Non-hiring Practices

<i>It is not merely rude but evil that anyone accepts a status quo of ignoring the unhired.</i><p>+1000000<p>I have not often been in the job market, but every time I have, I've been stunned by this practice: Run an ad, get a bunch of resumes, ignore many of them.<p>#1 Get this, all prospective employers: If you have time to run an ad, YOU HAVE TIME TO ACKNOWLEDGE EVERY RESPONSE. The typical response I usually get: "But we got so many resumes, we didn't have time to acknowledge all of them." WRONG. Acknowledging resumes is your job. Just like doing x, y, and z is my job. Your do your job. Period.<p>#2 Get this, all prospective employers: You may give your employees money but they give you something far more valuable: their time. You can always make more money, but they will never get those 8 hours of their life back. They could have spent that priceless non-recoverable part of their life doing many other things, but they gave it up to you. So show a little respect.<p>Bottom line: Employment (and the process of establishing it) is a two way street. So treat it that way.

Such an important issue. A few years ago, I applied to McKinsey &#38; Co as a resident. I had a pleasant time interviewing and got to the final round. I asked many questions as I was a physician and had no prior background in business but I was really interested and thought this was my calling in life. Their average response time via email was 57 minutes during recruitment. I just checked my old emails.<p>After my final round, I waited patiently ... and then waited some more. I emailed my recruiter, my "buddy" and my interviewers. I really was interested in working there but I had to make a decision on other jobs. I told them that and they said someone will contact me. 6 weeks later, after I had already taken another job, a recruiter called me saying that I didn't get the job because I did not make their "bar" and a partner will call me with feedback. 3 years later and still no call.<p>I guess I should be happy that they did eventually contact me but it left a very bitter taste.<p>Fast forward to two months ago. I was in the position of finding a consulting company to help our hospital system with financial issues. 3 large hospitals. Multimillion dollar contract. McKinsey &#38; Co.'s name came up a few times but my bad experience is what made me eventually recommend another company. One that I got rejected from after the first round but made me feel good. They gave me feedback and didn't make me feel like crap.<p>Most people claim that McKinsey has a great feedback system, but it failed in my experience and maybe that is what led to us choosing another consulting company.<p>It taught me a great lesson though. Regardless of who I interview now; resident, attending, or any other position, I personally call them to let them know our decision.

I interviewed with a very well known company in these circles. I was delighted as they are known for paying attention to the everyday aspects of running a business &#38; being open about it. (It was actually my 2nd time applying &#38; interviewing with them. I didn't hear back that time either, having had a Skype interviewed with the founders).<p>However, I was more than disappointed that after two interviews with staff members, personality test and contact from the CEO that I was in the final shortlist - a month long process - I never heard back again. The only way I knew I hadn't been hired was once the new hire was announced on the company blog.<p>Between the creative application they'd asked for, interviews &#38; tests, I'd put in a couple of full days of work. Being rejected would have been fine, understandable, but never letting me know was disrespectful &#38; goes against the culture they project.<p>A few weeks later, the same company advertised the exact same position again on their blog, as I believe they wanted even more coverage than the first person they hired. I decided not to apply that time.<p>All in all, a simple 2 line email thanking me for the effort and letting me know would have sufficed. Over a month of waiting for an email to drop was painful.

I'd encourage everyone to take it a step further.<p>If the candidate is strong, then I send them links to job openings at some of our peers, partners, and even competitors (depending on skills). Sometimes we get people who are solid technically but just not the right fit for our culture or team. In this case, they may be a good fit for another team. Your meta goal is to get strong candidates to work in the larger ecosystem that surrounds your company, not just your team.<p>This extra step always surprises and delights candidates, even if they don't end following through. They'll then go on to think and say great things about your company.<p>It's an incredibly nice thing to do that will pay dividends. I'm Twitter "friends" with several candidates we passed on by took this approach with. It's lead to several business development meetings, a partnership, and evening a speaking engagement. They've also referred new candidates to us.<p>I've had nothing but win from this and strong encourage others to try it.

