Reply to unsuccessful applicants?

Individual reply to those who made it to interview stage. Also if that person has prospects i would say to them you will keep their cv on file etc

Also list areas they could improve/work on to enhance either their interview technique or their skillset.

^^ never seen an employer do that tho.
 
Surfer said:
Individual reply to those who made it to interview stage. Also if that person has prospects i would say to them you will keep their cv on file etc

Also list areas they could improve/work on to enhance either their interview technique or their skillset.

^^ never seen an employer do that tho.
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They somtimes do that for someone who has attended an interview.
 
helpimcrap said:
And this is the cop out answer. Seriously it's just a courtesy thing. Part of the reason the UK is going down the pan with respect.
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Terminal_Boy said:
This.

Candidates have taken the time and effort to send an application, so it's the least you can do to let them know that it wasn't successful.

Basic manners.
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I don't think it's realistic to expect a reply to every application, especially when companies get to certain size or become a highly desirable place to work at. Otherwise you're just expecting a company to hire someone to to send out rejection emails all day long.
 
Freefaller said:
I'd reply to the finalists/shortlisted applicants.

If I had 100+ it would be a case of doing a BCC generic email really - it's a going to be tedious either way.
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This. When I was last on the dole a few years ago I would not expect a reply just for an application - I'm well aware that many jobs can have hundreds or even thousands of applications. But I really resent companies which don't reply to people who got an interview and were not successful; which I would put at more than 50% of the ones I got interviewed by. And these were far from casual jobs or the like. And only one gave me feedback. It's not likely to be more than twelve people, so it's not that time-consuming.
 
IT's just nice to be acknowledged, and also you know that you haven't been successful and can keep looking elsewhere.

I've had to write a few "sorry you were not successful" emails, because our HR teams were not bothered about actually doing them. Hence my comment on the BCC. I took time over a weekend to compile the list of emails.

I haven't been in a position of recruiting people for half a dozen years now which is a relief. I've interviewed people, but the rest of it was handled by another department.
 
As somebody who is currently in the process of applying for graduate jobs I find it pretty poor on the company's behalf if they can't even be bothered to send a template; especially after you've spent several hours filling out their proprietary application forms.

I got rejected after an interview recently and they said that they were unable to give any more feedback. This annoyed me a bit as I had prepared for several days for the interview. On the other hand, I have received some very personalized and constructive rejection emails which I have really appreciated.
 
I spent 5 months on the dole in a few years back, at the time it was apply to a minimum of 4 jobs a week so using these numbers that's a minimum of 80 jobs I applied for and only 2 of them contacted me for interviews. The rest I didn't hear anything from.

I would be happy with just a generic email. I understand it would suck to be the one to send them out but what sucked even more was when I went to sign on and week after week I have to say I've heard nothing back and seeing their face you can read the disbelief, it's crushing to be made to feel guilty.

You guys who do recruitment on here at the very least if someone comes in from the jobcentre send a letter or an email.
 
As someone who has fairly recently got involved in the recruitment process it has helped to highlight to me how time-consuming it can be. Just vetting CVs can take hours and occasionally I see a strong CV with good covering letter that isn't quite what we are looking for for a particular vacancy; it feels a shame to reject without providing some feedback as sometimes they look like a decent candidate for another (non-existent) role.

I also wouldn't underestimate the impact of the internal recruitment process and/or software used - ideally you want a quick and easy way of managing the CV sift that lets you perhaps write a one-liner rejection reason and then have HR or whatever do the rest. But not everyone will have it set up that way.

Where candidates are interviewed I will give feedback but the initial CV review is sometimes too high volume to be dealt with by people who have a day job.
 
The problem is there are at times thousands of applications for the most basic of jobs. Whose time should be spent sending out a reply to everyone?.. I know it's unfortunate for those that apply, but there's not much to give in most instances..

The other issue I can see with giving feedback after an interview is that it might leave the company up for legal issues, I wonder if someone could misread a statement and bring discrimination cases against a company.
 
Also, look into macros for Outlook.
I had the tedious job of going through 50+ applications every single day, assigning them an applicant number, then sending them to different departments around the island, whilst also replying to them confirming receipt of application.

When the job was filled, I then replied to each and every one thanking them, but letting them know they weren't successful.

I wrote a macro (no knowledge of macros beforehand, just trial and error and google) that auto-assigned it a number, renamed the email subject, filed it in a particular folder for the job, allowed me to tick boxes to determine which departments to forward it to etc. Took my morning workload from 3 hours to 10 minutes.
 
Generic email for those who don't get past the first filter - Send them the ' generic sorry template '.

As most of you appear to be experienced at this have any of you experienced a candidate just hanging up on you midway through a technical interview ? I was rather shocked that anyone would even consider doing that !
 
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