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there is a general culture nowadays in the HR departments to avoid any conflict with job seekers. you may very well be an open minded person seeking a constructive input, but for each of you, there are hundreds of idiots out there who would be screaming into the phone, play dumb or flat out ignore/debate the feedback they receive. who wants to deal with that stuff on daily basis? nobody, unless they are a masochist and really enjoy it. even sending an email to rejected candidate can be a major pain.
anothing thing to keep in mind is that there are certain situations where the person wasn't hired, but was a 2nd in line, or 3rd. if anything happens with the first guy or the offer gets rejected, they can always go to the person they had as 2nd preference on the list. I work for a Fortune 25 company and I was personally involved in a situation where we had interviewed multiple people, and then the top two candidates rejected the offer due to personal reasons. as a result, we hired a 3rd best candidate! the damn thing was dragging on and on for weeks. just imagine how rediculous we would look if we immediately told that 3rd best candidate that we decided to go with a more experienced candidate to begin with and burned our bridges.
PS: I am not an HR expert, just have some friends there.
PPS: as a rule of thumb, if you don't hear from the HR dept within a week after your last interview, there is 90% chance they decided to go with another candidate. usually people get contacted right away if the company really likes them, sometimes even as soon as couple of hours after the last interview!
I was involved in a similar situation. We interviewed, presented a job offer to our top candidate, gave her two weeks to consider the offer. A week and a half later she accepted. At that time, we performed a background check and required her to undergo a drug test. She failed the drug test (at this time it was a few months after the initial interviews). Since she failed the drug test, we contacted the second best candidate then.
We weren't jerking the second candidate around, hiring simply is a very long process anymore.
You don't seem to have any clue what people sue a company over in terms of hiring practices. You are simply asking for a lawsuit acting the way you describe.
I sincerely hope you become a manager one day so I can watch how dramatically you chance your attitude.
What?! So, you're saying companies should seriously fear lawsuits if they send out a generic, truthful, and identical email to all rejected candidates that simply says, "Thank you for taking the time to interview with us, but we've chosen to go another direction" - or "The company is still considering other candidates" - or "The job listed is still waiting to be funded?" This doesn't seem right since such emails are sent out all the time.
Realistically, people can't really sue over generic emails that simply state basic facts that in no way touch upon Equal Opportunity Employer issues and which do not address anything specific about the candidate. I was never asking for "personal advise" from the company - I know they can't do that. All I want is generic honesty, and they can't be sued for that.
If people *could* sue over that, than they could also sue over companies lying them to them about promising to get back to them and failing to do so, offering them "fake jobs" when they show the candidate where they'll be working and then don't hire them, and so on... and none of those lawsuits would hold up in court (or even make it to court) either.
Heck, if one could sue for what you're saying, I could sue the companies that did reply to me, as well as every company that ever sent me an email saying, "thanks for applying, we'll consider you!" because they "didn't consider me" or some nonsense. There's no way any of those "lawsuits" would hold up in court, so I can't see how having every company give out an honest, non-candidate specific answer will produce any problems. Note that I'd only expect this for people who made it deep into the interview process anyway - basically, if I spent the time and money going to an on-site, they should at least acknowledge that the interview happened and respond with "generic truth" as I've detailed above.
Last edited by Rambler123; 08-07-2012 at 08:40 AM..
What?! So, you're saying companies should seriously fear lawsuits if they send out a generic, truthful, and identical email to all rejected candidates that simply says, "Thank you for taking the time to interview with us, but we've chosen to go another direction" - or "The company is still considering other candidates" - or "The job listed is still waiting to be funded?" This doesn't seem right since such emails are sent out all the time.
Realistically, people can't really sue over generic emails that simply state basic facts that in no way touch upon Equal Opportunity Employer issues and which do not address anything specific about the candidate. I was never asking for "personal advise" from the company - I know they can't do that. All I want is generic honesty, and they can't be sued for that.
If people *could* sue over that, than they could also sue over companies lying them to them about promising to get back to them and failing to do so, offering them "fake jobs" when they show the candidate where they'll be working and then don't hire them, and so on... and none of those lawsuits would hold up in court (or even make it to court) either.
Heck, if one could sue for what you're saying, I could sue the companies that did reply to me, as well as every company that ever sent me an email saying, "thanks for applying, we'll consider you!" because they "didn't consider me" or some nonsense. There's no way any of those "lawsuits" would hold up in court, so I can't see how having every company give out an honest, non-candidate specific answer will produce any problems.