The local newspaper printed the following just last week (possibly fake and not sure how it was attached to the email but good publicity nevertheless):<p>I was an applicant for a role at Bell Tea and Coffee Company recently. In due course I received an email advising I was unsuccessful. It read: <i>'We are genuinely sorry that we couldn't offer you an interview this time, but as a token of our appreciation for your interest in working for Bell Tea and Coffee Company, we enclose a little something to assist you in your job search (Bell Tea sachets). All super heroes need a little pick-me-up from time to time and our Bell Kenya Bold tea is especially designed to do just that!'</i> All too often these days we don't even receive an acknowledgement to job applications. So well done, Bell, for making a small kindness. It is pretty tough out there for jobseekers.

As a hiring manager, I tried to have my recruiting managers or sourcers handle the notification of bad news whenever possible, but I made the mistake of doing so myself a few times and will never do it again. While certainly most people either don't reply or simply provide an extremely rude e-mail response upon the no-offer status, I've had a decent share of stalkers. The behavior has varied from:<p>- Women crying.<p>- Men telling me I was going to starve their family to poverty if they don't get this job.<p>- Men harassing me repeatedly.<p>It goes on. Admittedly, even back then (~2005/2006) I was too easy to contact (phone number in resume online), but dealing with the no-offer responses from candidates was by far the most stressful thing I've ever done related to hiring, and I have the utmost respect for the usually young folks in recruiting who have to deal with it on a daily basis. I personally found the, "we may have to let you go if your performance does not improve" conversations easier.<p>So, yeah, the comments responding to this post make it sound like all kittens and baby smiles if you give the, "no hire" mail, but it's pretty far from that in reality.

I have been instructed by legal affairs that non-contact after rejection is the safest choice for avoiding discrimination lawsuits. whether or not this is true, too much direct disobedience of management and legal usually results in starting ones own job search...

Devil's advocate here (and an employer)..<p>Its common for thousands of applicants to respond to a posting, many of whom are not vaguely qualified. So when a position is filled, its not uncommon to be turning down several thousand people.<p>Honestly, do <i>you</i> want to send a disappointing email to 3000 people and then deal with the responses? More importantly, do you have time? Remember, wasting time on the wrong problems is a sure-fire way to kill your business.<p>That said, if you've responded to a candidate at all, much less had an interview of any kind - then absolutely, you must follow-up. Those people have good reason to believe you might be an opportunity for them, and you owe it to them to respond one way or the other ASAP.<p>Sidebar: the current situation is <i>awful</i> for employers. Some start-up, PLEASE fix this. A job board where candidates can only submit 1 application per day would be a tremendous step in the right direction.

Silence after sending the resume in and especially after in–person interview kills every motivating molecule in me. I wish there was some kind of metrics based on feedback attached to my profile, so that after interviews, I'd bounce to that perfect position, as "one man's trash is another man's treasure".<p>Best rejection letter I got so far:<p>"We're sorry to say we couldn't accept you for a position at XXX. Please don't take it personally, it was a hard decision. The applications we receive get better every day, and since there's a limit on the number positions, we have to turn away a lot of genuinely promising people.<p>Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots of mistakes.<p>We're trying to get better at this, but the hard limit on the number of people we hire means it's practically certain that people we rejected will go on to do something amazing. "

While I agree that it is the decent thing to do, the whole '' Reply&#62;Copy&#62;Paste&#62;Send. 5 seconds.' is probably not entirely accurate. Many organizations spend weeks going through hundreds of applications before contacting the candidates that they <i>are</i> interested in.<p>Also, in general, if you've applied and haven't heard anything back by the end of the week, it's probably safe to cross them off your list. If it turns out they are a dinosaur that takes longer to get back to you - then their response simply gives you another option, or perhaps your first option. It's really not that big of a deal overall.

