Rejected Rejection Letters

apapadimoulis

Most companies don't send rejection letters to applicants, or they send one like 3 months later. That's annoying, right? So I thought I'd be courteous and not only send a rejection letter, but send them immediately upon making the decision, not months later when the position is filled.

This has led to an interesting experience. Out of dozens of rejections for an entry-level marketing position, I got these three note worthy replies:

First one; the rejection letter was sent within 24 hours of applying for the job:

I have already found a job thank you.

Second, and I'll be honest, I didn't even bother reading the resume because the cover letter had a few typos. Glad to see my rejection rejection has a few as well:

The rejection letter you sent me just shows me how un educated you are. That was my resume professionally written.

And finally, there's this. To be fair, the guy did have like 20 years experience, with probably just as many, if not more, different employers...

Really? I more than exceed the qualifications, probably would have been a bad job anyway

Nocha

Did you get any back thanking you for letting them know and asking if you have any feedback on their application? I know I try and do this now when I am applying, and people have generally been surprised I haven't just kept silent after rejection.

Lorne Kates

@apapadimoulis said:

That was my resume professionally written.

@Nocha said:

Did you get any back thanking you for letting them know and asking if you have any feedback on their application? I know I try and do this now when I am applying, and people have generally been surprised I haven't just kept silent after rejection.

I might do that, except I have never once, in my entire life, gotten a rejection letter to a position I've applied for. I've gotten turned down after an interview, but never a rejection letter. I've gotten:

Silence (no correspondence)
Ignored (Silence after I send a follow up inquiring about the position)
That is all

For all the shit people get about "when applying you must be 100% professional all the time in every way", I can't believe companies still don't send out notification that the job is filled, or that a candidate was rejected, or anything. FFS, most won't even acknowledge that they've received your resume.

So non-sarcastic to @apapadimoulis for doing your part to keep the job-applying ecosystem non-shitty.

Nocha

Silence is mostly what I have had, but I tend to call the following week asking if they have made a decision. If I were to get a letter rejecting me, I would definitely be thanking them for not leaving me hanging and asking for feedback.

apapadimoulis

@Nocha said:

Did you get any back thanking you for letting them know and asking if you have any feedback on their application? I know I try and do this now when I am applying, and people have generally been surprised I haven't just kept silent after rejection.

Never. Not once. But I would totally give feedback if they did.

Actually I sometimes add a note, like "PS. I noticed a typo" that I hope is helpful... and one guy managed to turn that around and get a phone interview.

Another guy responded (and to date it's my favorite), "oh i didn't realize i was applying for a spelling job".

apapadimoulis

@Lorne_Kates said:

I might do that, except I have never once, in my entire life, gotten a rejection letter to a position I've applied for.

That's absolutely the "right" thing to do, especially in the US.

The only possible thing gained by communicating with rejected candidates is a little bit of good will, but it opens up some serious EEO liabilities if you have any communication with them whatsoever.

Fortunately we're under most thresholds, but goddamn, it's a bullshit system.

boomzilla

@apapadimoulis said:

Another guy responded (and to date it's my favorite), "oh i didn't realize i was applying for a spelling job".

Was it for the job you posted? The Communications and Marketing Associate?

Nocha

@apapadimoulis said:

it opens up some serious EEO liabilities if you have any communication with them whatsoever.

What kind of liability is there in a letter along the lines of

Dear Nocha,
Thank you for your application for the position of Software Developer. After careful consideration I regret to inform you that you have not been successful on this occasion. We wish you all the best in your job search.

Kind Regards

apapadimoulis

I know I would appreciate a letter like that, especially as it means I'm not hanging on for a time wondering if I got through or not.

Lorne Kates

@apapadimoulis said:

Another guy responded (and to date it's my favorite), "oh i didn't realize i was applying for a spelling job".

A marketing position-- where the main role is creating written ads, and ad copy, and written marketing material...

fucking wow.

"Um, sir, when you came in to the interview for the trucker job, you made an illegal left turn into the parking lot, dinged another car, then double-parked across two handicap spots"
oh i didn't realize i was applying for a DRIVING job

RaceProUK

Is that Freddie Mercury interviewing a pufferfish?

Lorne Kates

@RaceProUK said:

Is that Freddie Mercury interviewing a pufferfish?


Buddy you're a koi,
Served up with poi,
Splashing in the pond,
Gonna be a big fish someday.


apapadimoulis

@Nocha said:

What kind of liability is there

Apparently, a lot?

