Just Say: No Why can’t the company I’ve interviewed with send me a simple rejection letter?
If you talk to employers about this, you’ll often hear that it takes too much time to notify rejected candidates (which is nonsense—increasingly ubiquitous electronic applicant tracking systems can take care of this in seconds). Or you’ll hear that employers intend to get back to candidates, but other priorities interfere.
Job rejection may be one of those things, however, where hirers are damned if they don’t, but they’re also sometimes damned if they do. When employers do take the time to send out rejection notices, candidates often pick those notes apart. They may complain they’re too impersonal, or they try to read between the lines for hidden messages about their candidacy.
I personally make every attempt to let anyone who applied for a position to let them know that the position has been filled/closed. I don’t provide feedback for many of the reasons the article addresses.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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