Big difference between responding to every resume (not really practical) and responding to someone who has put time and effort into a grueling interview process and has reason to believe they are on some sort of short list.<p>Quite some time ago I was recruited by Apple for a mgmt position (team of ~50). I flew from NYC to CA (they paid of course), went through 8+ hours of interviews with people I would be reporting to, parallel with, and managing.<p>Long story short, after waiting two weeks and hearing nothing, I had to pester the recruiter with 3 or 4 phone calls (unanswered messages) before I "caught" him answering his cell, whereupon he said something very brief and off-putting about not being a good fit, and acting like I had breached some sort of rule of etiquette by insisting on a direct response.<p>I had no way of knowing what their process was, whether I was still in the running (of course I had a hunch I wasn't, but you really never know with this sort of thing). I had decisions I had to make that were impacted by this trailing variable of probability that I might have a big-shot job in Cupertino.<p>Anyone who gets to that point in the process deserves the respect of a formal indication that you are not the chosen one.

I'm amazed advice like this needs to be given. I was contacted and asked for a resume by someone at Rumblefish who wouldn't divulge how he got my contact info and complained about how hard it was to hire good developers. The position looked interesting and I consider myself a pretty good developer so sent him my resume and told him I would call in a couple days to chat.<p>Before I called, I spent some time going over the job description writing down notes so we could make the best use of our time.<p>He didn't answer his phone, my last email, or his voicemail and I never heard from him again. Maybe he just knew after reading my resume that I was the wrong person for the job. Because of his lack of professionalism we'll never get to have a conversation about why, and I'll never refer anyone to them.<p>With such powerful analytical skills and immaculate professionalism I'm baffled as to why they're having trouble finding good developers.

I've had various experiences of good and bad HR/internal recruiters but the one that really deflated me was with one of the larger Ruby companies in the Bay Area.<p>I applied through a resume website, applying to 4 positions that I thought fit what I could do.<p>I got a email/call from their recruiter, then I did a technical phone screen and passed. Due to scheduling I was in the Bay Area a day later so I had a 45 minute pair programming assignment onsite instead of doing it over the phone/internet.<p>After I passed that they emailed me asking me to come into their offices the next day for the full onsite interview. During the full onsite interview, I did pair programming with 2 different people on 2 different programming tests, and did two 2-person interviews.<p>The first clue that should have alerted me to something being wrong was that I was suppose to talk to the CTO but because of "conflicts" he could do the interview. My recruiter shook my hand, thanked me, and then I left.<p>I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to get the job. I had felt pretty good about the programming tests but during the 2-on-1 interviews I felt they were forcing me to answer questions where the only correct answer was the one they had set out in advance in their head. I didn't really know which way it would go.<p>So how did I find out I got rejected? Essentially they changed the status of my application on the resume site from 'In Progress' to 'Reject' and the resume site sent me a notification tell me I had been rejected for the position. Just to be sure I got the message the person also rejected me from the three other positions I had applied for. So in the end I got 4 Rejection Letters from the company. They couldn't even be bothered to e-mail me directly and tell me, "No."<p>Considering the reputation of the company as one that "cared about its customers" and was considered one of the "darlings" of Silicon Valley, I felt pretty crushed being treated this way by them.

I agree. I have been on the side of not receiving any update after an interview, and also on the side of having to poke the recruiters about whether they got back to the interviewee when we decided to pass on him/her; and finally doing it myself.<p>It is absolutely the decent thing to do. I feel sorry for people who only have interest in you as long as they can potentially get something from you. Typically I avoid associating with such people, as that says a lot about their ethical standards.<p>Edit: Spelling

So having just gone through the job search process, I agree it's frustrating. However, I'm not that frustrated if I don't hear anything from a company if the only thing I've done is apply. Applying is a very impersonal thing.<p>However, if I attended an interview and didn't hear back, that is incredibly frustrating.<p>It's important to manage expectations; ambiguity is the enemy of mental health during the job search and you'll be immersed in it so learning to cope is essential.

