After reading the Oct hiring post and having gone through the process myself, there are some egregious offenders of the golden rule in HR. I'm not even talking about the "I applied and never heard anything!" (which isn't good). I'm talking about interviewer no call no show for phone screen, rescheduled to do the same thing 2 more times, then the job was filled by the time the phone screen actually took place (that was with a direct referral).<p>For some positions, it's a employers market. But, HR is the first point of contact for potential employees, many of whom won't get the job, which is the nature of the beast. But, when the process is abnormally disrespectful to the applicant, because HR doesn't think it's important enough to do the non-fun part of their job, your brand suffers. That candidate will tell everyone who will listen about their terrible experience and that'll hurt your future recruitment efforts.<p>Many thought leaders believe that a critical part of a startup CEO's job is to recruit. If this is happening at your startup, do you want to know?<p>If you have had a terrible experience (above and beyond submitting a resume and not hearing anything back), tell me about it below. If you are feeling bold, name the company so others know who to be weary of.
Well, if you are a small startup (>20 people) I would say that recruiting is probably a job you should take over yourself, much less want to know.<p>You need to know that type of thing. As a startup, word of mouth is a huge factor in your success. If you have disgruntled people who were mistreated, you're going to be in trouble.<p>I make sure I answer every email (we're ultra small at 2 people). For partner companies I even brainstorm some ideas to help them/make their life easier. It at least shows I care about them. You have to be really involved so...yeah, you should want to know!
If someone in your company is screwing up, you always want to know. Now whether you want to take action or not, may vary depending on the situation.<p>Sometimes it's a difference of opinion - if you are getting lots of applications, should the HR person waste time responding to failed candidates, instead of sourcing more candidates? Maybe you think they should - and it's not a waste of time, but rather common courtesy - if so, point it out to them.<p>I think as a CEO, it's important you set certain policies where you think the industry standard may not be aligned with your company standards. Then make sure you communicate these policies to your staff.
I would want to know what's going on if I were the CEO. And regardless of how many applicants, I believe in common courtesy and being upfront with people. I'm probably going to be very involved in the hiring process until the company gets so big that we'd need a HR department.<p>I really can't stand all the problems/complaints about the whole tedious job search process right now and that's why I'm going to build my startup to fix some of these problems. It's nice to know that my startup is in the job search industry and how much flaws and complaints there are, so I know I'm on the right track to doing something good for a lot of people.
I once interviewed at a small startup for a software engineering contract, and when time came for salary negotiations, the CEO said "so you're looking for $15 an hour for data entry?" I explained that I was not at all interested in that, and wondered why they wanted someone who knew Grails, Javascript, etc. for data entry. The CEO apologized, and said that they posted the same job description under different titles and salary ranges, just to see if someone would slip up. Needless to say, I passed.
Just wanted to chime in and say that, as a job-seeker myself, I'm absolutely with you. Not getting a job sucks, but I can deal with that. Complete silence in the face of effort, however, is just offensive. Doubly so in the form of broken engagements and lead-ons that were never intended to be followed up on.
Of course I would like to know!<p>Gathering a team of stars in critical to me and my Startup, so if the processes aren't optimized in order for us to get the talent, something is wrong and my job as a CEO has not been done.