@Nocha said:

... After careful consideration ...

Deposition time!

describe for me this careful consideration .... I see, "using coming sans for their resume"? Um, that doesn't sound very careful of consideration, now does it? Would you agree that most people agree with that? ... Really!? Let me remind you, you're under oath. You are saying, for the record, that you honestly believe that most people would say "font choice" is a "careful consideration" for a non-designer job? ... Ok, we've demonstrated you didn't actually use "careful" consideration, did you actually have any other non-racial, non-sexist, non-religious consideration, or did you just not hire Latisha Goldstein because she's black, female, and jewish?

Actually, there's an insurance product that many small companies need to purchase, basically along the lines of... "if a nuisance EEO lawsuit is filed on behalf of a rejected candidate, we will either settle or bring in our big-gun lawyers to threaten their lawyer."

Somewhat related, but what kind of liability there is in saying a truthful statement such as, "we fired him because he stole from the company, smoked pot at lunch, and constantly called off sick while his twitter showed him doing XYZ." We'd never hear that from any former employer, only "we confirm his employment was from JUN-8 to OCT-19".

Nocha

@apapadimoulis said:

did you actually have any other non-racial, non-sexist, non-religious consideration

Please tell me that

The standard of spelling and grammar in their application was not of the standard we expect of our employees

or

We had a large number of other applicants, and only time to interview a small number of them. Unfortunately your client was not a qualified or experienced in the area we wish to hire in as other applicants, and therefore was not hired

Would be acceptable answers to that question? I can't imagine an application failing for many other reasons than that anyway...

@apapadimoulis said:

there's an insurance product that many small companies need to purchase, basically along the lines of... "if a nuisance EEO lawsuit is filed on behalf of a rejected candidate, we will either settle or bring in our big-gun lawyers to threaten their lawyer."

Jesus Christ on a stick. Are people really that sue happy that you need insurance to protect against it? Surely they can't sue simply because you had other applications that were better on paper/better in interview than them and they have a vaguely female/black/jewish sounding name?

cheong

For me, there's not much difference.

I mean, unless your job pays really well that I want to wait and see if I get I chance for working in there, when you're out of job, you just keep interviewing until you find one.

Btw, the difference in salary the companies offer is usually not so great (after all, when they hire through the job agents, they know what the marketing price are) so I've never bother to wait. And by the way, ever since I got 5+ years of experience, I've never been waiting more than half day since I start interviewing to get a job. ) Taking the time in sending the resume for consideration, the whole process is usually less than 5 days. Those companies with HRs acting too slow is never going to hire me.

apapadimoulis

@Nocha said:

acceptable answers to that question

It's extremely difficult to give good answers like that quickly, especially in a heated deposition. Scoring a few good quotes in deposition are invaluable at trial, "so you swore under oath that ...; do you still believe what you said, or have you now changed your mind?"

@Nocha said:

Jesus Christ on a stick. Are people really that sue happy that you need insurance to protect against it? Surely they can't sue simply because you had other applications that were better on paper/better in interview than them and they have a vaguely female/black/jewish sounding name?

It's not about being hyper-litigious, it's more just EEO trolling. The idea of patents are a GoodThing™, and the idea of not being racist/sexist/religiousist is a GoodThing™ is a good thing, but the EEO laws make companies easy targets -- companies lose either way (a "win" in court is hardly worth legal fees and time), so they just settle for a few grand.

A lot of "small" (50-500ish) organizations have the same concerns about hiring a protected class; because of EEO, terminating them is very risky because objectively proving that their work product didn't meet the job description is almost impossible...

cartman82

We didn't send rejection letters to any of the people who applied during our last hiring spree. As you say, there's zero benifit. Just wasted time and potential problems.

If some of the candidates was really good, maybe it would be worth the trouble to establish good relations. But since the CVs we got ranged from mediocre to a 40 year old warehouse clerk who "took a 3 week CSS course", we didn't bother.

Lorne Kates

@cartman82 said:

"took a 3 week CSS course"

That reminds me: I'll reject anyone instantly who claims they know how to "program HTML".

Filed under: Same if they say they can code in XML

RaceProUK

@Lorne_Kates said:

Filed under: Same if they say they can code in XML

So no graduates of the University of Michigan then?

ben_lubar

http://www.cs.uwm.edu/~cs101/

Lorne Kates

@RaceProUK said:

@Lorne_Kates said:
Filed under: Same if they say they can code in XML

So no graduates of the University of Michigan then?