The other benefit of being civil, polite and responsive is the candidate may not be the best match now, but they will know other people and meet people when they do get a job. They are far more likely to recommend your company to those people. It helps sell your company and they will remember it in their future career and business dealings.<p>My only qualms have been what to do about the people who made no effort - the folks who borderline spammed every email address they can find. So far we have also responded to all of them too.

There are many examples here, both positive and negative, but I keep wondering, why people anonymize the unfavourable ones? I'd really love to know which company was that "company X", "company [HNer] won't publicly name", or "well known company in these circles". Those are important data points in order to know whether or not one should get involved with a particular company.

I interviewed with both Google and Microsoft when I first graduated. MS one was way more smooth but it was largely because they've sent a team out and we did face-to-face interviews. At the end of the day I was told that I was not a good fit. The only thing I was pissed about is that they haven't told me they wanted a Software Tester right away. Since I wasn't interested in such a position, it'd save both parties a huge time.<p>Google one was quite a story. First of all, they reached out to me. Then it took them 3 weeks to schedule an over the phone interview. I've changed like 4 recruiters along the way, and no one told me way. This is a bad practice since for international hires, recruiters are way more important.<p>This is where it gets interesting. My interviewer failed to call me at appointed time, I mailed my recruiters, got a big lie, they scheduled for a week after. It was ok since accidents can happen. Over next to weeks I did two interviews (why on earth can't they schedule them one a day?) and I was told to wait for a committee. Ok, no problem. After 10 days, and a pissed off email, they told me that I had to get a 3rd one. Another week of waiting, and interviewer failed to call again! I was raging by that time. Another week. The interviewer failed to call again. I wrote an email telling them to not to bother with excuses. Right before I hit send, interviewer calls. I was raging so the interview was a bust. They waited 2 weeks to give me a response.<p>Moral of the story: If you need to have 3 or more interviews do them in a short time. In that 2.5 months time I've did so many things, Google became irrelevant, a joke for me. I do get that hiring is hard, as I'm doing it myself; but I always try to return to an applicant in a weeks time. Still now and then Google recruiters ping me over Linkedin. I've told every single one to send an offer right away and skip the interview process. I get the silent treatment =)

Once after an interview I wrote an email to thank the group I interviewed with for their time and to say that I did not think it would be a good fit. About a month later they wrote to inform me that I wasn't a good fit for their group. So there are cases when hearing nothing negative would be preferable than hearing something negative.

Over a year ago, I applied to a job that I considered a great match with my experience and interests. Never heard from the company after applying. I had a couple of offers from other companies and I choose one.<p>Many many months later (7-8?) the company contacted me that they thought my resume was great and if I was interested in an interview. Even if I did not have a job, I still would not have gone through the interview due to the company's previous behavior.<p>What were they thinking? Either they are incompetent or they stockpile resumes for when they actually need to hire. There is nothing wrong with saying that you are not a good fit right now, but they will keep your resume on file. It really does happen. My wife was hired at a company a few months after she was rejected for a different job. They hired someone else, but came back to her when something else opened up.

