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Non-hiring Practices

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Re: Non-hiring Practices

#121

Post by dennisgorelik »

qeorge wrote: post #116

Devil's advocate here (and an employer).. Its common for thousands of applicants to respond to a posting, many of whom are not vaguely qualified. So when a position is filled, its not uncommon to be turning down several thousand people. Honestly, do you want to send a disappointing email to 3000 people and then deal with the responses? More importantly, do you have time? Remember, wasting time on the wrong problems i…

> A job board where candidates can only submit 1 application per day would be a tremendous step in the right direction.

When company has a job opening - they want to fill it ASAP, so they want to see multiple resumes, not few. Even if these resumes are not 100% relevant.

In order to deal with high volume, recruiters choose not to reply to not very relevant applications.

In order to fix it, job board must be able to filter irrelevant applications, but realistically only recruiter [somewhat] knows if application is relevant or not.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#122

Post by crazygringo »

markokocic wrote: post #90
benjaminwootton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice story, but is it responsible to allow 3 year old personal feelings to influence the decision on a multimillion dollar contract influencing the financial affairs of 3 hospitals? What if Mckinsey were the best consultancy for the job?

His previous interaction has shown to him that McKinsey might not be a loyal contractor for the prospective contract. The way they treated him in the past might just indicate the way they would treat those hospitals. Since nowadays there is a thick competition for every contract, just the gut feeling of the person in the deciding position is enough to tick them off. Besides all, he has the first hand experience deali…

But you can only take that into account if you've had equivalent experience interviewing at other consultancies as well.

If that's basically how they all work, then it could be very irresponsible indeed. You can't judge an entire company based on your interactions (or lack thereof) with a single one of their employees.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#123

Post by Spooky23 »

docdoc wrote: post #20

Such an important issue. A few years ago, I applied to McKinsey & Co as a resident. I had a pleasant time interviewing and got to the final round. I asked many questions as I was a physician and had no prior background in business but I was really interested and thought this was my calling in life. Their average response time via email was 57 minutes during recruitment. I just checked my old emails. After my final ro…

So you were miffed a few years ago, and exacted some petty revenge by rigging a multi-million dollar procurement? Sounds like you're on the wrong side of the ethical line.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#124

Post by danbmil99 »

Big difference between responding to every resume (not really practical) and responding to someone who has put time and effort into a grueling interview process and has reason to believe they are on some sort of short list.

Quite some time ago I was recruited by Apple for a mgmt position (team of ~50). I flew from NYC to CA (they paid of course), went through 8+ hours of interviews with people I would be reporting to, parallel with, and managing.

Long story short, after waiting two weeks and hearing nothing, I had to pester the recruiter with 3 or 4 phone calls (unanswered messages) before I "caught" him answering his cell, whereupon he said something very brief and off-putting about not being a good fit, and acting like I had breached some sort of rule of etiquette by insisting on a direct response.

I had no way of knowing what their process was, whether I was still in the running (of course I had a hunch I wasn't, but you really never know with this sort of thing). I had decisions I had to make that were impacted by this trailing variable of probability that I might have a big-shot job in Cupertino.

Anyone who gets to that point in the process deserves the respect of a formal indication that you are not the chosen one.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#125

Post by SoftwareMaven »

dhh wrote: post #104
mattjaynes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love 37Signals - their products and their content, but this is the biggest issue I have with them - ignoring applicants. I've never shared the story of my efforts in applying to 37Signals, but this seems like a great time :) About 6 months ago, 37Signals advertised for a dedicated Conversion guy/gal: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3175-were-hiring-help-us-sign... This was very exciting for me. I'd been a long-time…

I apologize for not getting back to you. That's not cool in general and triple uncool when you've out this much effort into it. I will make sure we write back to all applicants in the future to let them know when we've made a decision (this does some time take a while though, we've taken 4-6 weeks in the past to make a decision, but it will be done).

While it may take four to six weeks to find out if somebody is right, it rarely takes more than a minute to know somebody is wrong. Hirers could certainly let the vast majority of applicants know that they shouldn't bother spending more time.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#126

Post by SoftwareMaven »

The one that I hate more than any other is the "You look great; I'll contact you in a couple days" to then never hear from them again, even after you try multiple follow-ups.

My favorite was the one where I got flown out to the Bay Area for an interview at Apigee[1]. They dropped the ball by not having everybody there to interview me, meaning they couldn't get all the information about me they would have liked[2]. When I left, it was all roses (including a said follow-up comment like above), and then complete and total silence. I get you may not think I'm right for the job, but flying somewhere takes a lot of my own, personal time.

1. I'm naming names for two reasons: one, I, like the author, think it's deplorable. More importantly, if you are going to take a potential employee's time without the courtesy of a simple reply to one of multiple questioning emails by saying, at least, "No, thanks", others deserve to know what to expect as well. I couldn't even get a response on how to get reimbursed for incidental travel costs without tracking down somebody outside of HR.

2. I don't think this had any impact on their decision to ignore me. It didn't even concern me, but, taken with the other events, it points to a lack of respect for candidates.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#127

Post by illuminate »

gfody wrote: post #33
linuxhansl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. This makes me sad. Sounds like unreasonable fear of a lawsuit stands in the way of common courtesy and decency here.

The fear is not unreasonable, the lawsuits are. USA is lawyers gone wild.

"USA is lawyers gone wild"

Not as much as the tort reform-obsessed would have you believe.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#128

Post by illuminate »

mattblank wrote: post #101

i recently just changed jobs, so i can give a first-hand opinion on this. firstly, the fact that many companies, after interviewing candidates, don't bother to contact interviewees afterwards is a big problem. it reflects personally on the people who run these companies and hire their workers. if your someone they want, they will kiss your ass to no end, but the second they don't want you, you're treated like a worth…

"if your someone they want, they will kiss your ass to no end, but the second they don't want you, you're treated like a worthless piece of shit."

I'd like to be given more graceful declines, certainly, but you can't seriously expect them to devote the same amount of time dealing with rejections that they do on acquiring talent. That's not a reasonable request to make of any employer that goes through hundreds of applicants for every firm hire.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#129

Post by illuminate »

bryan11 wrote: post #24

Thank you. This seems to be the practice for many recruiters now, too. For more than ten years I've wondered what's happened to common decency and professionalism.

"For more than ten years I've wondered what's happened to common decency and professionalism."

Monster and Craigslist, I assume.

Re: Non-hiring Practices

#130

Post by delinka »

In the US? Liability. That's why this doesn't happen. Actually having to tell someone "we're not hiring you," regardless of polite spin, puts you in the crosshairs of a lawyer.

Much like discussing former employees in my "right-to-work" state. "Yes, she did work here from P to Q. No we can not discuss her work performance." Doesn't matter if she was the model employee or an incompetent moron, saying anything is a potential liability. If you express your opinion that she was that incompetent moron, you're stifling her ability to find work and a jury of her peers will find against you, the former employer.

So back to the topic at hand. Say you get the generic "not hiring you" email. Are you going to leave it at that? If so, great, everyone can move on. Or are you going to try to appeal to the HR staffer's humanity and harass them with questions like "why not?" And then some candidate gets all pissy because "that's not what the job ad said!" and lawyers. So we send the email from a generic address that ignores replies ... and someone fouls up and sends it to all current candidates.

Should companies adopt a "we're not hiring you" generic message to send out and just never reply to replies? Sure. I'd love that. It's easier to ignore people.

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