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. I am going to start a new thread. Holy shit.

MHolt

@apapadimoulis said:

Somewhat related, but what kind of liability there is in saying a truthful statement such as, "we fired him because he stole from the company, smoked pot at lunch, and constantly called off sick while his twitter showed him doing XYZ." We'd never hear that from any former employer, only "we confirm his employment was from JUN-8 to OCT-19".

I don't know about the US, but here in Denmark former employers are not allowed to give negative comments on a former employee. Basically the worst you can get is "we confirm his employment"

apapadimoulis

Is that an actual law?

There's no such law in the US, but former employers are also not allowed to give negative comments (due to "that's how it works / lawsuits / etc").

boomzilla

@Lorne_Kates said:

That reminds me: I'll reject anyone instantly who claims they know how to "program HTML"

What if they say they want to start an HTML pogrom?

Lorne Kates

@apapadimoulis said:

Is that an actual law?

There's no such law in the US, but former employers are also not allowed to give negative comments (due to "that's how it works / lawsuits / etc").

It's also getting to the point where former employers won't make POSITIVE comments either. Because Initech might hire Paula Bean based on a positive comment from her former employer. Then when Initech
finds out she isn't very brillant, Initech will sue her former employer for misleading them.

Though, given the staggeringly long string of mind-boggelingly bad employees Initech has gone through, they have no one to blame but themselves...

Weng

@Lorne_Kates said:

Filed under: Same if they say they can code in XML

There go all your former WtfCorpers.

We have a home-grown XML dialect that is a turing complete programming language.

HardwareGeek

@Weng said:

home-grown XML dialect that is a turing complete programming language

sloosecannon

I mean, if they can prove they actually know what "code in XML" means, they're probably OK.

Then again, maybe that's not a good thing....

blakeyrat

I interviewed for a Seattle company you've all heard of but I won't type their name here; they promised they meet INSTANTLY after the interview and always make a decision in less than 15 minutes, so I should just wait. I did, and they did. I even got bullet-points on the reasons for the rejection. I was kind of impressed at their interview process.

It was a company who thought it was a good idea to fire all their QA staff and replace them all with unit and integration tests, and of course (at least according to my other friend who worked at the company) their core product was broken as shit after a few months of this decision. They didn't hire me partially because their corporate culture was so "anti-QA" that they were offended at me talking up the great QA staff at my previous position. Kind of glad I wasn't hired.

blakeyrat

@Weng said:

We have a home-grown XML dialect that is a turing complete programming language.

I'm pretty sure plain ol' XSLT is turing-complete. You don't need to home-grow this.

Weng

But we did because we are WtfCorp and that's what WtfCorp does.

blakeyrat

Man think of how much time they could have saved using an already-existing complete WTF instead of creating their own new complete WTF from scratch.

MHolt

@apapadimoulis said:

Is that an actual law?

I thought it was,but I can't find any mention of this in the current law. Apparently you used to have a right to a comment and a written statement of the reason for termination, but that was removed in 2008.

It is at least considered very bad form, and I'm sure the unions would have a field day.

PJH

@apapadimoulis said:

To be fair, the guy did have like 20 years experience

20 years? Or one year twenty times...

@MHolt said:

I don't know about the US, but here in Denmark former employers are not allowed to give negative comments on a former employee.

Negative references are allowed in the UK. They cannot, however, be bad or misleading.

anonymous234

@apapadimoulis said:

Never. Not once. But I would totally give feedback if they did.

"Sorry, you don't get the job"
"Hey thanks for letting me know! Most people just keep quiet"
"Thanks for thanking me! Most people just get angry even though I'm doing it for them"
"No problem! Thanks for thanking me back. Most people would just quit the conversation at this point"
"Hey thanks for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me! You're being so courteous"

(repeat until buffer overflow)

anonymous234

What about

Dear whatever,

You don't get the position of Software Developer you applied for on 10/5/2015

Kind regards, me

No statements of any kind in the letter other than the one you implicitly already gave. I even omitted "sorry" in case the courts wanted to dispute that.

anonymous234

@Nocha said:

Jesus Christ on a stick. Are people really that sue happy that you need insurance to protect against it?

I don't think that even scratches the surface of legal WTFery nowadays.