Many years ago, I applied for a Google job that I was totally unqualified for. I didn't even get an interview, but they sent me a nice <i>snail mail</i> paper rejection letter anyway. I've heard mixed things about their interview process, but I still get a have a nebulous warm fuzzy feeling when I think about possibly sending a resume in again one day, because of one simple, probably automated, $.29[1] response.<p>Conversely, at a company I won't publicly name, I got the silent treatment [2], <i>after getting an offer</i>, for asking if I could take two months off between jobs. I can only imagine what would have happened if I tried to negotiate salary.<p>I understand and appreciate the blogger's comment that people should behave decently, by the simple virtue of being human. But, that's not going to convince anyone who doesn't already want to be a decent person. But what ever happened to unenlightened self-interest, naked greed, and pure avarice? Not only did they sour me on the company, they lost two other potential hires into the same group, when I told them how their potential future boss treated me when I didn't take the offer without negotiating, after being asked why I didn't take the job.<p>There's pretty much no benefit to treating people shoddily, and a huge potential downside, when the candidate pool you're trying to employ hears about it. Why do it?<p>[1] Probably less, since they doubtless qualify for bulk mail rates.<p>[2] I sent a couple of emails to follow-up, and tried calling and leaving a voicemail once. I had the hiring manager's number (and that's the person I would have been directly reporting to), because he gave it to me in case I had any questions. Months later, I asked a friend of mine at the company what happened, and he told me "Yeah, X is pretty busy". The funny thing is, it was a huge microprocessor project that was staffing about 40 circuit designers / logic implementers, and the hiring manager told me they were expecting to continue hiring for another six months. It actually took them longer than that to fill all the positions they wanted, and I would have started before they were finished with the arch/perf simulations and moved onto real logic work anyway, even with a two month delay. I would have saved them paying me two months salary without having any work for me to do!<p>EDIT: Sorry for adding something after there have been replies, but it's been a long time since this happened. After looking through old emails to jog my memory, I see that they sent me a standard form with a bunch of info they wanted filled out, before I interviewed. One of the fields was availability, which I listed as 2+ months out. It's a big bureaucratic company, so it's understandable that there are standard forms which get sent out that hiring managers never look at, but ignoring this particular thing this particular time is a bit funny, ex post.

One recent experience I had left a bad taste in my mouth. I applied for a position, did a quick screen interview, took a 2-hour online IQ and math test, did a one hour phone interview, and then did an in-person interview where I had to take another test and then meet with 3 people for one hour meetings.<p>I got an automated email the next week letting me know they were not interested. At the very least, I would have at least like the email to come from the corporate recruiter I had been communicating with, not noreply@companyname.com. I think it's rude to not give some personal acknowledgement and I put in close to 10 hours of my personal time working with them. Though a company that behaves this way is probably not one if like to work for.

I'm a 3+ year HNer, using a throwaway because while I'm looking for work, I'd not like others to know this publicly (should we form a club?)<p>What the OP describes truly does seem to be almost standard operating procedure today. In one instance this happened even after I had substantial contact with the company:<p>* phone screen with recruiter;<p>* technical phone screen;<p>* completed a <i>substantial</i> pre-interview coding project;<p>* multi-hour interview with 6 technical interviewers, including on-the-spot coding tests;<p>This process took <i>a month and a half</i>. I was assured by the recruiter that I did awesomely on all of these, and then, silence...<p>Only after pressing them for weeks did I finally get a reply: "sorry, we're not hiring for that position after all". It's incredibly rude to put someone through this kind of process, only to insult them at the end (if you acknowledge them at all).<p>I've been on the opposite end of the interviewing table many times, and I understand that there are all kinds of reasons to reject a candidate (technical skills, people skills, personality, just plain "bad fit").<p>And sometimes it's best from a legal standpoint to not even explicitly say why a candidate is being rejected. But a simple "sorry, we feel you're not a good fit for this position" <i>as soon as you know you will not be making the hire</i>, will save an incredible amount of worry and anxiety, and let people get on with their lives.

In the US? Liability. That's why this doesn't happen. Actually having to tell someone "we're not hiring you," regardless of polite spin, puts you in the crosshairs of a lawyer.<p>Much like discussing former employees in my "right-to-work" state. "Yes, she did work here from P to Q. No we can not discuss her work performance." Doesn't matter if she was the model employee or an incompetent moron, saying <i>anything</i> is a potential liability. If you express your opinion that she was that incompetent moron, you're stifling her ability to find work and a jury of her peers will find against you, the former employer.<p>So back to the topic at hand. Say you get the generic "not hiring you" email. Are you going to leave it at that? If so, great, everyone can move on. Or are you going to try to appeal to the HR staffer's humanity and harass them with questions like "why not?" And then some candidate gets all pissy because "that's not what the job ad said!" and lawyers. So we send the email from a generic address that ignores replies ... and someone fouls up and sends it to all current candidates.<p>Should companies adopt a "we're not hiring you" generic message to send out and just never reply to replies? Sure. I'd love that. It's easier to ignore people.

