Hi HN,<p>First time posting on Show HN. Spent two weeks over Christmas and new years to make this fun little full stack web app built with Next.js and Supabase PostgreSQL, hosted on Netlify<p>open to feedback and hope you enjoy it!
The best rejection letter I ever got was a personal note from the person hiring, saying "You were good, but we just needed someone who is stronger with [x], [y], and [z]". It felt actionable because it told me things I could improve on.<p>Aside from that one, the rejections that were the least self-esteem-damaging were ones that said "we've decided not to fill the position". Even if not true, it's a good "it's not you it's me" type of rejection.
The most shocking and hurtful letter I ever got ( which makes me laugh now looking back it) was from Spotify a few years ago. I was like wtf<p>It was particularly hurtful as it somehow re-enacted a scene from highschool. Which in retrospect now comes across as a brilliant troll.<p>It officially read ( and I paraphrase the important part ) :<p>Dear ionwake,<p>Thank you for your application. But we dont want you in our band.<p>Regards,
xxxx Spotify
Some of these are clearly troll posts.<p>This can't be an actual message from OpenAI though?<p>Thank you for considering OpenAI for your next career move. Amazing that you thought you had a chance. Try Microsoft.
You are owed a rejection letter but we shouldn’t shame companies for sending them, who cares what platitudes they give you, all that matters is you didn’t get the job and they are doing the courtesy of telling you. You would be surprised how many companies in other industries don’t even bother, they just leave you hanging
My favorite rejection letters are of the "We received an overwhelming volume of well-qualified applicants" sort. Especially when it's for a position that's so niche that you know there's a good chance that you personally know most of the other people who would actually meet the stated requirements.
I have a doozy but I'm not comfortable sharing it without blanking the name of the company. The short version is I went through a ridiculous 7-stage interview process only to be told at the end (the night before my 8th and final interview) that they really liked me, got excellent feedback but were no longer hiring for that position.
My favorite rejection letter - if you can call it that.<p>I had two interviews with a smaller agency that I knew of and really wanted to work there because of their reputation and the work they were doing.<p>The last interview was with one of the founders of the company. She was really cool and we had a great rapport. The interview was about 90 mins and we covered a lot of ground. She said she would be reviewing my resume with the other devs I interviewed with and asked when I would be available to start.<p>I figured, cool, I got this in the bag.<p>A week goes by. . . .then another four days and now its been around two weeks since I heard from them. I practically checked out at my last job thinking I would be leaving and now I was getting nervous.<p>By sheer coincidence I run into one of the devs from the company at a conference that weekend. He was stoked to see me again since we had some common hobbies outside of development. I immediately asked WTF was going on, I hadn't heard anything from his company.<p>He looks at me and says, "Nobody called you to tell you what happened?" I said, "Yeah, no man, nobody called me, WTF happened?!" He does that nervous look around and then looks back and says in a hushed tone, "Two days after your interview, the founder you interviewed with? She sent an email to the other founders just saying, "I have to flee the country, and I've taken all the cash from the petty cash fund. I'll send back my phone and laptop when I'm in a safe country."<p>So yeah, I didn't get the job because one of the founders fled the country, took the companies petty cash fund along with their phone and laptop.
I once got a rejection letter from a recruiter, complete with the boilerplate, "we'll keep you in mind for future positions" from a noreply@ email address.
It wasn't the intended purpose, but I might consult this site before sending a rejection letter. Some of the language used is awful, of course, but some of it is fine.
While the site you provided is completely off the rails now (thank you for the lesson in content moderation). I see people have been using this comment section to complain about rejection messages, while I share the feeling and in no way condone about how poor the situation is, I think it's too negative and depressing. On a light-hearted note I'd like to share the <i>best</i> rejection message I received.<p>Whilst still a student in university I messaged Valve my resume, I knew they only hired wizards or people with extreme seniority, but I really liked what I knew about the company and I said hey I'd be really cool. I received a rejection in ample time, sent by an account that has an actual person's name (not just hiring@company.name). The message was a few paragraphs long of (what seemed like) personalized non-auto reply text about what skills I lack, what Valve looks for in a hire, and how the people at Valve acquired their knowledge.<p>Checking back on the details of the person I now see it wasn't even just an HR person, but an actual engineer. And I do need to say I applied to a lot of considerably smaller (in number of people) companies than them and never have I received such a nice experience.<p>It is not enough to say that after dealing with hundreds of rejections that one was actually the first uplifting one I ever received. And also the only. So for that I want to thank that person @Valve.
