Non-hiring Practices

No excuse. Mail merge has been available since at least the start of the 1990s.

As someone in a position to hire, I make a point of telling people no -- but only if I've taken the time to interview them. No way I'm taking the time to write back to every candidate that applies over the transom.

Important people have enough crap to deal with every day, and it's just not reasonable to expect a response to every piece of communication they receive.

EDIT: The below is correct and I stand by it. Please read the argument carefully.

Let me ask you, as you have opened six tabs and are applying one by one to them, would you like to have your inbox interrupt you with a message you have to spend time on, but which actually has the same effect (after the 2 minute interruption) as if you didn't get it? Because if you get 10 such emails, that's 20 minutes that could have been what it takes to get job (one of the six you were currently applying for) but you don't because the day is over and you go home or do something else.

The below is correct and I stand by it. Obviously if it is a position such as a high-level directorship where it is quite normal to do one such application for 2-3 weeks, then this does not apply.

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I don't really get this perspective. It's a funnel. (For both you and them).

You're sending out 30-200 applications per day - do you really want your inbox cluttered at the first stage of the funnel with "Email undeliverable"? How about "Thank you your application has been received"? Well, I don't!

Maybe if I didn't have a funnel but was applying to ONE job at a time for 3-11 days. This is literally 1/300th of the rate you should be going at. 0.3% of the full-time job that looking for a job entails. Sorry, but at this rate how suprised can you be that you don't have one? The proper rate is to apply for 30-100 jobs every 8 hours you are actively on the market, which shouldn't be long.

If none of the 100 applications gets to the next stage of the funnel, it's better to have 0 responses. As opposed to, say, 7 undeliverable emails, 93 "Thank you, your application has been received" and another 93 saying, unfortunately your application was not a good match. Think about it. This is 186 spam emails you have to read insstead of having 0 emails to read before you can continue the work of sending out applications. It's noise coming into your inbox to interrupt your process.

Can you imagine if every single IP that went to your site generated an email to you unless that IP became a paying customer in the same session? But actually, the analogy is more like: every IP that comes to your site generates an email to you saying your sales pitch has been received. And it generaets an email to you if the IP starts filling out the form but does not complete it. Maybe if you have 3 visitors per month. But that is not a viable strategy.

The ONLY possible effect of that 186 spam emails (7 undeliverable, 93 thank you, your application has been received, 93, we won't be calling you's) is that MAYBE you miss one of them that ACTUALLY asked for more informatino (i.e. where you progressed through the funnel).

The ONLY time I want to hear back is where I am proceeding through the process. I have actually, legitimately, missed such emails because I thought they were automated or I missed them a long with a bunch of automated responses I also got.

It's the same at every stage. Getting 20 responses to 20 interviews would be spam. I don't care about places that don't give me a job offer, since I should be spending the same time sending out the daily 20-100 applications.

If you do progress to getting 2-3 job offers, choose the best one, or name your price. If you don't hear back, it didn't work.

If you don't get to here, keep repeating the 200. People, there is ONE of you. ONE. But there are probably tens to hundreds of thousands of companies you could be working for.

do you really want the fact that you can't work for all of them (which is a mathematical guarantee) spamming your inbox?

Let me ask you this: would YOU like to LITERALLY DOUBLE the number of emails you send at EACH funnel step, by writing another email to everyone you previously sent an email to, saying you won't be pursuing it? Do you want to halve the signal-ratio by having the next funnel step include not only signal (ones going forward) but noise (rejections).

This would be like building a web app funnel where half of your "conversions" are in fact thoughtful no-thankyou. That's not a signal, that's noise. If the customer doesn't sign up, that's all the signal you need.

Times have changed I guess. The last time I applied for work was over twenty years ago. Back then resumes were printed on paper and mailed (or hand delivered) to prospective employers. It was very rare to never hear back. You almost always received a rejection letter if there was no interest in you.

I've had various experiences of good and bad HR/internal recruiters but the one that really deflated me was with one of the larger Ruby companies in the Bay Area.

I applied through a resume website, applying to 4 positions that I thought fit what I could do.

I got a email/call from their recruiter, then I did a technical phone screen and passed. Due to scheduling I was in the Bay Area a day later so I had a 45 minute pair programming assignment onsite instead of doing it over the phone/internet.

After I passed that they emailed me asking me to come into their offices the next day for the full onsite interview. During the full onsite interview, I did pair programming with 2 different people on 2 different programming tests, and did two 2-person interviews.

The first clue that should have alerted me to something being wrong was that I was suppose to talk to the CTO but because of "conflicts" he could do the interview. My recruiter shook my hand, thanked me, and then I left.

I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to get the job. I had felt pretty good about the programming tests but during the 2-on-1 interviews I felt they were forcing me to answer questions where the only correct answer was the one they had set out in advance in their head. I didn't really know which way it would go.

So how did I find out I got rejected? Essentially they changed the status of my application on the resume site from 'In Progress' to 'Reject' and the resume site sent me a notification tell me I had been rejected for the position. Just to be sure I got the message the person also rejected me from the three other positions I had applied for. So in the end I got 4 Rejection Letters from the company. They couldn't even be bothered to e-mail me directly and tell me, "No."

Considering the reputation of the company as one that "cared about its customers" and was considered one of the "darlings" of Silicon Valley, I felt pretty crushed being treated this way by them.