The one that I hate more than any other is the "You look great; I'll contact you in a couple days" to then never hear from them again, even after you try multiple follow-ups.<p>My favorite was the one where I got flown out to the Bay Area for an interview at Apigee[1]. They dropped the ball by not having everybody there to interview me, meaning they couldn't get all the information about me they would have liked[2]. When I left, it was all roses (including a said follow-up comment like above), and then complete and total silence. I get you may not think I'm right for the job, but flying somewhere takes a lot of my own, personal time.<p>1. I'm naming names for two reasons: one, I, like the author, think it's deplorable. More importantly, if you are going to take a potential employee's time without the courtesy of a simple reply to one of multiple questioning emails by saying, at least, "No, thanks", others deserve to know what to expect as well. I couldn't even get a response on how to get reimbursed for incidental travel costs without tracking down somebody outside of HR.<p>2. I don't think this had any impact on their decision to ignore me. It didn't even concern me, but, taken with the other events, it points to a lack of respect for candidates.

The author of the submitted blog post begins with<p>"I’m looking for work right now; and I have looked for work in the past. It’s something everyone does, now and again."<p>There is indeed an ongoing interest in finding paying work among the many participants on Hacker News. That's why I have devoted time and effort (with the kind help of several other HN participants) to writing up a FAQ about company hiring procedures,<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543</a><p>which gives job applicants tips on what to get ready for at companies that use the best procedures.<p>"It is bizarrely standard, if you’ve decided not to hire someone, to simply never contact them again.<p>"Don’t accept this. Don’t behave this way."<p>It's easy to tell other people to do work you are not going to have to do yourself. You have no idea how many other applications were sent in for the same position.<p>HN participants luu<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4768830" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4768830</a><p>doctorpangloss<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4768999" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4768999</a><p>munin<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4768864" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4768864</a><p>and hso9791<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4769295" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4769295</a><p>all have pertinent comments in this thread that appeared overnight in my time zone, at various comment levels.<p>The key idea is that companies get unimaginably more applicants, some with very poor fits to the advertised job requirements, than most job applicants suppose. I strongly sympathize with the idea that if someone has applied for a job I advertise, I might as well be polite enough to reply. As Winston Churchill said (hat tip to the HN participant who recently mentioned this quotation), "After all, when you have to kill a man it costs noth­ing to be polite."<p><a href="http://richardlangworth.com/when-you-have-to-kill-a-man" rel="nofollow">http://richardlangworth.com/when-you-have-to-kill-a-man</a><p>It costs nothing to be polite, but it costs a little to send out a response, even by email. A company in hiring mode is looking for people to respond to its paying customers. It is GROSSLY impolite to ignore a paying customer. When forced to prioritize by press of busyness, most companies devote more time and effort to responding to paying customers than to job applicants who in many cases are taking a shotgun approach to applying for jobs. I assume that all the HN participants here who have recently applied for jobs have done careful research and only applied for positions for which they are a prima-facie good fit and well qualified. But at all the workplaces I have ever worked at, the company has received many out-of-the-blue applications on a cold-call basis, and many responses to advertised openings with an extremely poor fit to job requirements. And meanwhile there may be people on staff whose job it is to HIRE new people who fit, but there is no one on staff who is assigned to have time and resources to answer absolutely every job application that comes in, even for advertised positions. The inexpensive availability of word-processing software on personal computers, beginning in the 1990s, has deluged most companies with many more applications than most companies have procedures in place to answer individually. That's tough on the job applicant, but that's reality. I agree with everyone here who says it's the decent thing to do, and can even in some cases be the expedient thing to do, to answer a job application with a definite result in a polite tone, but all companies have higher priorities, and at least one of those priorities is decently answering actual paying customers.

