I’m finding the hard way that finding another job is a grind: you invest time reading what they want to hire, you write a CV and an application.
Most of the time you don’t get an answer, meaning you are that irrelevant to them. Most of these times it is YOU the one who has to ask if they decided for or against. On the limited times they write you back, it’s a computed generated BS polite rejection letter.
I asked one of them how many candidates they considered and why they rejected me, but that only made them send me another computer generated letter.
I’d like to know how close I was and in what ways I can become a more interesting candidate, but nobody is going to give me a realistic answer.
It sucks having to need them more than they need you. And I should consider me lucky, because I have a job, but jesus christ, I feel for those who have to do this without stable income or a family that offers them a place to stay…
Answering you is a liability to them. They have no incentive to do so and legal liability if they do.
Send out so many applications and keep busy, so that every response is a surprise. Only after a response can you set a reminder to reach out after a week. After a reminder, send a message and do not set a reminder. Keep applying to other jobs.
I just lose track of jobs I applied to in my head. If they aren’t responding, they don’t care and neither should you.
There are a few benign-ish ways this happens, based on my experience from working on “the other side”. They reflect shittily on the hiring manager, but not on you:
You got no immediate rejection because they did consider you valid for the position, just not first place. Then they got a match on the first place and stopped giving a shit about the applicant backlog.
They got too many applicants and threw half in the garbage.
Upper management put a freeze, or reduction, on hiring right as they put an ad out.
They have a person already picked for the position, but they will get in legal or corporate or PR trouble if they don’t pretend to do a proper hiring process.
Their application process, human or computer, lost your CV.
I have never once been told I wasn’t hired, let alone told why.
I’ve been to probably a thousand interviews.
No one has time for that.
Imagine as a manager, you interview 100 people. Now you expect them to write a rejection letter, pass it through HR and the lawyers, for 99 people?
Imagine the time that would take, and what does the company get for that time? Nothing but risk.
As a hiring manager for nearly 4 years straight, dealing with way way more than 100 applicants for some positions, I know it takes minutes at most.
All hiring systems have ways to send batch emails to rejected candidates.
If you don’t have a hiring system for some reason, it’s still just hitting reply/ctrl-v/send to each applicant you move out of the “possible candidate” inbox.
Giving a reason “why” tends to hit people badly if they didn’t specifically ask, so a stock response is not only easy to give, but the best response. Whether and how to respond in more detail to people asking for “why”, is a less easy decision but good if you are able to.
Not OP, but just a boiler plate response would be fine for me. “Sorry [insert name here]. You are no longer being considered for this position. (Optional) Good luck on other applications”. Could even have it set up to sends those out automatically.
I’d like to know how close I was and in what ways I can become a more interesting candidate, but nobody is going to give me a realistic answer.
I can tell you from the employer side there is nothing to gain by answering this question asked by a candidate, and everything to lose which is why you the candidate almost never hear a response.
There are some legally protected reasons you cannot be turned down for a job. Its all the stuff you’d think of: race, religion, marital status, sex, age, etc. The likelihood you were turned down because of one of these illegal reasons is usually very low in the USA. I’m proud to say for the hiring efforts I’ve been a part of, these have never been considered criteria for disqualifying a candidate. Its always been for things like lack of knowledge/education, criminal history (example multi-DUI for a job that requires driving or conviction of embezzling when put in charge of company finances ), etc.
However, any documented reason a prospective employer gives back to a candidate becomes a liability. Will that candidate sue the company claiming that they weren’t hired because they think the position required some not married, which would be a crime of the employer?
I saw a job posting for a court domestic violence advocate and they would probably reject men on principle.
Legally they cannot. Also, domestic violence happens to men too.
I know
Legally they cannot.
gender supremacists:
“Hold my beer and watch me do exactly that. Again and again and again without any censure or pushback, purely because I am being a gender bigot against men, and for no other reason. We have full societal and legal ability to employ open misandry, because opposition of any kind is misogyny by default.”
domestic violence happens to men too.
71% of non-reciprocal (only one person being abusive) physically violent (actually striking) domestic violence involves women striking men.
As in, 71% of those victims are men.
And under those same conditions (non-reciprocal physically violent DV), two-thirds of victims that were injured seriously enough to require hospitalization were men, yet almost 100% were also arrested as the “perps”, even though they were the only victims.
Losts of people have problems with these facts. Wild how bad anti-reality ideological indoctrination has gotten.
Something I picked up over the years. The reasons are potentially personal or emotional.
Skills, experience and education are important.
But they are also concerned with cohesion.
“Is this someone I can have a beer with and have a good time”
“Will this person enjoy the company of the staff under my charge”
“That guy drove in with a insert political message on their bumper sticker. :/”
“Gross they used random font”
“We got too many Marks at this company”
Reminds me of one team I was on that had Karthic, Karthik, and Karthick. THEY JUST KEPT HIRING THEM.
HR is playing pokemon trying to catch em all
Employment is like dating, there are frequently things that happen outside of the process that impact the process and there are often reasons to avoid direct rejection even if the reasons are different.
Jobs might be posted and then the position itself is made redundant during the interviews, so they are no longer hiring. Or they liked your interview, but want to offer you something else and have to do the HR circus to make that offer happen and the whole thing falls through. Or during the interviews they decide they want to change the position into something else. Orbthey are incompetent and HR forgot to follow up on the job offer. I have seen all of these happen!