It's funny just how terribly many of these are written. That Palantir example has got to be my favorite. Check out this hum-dinger of a sentence:<p>> It was a pleasure to learn more about your skills and accomplishments; however, I'm afraid that after careful consideration, we regret to inform you that we do not have any positions that are a fit for your experience and skills at this time.
After 1 round of technical interview for a Manager position:<p>> "Sorry, we're on a hiring freeze"<p>I pressed my contact to reach out to the guy who interviewed me. He said, 'Yeah. I like the guy. I gave a positive feedback' (I would've been his manager, actually).<p>So, what really happened?<p>> Sorry, we're only looking for women candidates for this position.<p>(My name can apply to both genders. The recruiter called and heard my voice before scheduling the interview.)
I like sending these to companies I applied with that seem interested but about which I discovered something God-awful. "Unfortunately, after careful consideration I have decided not to move forward with my candidacy, but I wish you the very best of luck in your search to fill the role" and that. It's a little passive-aggressive, but it makes me feel good and shows them about as much good will as they would show me.
Small quirk/bug report: maximized images can only be closed by clicking outside of them (no "X" or other control for that function that I could see), but the code doesn't take into account a browser window that is smaller than the image; in that eventuality the image can't be closed and the user is forced to close the tab because also the back button doesn't work.
Had similar idea, e.g. identifying typical sections of a rejection letter and creating random letter from the hundreds of them I have received. Gave up the idea. Nobody cares about your bitterness. It's impersonate, someone found your CV repulsive and simply clicked send button.
currently applying for jobs and just getting automated, boilerplate rejection letters.<p>there are companies that don't respond to your application at all, and i have started to feel that it is ironically a better approach.<p>funnily enough, one time i applied for a role in a company, which i never heard back from. however, someone else in there looked at my CV and sent me another job offer, which I ended up getting in the end.
I have recently gotten a few letters to the tune of "we have already filled the position". This would have been good to know before applying.
I'll post it on your site as well to give it a bit of traffic, but here's one of the goofier rejections I've gotten.<p>-----------<p>I applied to a large newspaper (I won't say the name but you've definitely heard of it) as a software engineer. They made me do some idiotic Myers-Briggs style test that took me about two hours to do, which was annoying, but the pay seemed like it would be ok and I was unemployed anyway.<p>Outside of an ITIL certification that I had to get for college, my resume is <i>extremely</i> technical, as I've only ever done engineering. I have bullet points about different tech I've used, programs I've written, and basic tasks I did for the company. I've had a ton of jobs so the resume is long, and basically devolves into a bunch of software engineering buzzwords. We can argue all day on whether it's good or not, but I don't think anyone would claim it's not technical [1].<p>Nowhere on my resume (outside of one line that said I mentored some junior and mid-level engineers and some lecturing I did for two semesters) does it say that I've done any kind of "people management", but the response I got from the recruiter was as follows:<p><pre><code> > Does not show technical keywords or statements in his resume. Showing to be more of a PM and not a hands-on coder. Not see enough Java experience. I don't see him as a focused Java developer like the other candidate you've sent us. Needs someone who can write the code.
</code></pre>
I found this extremely bizarre, as I don't really think my resume could in any way be interpreted as a PM's resume, and assuming I wasn't lying I feel that it's pretty obvious I am a "hands on coder".<p>I <i>think</i> what happened is that the hiring manager already knew who they wanted for the job, but for legal and/or bureaucratic reasons they had to have a pretense of "trying to find the best candidate". I suspect that they never even looked at my resume, had some basic boilerplate rejection text that had some vague plausibility, and was just going to reject every candidate sent to them.<p>That's fine, but I really wish they had done this <i>before</i> I had to spend multiple hours trying to get a read on my personality. I think a lot of hiring managers are sociopaths.<p>[1] <a href="https://gitlab.com/tombert/Resume/-/blob/master/resume.pdf?ref_type=heads" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.com/tombert/Resume/-/blob/master/resume.pdf?r...</a>
I note that there's zero attempt to verify that any of the messages actually came from the companies they purport to have come from.<p>I dislike corpos as much as the next guy, but there's no reason to treat these as anything other than completely made up by randos on the internet.<p>Personally I'd anticipate a string of defamation lawsuits from something like this. And dick pics. I'm actually surprised that so far there's only a bunch of garbage and not dick pics.