This is an unfortunate side effect of recruiter compensation. Most internal recruiters are paid a somewhat low (for Valley at least) base with a nice bonus when a certain quantity of hires is reached.<p>Thus internal recruiting is a sweatshop assembly line where it's always juggling between closing the candidates who passed the interview round and moving on to sourcing the next batch.<p>Almost no company puts effort (or pays bonuses) for nice rejections. Depending on the status of the recruiter himself (full-time vs contractor brought in to boost the company to a certain headcount), your rejection might generate a reply. Internal recruiters won't bother (they simply don't have time for it and are not compensated in any way), but contractor guns-for-hire will reach out and be nice about it, since in 6 months they'll move on to another company, and you'll still be in their rolodex as a potential candidate they can hit again to reach their quota.

I feel strongly about this. As a relatively recent college graduate who has has applied to dozens of jobs over many months, I can confirm that non-response has definitely been the status quo in my experience. Until I got numb to rejection and because accustomed to the status quo, I would feel compelled to seek out hiring managers or HR and ask, "Why don't you have the decency to even acknowledge my application status?" Instead, of course, I would simply inquire about "following up" on my application in the event that this was even possible to do.<p>"Go to our website" is the new mantra for hiring employers. And that's fine, but I'm stunned that many can't be the least bit bothered to set up some sort of response system. "Overwhelming number of applicants" is no excuse in the day of email...even an automated message, if phrased thoughtfully, would suffice perfectly fine.

Times have changed I guess. The last time I applied for work was over twenty years ago. Back then resumes were printed on paper and mailed (or hand delivered) to prospective employers. It was very rare to never hear back. You almost always received a rejection letter if there was no interest in you.

I cannot speak for other industries but in mine, video games, this practice seems to be formed by the 3d party recruiters in order to collect fees.<p>Applying to any company's ad for an engineering position rarely produces any response while in the same time every engineer is hounded by recruiters even while not looking for a job. You can apply, wait for weeks with no response then call an agency recruiter of your choice and have a phone interview scheduled in 2 days tops.<p>Looking at recruiters in my Linkedin network I can see how most of them move between 3d party agencies and contract/staff HR positions at the studios so I imagine there are many connections between internal and external HR. With the recruiting fees being 10s of thousand dollars and HR people paid peanuts it is statistically unlikely that most of them stay honest.

I so concur with this post. How hard can it be to send an automated email: 'We're sorry to inform you that you have not been selected for position X. Thank you for your time and consideration.'

i recently just changed jobs, so i can give a first-hand opinion on this.<p>firstly, the fact that many companies, after interviewing candidates, don't bother to contact interviewees afterwards is a big problem. it reflects personally on the people who run these companies and hire their workers. if your someone they want, they will kiss your ass to no end, but the second they don't want you, you're treated like a worthless piece of shit.<p>as i went through the recruitment process, i interviewed with a bunch of companies, from startups to larger, more established companies. i have to say that the situation was a lot more improved than a few years ago. a few years ago, i would talk to companies like ebay, and even getting all the way up to discussing salary, both ebay and the recruiters stopped talking to me abruptly, for unexplained reasons. i was pretty much put off paypal and ebay for those reasons.<p>this time around, it was mainly the startups that were pretty rude in notifying me that i was no longer being considered.<p>when i finally decided on a job, i was still in talks with several companies. i was sooo tempted to just stop responding to their emails, but instead i did the right thing and emailed them all personally, telling them that i had accepted another offer. most of the companies responded back congratulating me, and only a single startup didn't bother responding.<p>i am hopeful that we have turned the corner, and that being professional in one's correspondence, especially during the hiring process, is important.

As someone in a position to hire, I make a point of telling people no -- but only if I've taken the time to interview them. No way I'm taking the time to write back to every candidate that applies over the transom.<p>Important people have enough crap to deal with every day, and it's just not reasonable to expect a response to every piece of communication they receive.