Absolutely! It isn't right, but a lot of people are very slimy, and will sue over anything. There have been lawsuits where an email like that is sent out and the candidate claims racial/sexual/religious discrimination and sues. Even if the suit is thrown out, you incur a lot of legal costs. It simply isn't worth the money in legal expenses. This happens all the time. Even if the lawsuits hold up in court, would you want to pay a lawyer $200/hr to defend the suit to the point at which it is thrown out?
If you get discriminated against for having a disability for example and you sue a company with proof on your side, I support that 100%. Someone who can't follow one of the golden rules of life they should be punished for that.
there is a general culture nowadays in the HR departments to avoid any conflict with job seekers. you may very well be an open minded person seeking a constructive input, but for each of you, there are hundreds of idiots out there who would be screaming into the phone, play dumb or flat out ignore/debate the feedback they receive. who wants to deal with that stuff on daily basis? nobody, unless they are a masochist and really enjoy it. even sending an email to rejected candidate can be a major pain.
anothing thing to keep in mind is that there are certain situations where the person wasn't hired, but was a 2nd in line, or 3rd. if anything happens with the first guy or the offer gets rejected, they can always go to the person they had as 2nd preference on the list. I work for a Fortune 25 company and I was personally involved in a situation where we had interviewed multiple people, and then the top two candidates rejected the offer due to personal reasons. as a result, we hired a 3rd best candidate! the damn thing was dragging on and on for weeks. just imagine how rediculous we would look if we immediately told that 3rd best candidate that we decided to go with a more experienced candidate to begin with and burned our bridges.
PS: I am not an HR expert, just have some friends there.
PPS: as a rule of thumb, if you don't hear from the HR dept within a week after your last interview, there is 90% chance they decided to go with another candidate. usually people get contacted right away if the company really likes them, sometimes even as soon as couple of hours after the last interview!
Exactly had interview before - then other people advised to contact them and ask what I did wrong or feedback - when in reality it can be any number of reasons, where there multiple candidates with similar resumes, they like the look of you, you can start quickly, you can jump into the role very quickly, or perhaps they just didn't think you would be a good fit with rest of the team, or perhaps they thought the role was a step down for you, or your overqualified - rather some specific thing you did wrong or some major flaw with you- time constraints and business needs force a quick decision.
Some people need to realise their not actually that important, and no amount of tweaking your personality or saying right things, pretense, or dressing a resume make that much difference.
had interviews which were more like a chat - and got offered a job straight after the interview for good salaries, other interviews for jobs which were lowered paid positions which were like an interrogation - your left feeling do I really want to work for these people.
I generally look at the salary level as an indicator of their expectations - Employers can't expect multi skilled miracle workers for pretty average salaries.
They know if they want someone really good then they need to pay a decent salary for it.
The ironic thing is when you tell them that you had a more qualified candidate, they get pissed and cop an attitude. Reality check, just because you meet all the qualifications, it doesn't mean that there weren't people out there who were more qualified. And applicants wonder why we don't want to talk to them outside a letter telling them we've gone with a different candidate.
The fact is that 99.99999% of the time, that's the entire reason we didn't hire them. There was someone more qualified.
The person we rejected might have had a nice suit, great personality, and perfect resume, but the person we hired had just one little thing that set them apart--something that the other candidates didn't do wrong, but just didn't have. A second language, roots for the same sports team, or volunteers for a favored charity. Or maybe the hiring manager just clicked with the person they chose better.
For the last time, I was NOT asking for some detailed explanation as to why specifically I wasn't hired, so using that as a reason to totally ignore people is illogical. What I want is honesty about the position - was it cancelled? Did they hire somebody else? Are they waiting for funding? This is all I'm asking for, as detailed in my posts - a simple, generic email sent to all the rejected candidates who made it deep into the interview process. No individual details - just the simple truth.
It is not that hard to be honest, and I find it lame that the reasons to justify treating the candidates like crap are "oh, the stupid unemployed people will complain anyway," or, "somebody will sue us." The first excuse is just more "all unemployed people stink" and the second doesn't match reality or we'd be hearing about countless lawsuits being filed against companies for sending out honest emails, ignoring candidates, etc.
Is it that hard to tell the truth? Or, have all the HR gatekeepers forgotten what it's like to apply to job after job, go on on-site interviews, be shown around and told how you're a "great fit for the job" - and then to be ignored! Is it that hard to treat people the way you would like to be treated? Geez...
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