn't like my hair length, either: mind, it was rather short for the times. And this was way before the beard.

I still think of that as the "casting call" interview.

[dsrtao]

Yes. The advent of email resume-blasting has also heralded the end of responses for anything other than "We'd like to interview you".

[kellan_the_tabby]

Yup. I can kinda understand it for those who don't get called in for an interview with the aforementioned internet resume-blasting -- but if you've interviewed, twice in some cases, I kinda think that it'd be nice to let me know the answer is no. :/

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

My company only emails/calls people who come in for interviews and don't go on to get the job, which seems fair to me. But I've interviewed for jobs elsewhere and never heard back, which does not seem right in the least.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Worse yet, HR doesn't even tell the people inside the company, so no one knows until the job applicant emails going "so?". I've had N (n>5) referrals 'die' in this fashion.

[cellio]

Same here. If my friend who schedules the interviews doesn't tell me, completely outside the process, I never hear what happens to my referrals (unless we hire them, but that hasn't happened yet).

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Dunno about in your part of the world, but around here, if a company receives 200-300 resumes for a single job opening, it's rather expensive (timewise, if nothing else) to send out that kind of letter. Most companies don't anymore.

[rosinavs.livejournal.com]

Exactly. My department has run job searches once a year for the last n years, and last year we received around 140 applications on time and this year around 100. That's $41 just in postage to send those letters.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

And that's just the postage. Add in the man-hours of labor, etc ... multiply by how many job openings an even larger company may have in any year, and ...

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Good points. If every misemployed and unemployed librarian I know had sent them a resume, plus every librarian who wanted a change, plus some of the new grads.... They probably got 100. The only reason I'm sure my email got there is that I received an out-of-office reply from my initial submission.

Only 100?

[metageek.livejournal.com]

When I was at Endeca, we estimated that we screened 1000 résumés for every person hired. There were three stages (review the résumé, phone screen, interview), and, at each stage, about 1 in 10 made it through.

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

I would say it has become fashionable to focus solely on productive activities. Anything that doesn't serve the company's needs doesn't need to be done.

Alas, too few people recognize that "keeping on good terms with those who have applied to work at your company" serves a company need. It might be nice for those same folks to apply again when their skills match the company needs, but if they have a bad attitude about your company, well... Thus, rejection letters aren't sent.

I agree with others that the ease of sending resumes, and the general decrease of what is considered "good etiquette" is part of the reason that responses are no longer considered good business practice.

My employer's HR team sends out rejection letters on a regular basis, but I only know they send them to people they have interviewed. I don't know if they send anything to people who aren't invited for interviews.

One last reason: I am aware of two situations where candidates received a rejection letter, and then within the week were asked to take the position. One was still willing to take it, the other had moved on. Avoiding such communications errors is another reason to take on the policy of "just don't send rejection letters.

[kls-eloise.livejournal.com]

We have a letter that we send out to people who send in unsolicited resumes when we're not adverting any positions. But when we actually are looking for someone, we just don't have the manpower/man hours to reply to all of the (let's be honest) spam that we get.

[johno.livejournal.com]

In the past 20 years and 5 differnt job searches, I can count the number of simple acknoldegments of recieving my email or postal mailed resume on one hand, and can count the number of "thanks for your time, but no" contacts after a interview on two hands.


So in my opinion, it's never been in style.

[galaneia.livejournal.com]

It seems to be, yes. [insert rant here about applicant etiquette advice that seems horribly outdated based on company behavior]

Most places I have applied in the past seem to prefer (or exclusively take) online applications. Many of them will have an auto-responder that lets you know that they received your resume (but often no details, like for which job). That email is usually the only communication to occur unless I get called for an interview.

After an interview I generally have to pester someone in HR (sometimes repeatedly] in order to get a definite yes or no.

I've gotten exactly two rejection letters ever, one from a post I never interviewed for.

[lecil.livejournal.com]

Seems to depend on the size of the company. When I was a hiring manager at GE, it was our HR department's responsibility to send "no thanks" letters to anyone who I rejected, either after looking at the resume or after an interview.

Now that I'm on the other side of the proverbial coin; I rarely get a "no thanks" in response to a resume. I get one about 50% of the time after an actual interview. (And this really irritates me; if we all took time to meet face-to-face, a few seconds to send an email to wrap up things doesn't seem to be asking too much, does it?) I did have one company call in response to a resume to clarify the job, which turned out to not be what I was looking for. That was nice.