People posting here should name names of their negative experiences. How else can we learn who the problem actors are?

This. A thousand times. Not only is it the decent thing to do, it's incredibly fucking rude not to.

Naturally, this goes way beyond non-hiring. Invited to do something but can't/don't want to? Don't ignore the invitee; let her know. Send that text. You can tell a lot about your relationship with someone by this.

Thank you. This seems to be the practice for many recruiters now, too. For more than ten years I've wondered what's happened to common decency and professionalism.

diiq, you should have made the font a bit smaller.

The theme has got the style of 6wunderkinder.com

EDIT: The below is correct and I stand by it. Please read the argument carefully.<p>Let me ask you, as you have opened six tabs and are applying one by one to them, would you like to have your inbox interrupt you with a message you have to spend time on, but which actually has the same effect (after the 2 minute interruption) as if you didn't get it? Because if you get 10 such emails, that's 20 minutes that could have been what it takes to get job (one of the six you were currently applying for) but you don't because the day is over and you go home or do something else.<p>The below is correct and I stand by it. Obviously if it is a position such as a high-level directorship where it is quite normal to do one such application for 2-3 weeks, then this does not apply.<p>-----<p>I don't really get this perspective. It's a funnel. (For both you and them).<p>You're sending out 30-200 applications per day - do you really want your inbox cluttered at the first stage of the funnel with "Email undeliverable"? How about "Thank you your application has been received"? Well, I don't!<p>Maybe if I didn't have a funnel but was applying to ONE job at a time for 3-11 days. This is literally 1/300th of the rate you should be going at. 0.3% of the full-time job that looking for a job entails. Sorry, but at this rate how suprised can you be that you don't have one? The proper rate is to apply for 30-100 jobs every 8 hours you are actively on the market, which shouldn't be long.<p>If none of the 100 applications gets to the next stage of the funnel, it's better to have 0 responses. As opposed to, say, 7 undeliverable emails, 93 "Thank you, your application has been received" and another 93 saying, unfortunately your application was not a good match. Think about it. This is 186 spam emails you have to read insstead of having 0 emails to read before you can continue the work of sending out applications. It's noise coming into your inbox to interrupt your process.<p>Can you imagine if every single IP that went to your site generated an email to you unless that IP became a paying customer in the same session? But actually, the analogy is more like: every IP that comes to your site generates an email to you saying your sales pitch has been received. And it generaets an email to you if the IP starts filling out the form but does not complete it. Maybe if you have 3 visitors per month. But that is not a viable strategy.<p>The ONLY possible effect of that 186 spam emails (7 undeliverable, 93 thank you, your application has been received, 93, we won't be calling you's) is that MAYBE you miss one of them that ACTUALLY asked for more informatino (i.e. where you progressed through the funnel).<p>The ONLY time I want to hear back is where I am proceeding through the process. I have actually, legitimately, missed such emails because I thought they were automated or I missed them a long with a bunch of automated responses I also got.<p>It's the same at every stage. Getting 20 responses to 20 interviews would be spam. I don't care about places that don't give me a job offer, since I should be spending the same time sending out the daily 20-100 applications.<p>If you do progress to getting 2-3 job offers, choose the best one, or name your price. If you don't hear back, it didn't work.<p>If you don't get to here, keep repeating the 200. People, there is ONE of you. ONE. But there are probably tens to hundreds of thousands of companies you could be working for.<p>do you really want the fact that you can't work for all of them (which is a mathematical guarantee) spamming your inbox?<p>Let me ask you this: would YOU like to LITERALLY DOUBLE the number of emails you send at EACH funnel step, by writing another email to everyone you previously sent an email to, saying you won't be pursuing it? Do you want to halve the signal-ratio by having the next funnel step include not only signal (ones going forward) but noise (rejections).<p>This would be like building a web app funnel where half of your "conversions" are in fact thoughtful no-thankyou. That's not a signal, that's noise. If the customer doesn't sign up, that's all the signal you need.