We're already at the point where every public statement has to be carefully analyzed by a lawyer, where every product you release probably infringes dozens of patents but there's literally no one in the world who could tell you with certainty which ones, and where every small company is at constant risk of getting in a frivolous legal fight that costs more money than they have assets.

Legal expenses insurance is to a company today what health insurance is to people. You can live without it, but sooner or later you'll wish you hadn't.

jmp

Those regards are indifferent at best.

apapadimoulis

@anonymous234 said:

What about [...]

In my expert legal opinion, that is still unadvised.

In my expert medical opinion, you should take more Vitamin D.

Bort

@Weng said:

We have a home-grown XML dialect that is a turing complete programming language.

So fully explicit syntax like lisp, but pointlessly verbose?

(define map (f list)
  (if (= nil list)
    nil
    (cons (f (car list)) (map f (cdr list)))))

<define>
  <name>map</name>
  <parameters>
    <parameter>f</parameter>
    <parameter>list</parameter>
  </parameters>
  <body>
    <if>
      <condition><apply><var>&#61;</var><nil /><var>list</var></apply></condition>
      <then><nil /></then>
      <else>
        <apply>
          <var>cons</var>
          <apply><var>f</var><apply><var>car</var><var>list</var></apply></apply>
          <apply><var>map</var><var>f</var><apply><var>cdr</var><var>list</var></apply></apply>
        </apply>
      </else>
    </if>
  </body>
</define>

ooowwww... my fingers...

at least there aren't so many parenthesis.

Lorne Kates

@blakeyrat said:

I interviewed for a Seattle company you've all heard of but I won't type their name here;

CthuluTech? VoldomortSoft, LLC? iSauron?

Filed under: I am insanely proud of that EYE Sauron one

DCRoss

@anonymous234 said:

@apapadimoulis said:
Never. Not once. But I would totally give feedback if they did.

"Sorry, you don't get the job"
"Hey thanks for letting me know! Most people just keep quiet"
"Thanks for thanking me! Most people just get angry even though I'm doing it for them"
"No problem! Thanks for thanking me back. Most people would just quit the conversation at this point"
"Hey thanks for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me! You're being so courteous"

(repeat until buffer overflow)

I'm sorry to hear you didn't get the job in Canada.

Dragnslcr

@apapadimoulis said:

It's extremely difficult to give good answers like that quickly, especially in a heated deposition. Scoring a few good quotes in deposition are invaluable at trial, "so you swore under oath that ...; do you still believe what you said, or have you now changed your mind?"

Professional expert witnesses get treated that way (sometimes with extremely humorous results), but average people that get dragged in as fact witnesses usually get a little more leeway to correct things that they've previously said. The lawyers always went to get those good sound bites, but they have to be careful, since it can backfire with a jury if it looks like they're bullying a witness.

@apapadimoulis said:

Deposition time!

describe for me this careful consideration .... I see, "using coming sans for their resume"? Um, that doesn't sound very careful of consideration, now does it? Would you agree that most people agree with that? ... Really!? Let me remind you, you're under oath. You are saying, for the record, that you honestly believe that most people would say "font choice" is a "careful consideration" for a non-designer job? ... Ok, we've demonstrated you didn't actually use "careful" consideration, did you actually have any other non-racial, non-sexist, non-religious consideration, or did you just not hire Latisha Goldstein because she's black, female, and jewish?

I really wanted to say that this would never happen in a real deposition. Then I thought about it for a minute, and I realized that I can see a lawyer trying to pull it off.

Magus

French accent: "Two months later..."

"...And I especially liked the one with the moose..."

boomzilla

Necro rejection:

Millennial Savages Me on Glass Door for Giving Her ... Constructive Feedback

This is an amazing Glass Door post savaging me as one of the the "rudest and [most] unprofessional hiring managers" a 23 year-old millennial has ever encountered (in her distinguished career): So, real talk: No; this person didn't actually get an interview. This person sent an application and bragge

This is an amazing Glass Door post savaging me as one of the the "rudest and [most] unprofessional hiring managers" a 23 year-old millennial has ever encountered (in her distinguished career):
...
This is an entire culture that some of you folks out there have created by being helicopter parents; hovering around your kids; never letting them fall off their bikes; insisting that they get trophies for everything even when they lose; arguing with their teachers to get them better grades; coddling them and holding their hand through absolutely everything and never letting them sink or swim on their own. This is the monster that you have created.