Then there is the all too common scenario of finding out the candidate is a woman or a minority and sone jerk killing the process. Can’t admit that so they ghost. They might have a valid reason not to hire, but don’t want to be sued for giving a reason. They might also have posted the thing to meet a requirement although they know who they were going to hire from the start. I have seen all of those as well.
Or they don’t want to tell a candidate they didn’t meet the position for fear of violence. This is likely being over cautious and not specific to the applicant!
Or the applicant reminded an interviewer of someone they don’t like.
These often line up with dating because they are all things that have no real specific explanation that can be given as what the csndidate can even do to change. Knowing they are possible won’t really impact how the interview/dating should go in the future either, because they are all external to the interview or dating process.
So the best way is to come to terms with the fact that there is likely to be someone who is a better fit, or the position wasn’t really stable, or you didn’t want to work or date them anyway if they didn’t follow up.
Shit man, you forgot someone else was just better suited for the job.
Even though you might be 97% perfect for the job, if they find 98% you’re done and it’s not your fault. Hell you were an excellent candidate for the job and just got unlucky enough to happen to be in the same pool as them.
The final decision on who to hire never comes down to who is the ‘most qualified’. There will almost always be multiple people who are qualified and the tiebreaker is interpersonal stuff like a matching sense of humor, attractiveness, and not reminding the interviewer of someone they don’t like.
Someone might be told it is based on the most qualified, but working well with others is part of a job and not in the written qualifications. It is also a subjective determination and varies wildly depending on the job and who is interviewing.
I said nothing about qualified.
I said better suited and gave percentages of perfect for the job.
Perfect for the job included everything, social interactions, qualifications, hair style, maybe holding the door for one of the people on the panel yesterday at the doctor.
I had applied for a job in a busy area a long time ago. I followed up a week later, nothing. I called a few days later. Nothing. I went to the office in person and some to the receptionist, who was pre-screening resumes. She picked up a box the size of a case of paper, and showed me another, half full. The full one were resumes she’d not looked at yet; the half full was what she had.
I mean what else can you do?
You should send them one of those annoying feedback surveys.
1.On a scale from 1 to 10, how do you rate the overall quality of my application?2.How well did my qualifications match the requirements for the position?Very well matched
Somewhat matched
Not well matched
3.On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate the clarity of my resume/CV?4.Was there any specific skill or experience you felt was missing from my application?Yes (please specify)
No
5.On a scale from 1 to 10, how effectively did my cover letter convey my interest in the position?6.Were there any areas in which my application could have been improved? (e.g., resume formatting, better alignment with job requirements, etc.)7.On a scale from 1 to 10, how well did I communicate my strengths during any interviews or communications?8.Would you consider my application for future opportunities within your organization?Yes
Maybe, depending on the role
No
9.On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend me to another employer?Because employers are opaque and their evaluation of you isn’t something that should be important to you. They’re not giving you a clear response oftentimes because they want to avoid legal issues.
Since the answer is unknowable, you might as well assume the best for yourself. Imagine that the job would have sucked anyway.
For example, I once interviewed for a job, was accepted, then showed up on my first day only to find out that the position had been given to someone else. Was I angry and disappointed? Of course. I made myself feel better by deciding I was better off not working for someone so untrustworthy.
I once interviewed for a job, was accepted, then showed up on my first day only to find out that the position had been given to someone else.
And with written proof of acceptance, any employment lawyer worth their degree could have gotten you a healthy amount of compensation even after their cut. Behaviour like this by any company is illegal in almost all jurisdictions, and should never be tolerated.
I didn’t have anything in writing. That’s what stopped me from taking it further. You’re completely right, though.
Most of America (all but 7 states) and all of Canada are one-party jurisdictions. That means you can record conversations without anyone else knowing so long as you are a primary participant in said conversation.
If you have an iPhone (which prevents calls from being recorded as a security feature), it helps to invest in a small digital recorder and to take all calls on speakerphone.
If you take communications through apps like Teams or Slack, there are third-party apps that can screen record your entire monitor such that the other person won’t be informed of the recording. Recording through teams, for example, would have Teams tell the other person that the screen is being recorded.
Don’t just record convos that you think might be important. Record all calls just in case someone does something particularly in your favour, such as asking an illegal question.
Life is all about probabilities, you can do everything right and still lose (however doing everything"right" is nigh impossible). You lose if they have a better candidate, you lose if their department is suddenly not in need of the position, etc.
With that mentality, I don’t bother with CVs, and just use the time saved to apply to more jobs or maybe some kind of relevant project.
You don’t get “rejected”, they just hire someone who isn’t you.
New stratagy…apply to the same company 400 times. With 400 different aliases. With 400 different disguises.
Exaust them with competition all looking for the same job. Which drowns out the 20 or so candidates. And then you just need to start a new life under your new name. Easy peasy.
Except not easy at all. It’s actually incredibly complicated keeping each character seperate, and remembering which accients to use, and then commiting to the bit for the next 60 years.
Some people fell better when they find fault in others. So blame them for being too stupid to see your worth and be thankful you don’t have to work somewhere with people like that. It’s their loss. You’re waiting a company worthy of your talents finds you.
So blame them for being too stupid to see your worth…You’re waiting a company worthy of your talents finds you.
Careful with this. If you legitimately feel you are entitled to be hired by a specific employer, you are almost certainly less likely to get the job. Nobody wants to deal with entitled people.
Yeah, during the interview, realistically you’re looking to see if it’s a good fit.
But after the fact, feel free to cheer yourself up by blaming their incompetence.
There’s a balance though. Not a specific company, but with a company who sees my needs and value, and meets or exceeds that, with appreciation.
Shiit so many comments here.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment
