(~4 minutes to read)
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This week’s piece is a rant. By nature, I’m a ranty sort of person, so writing a rant should be easy—all I need is a topic, and the title of this piece should give you a clue what it is.
I’m old enough to have received employment rejection letters in the mail. My first such letter was from the BBC—I wanted to be a production technician, but they didn’t see me in their future. Since then, I’ve had very few. I’m pretty sure I’ve had more acceptance letters than rejections.
But at some point (I don’t know exactly when because I first noticed it when we immigrated to Canada), employers and body shops / head hunters (even the terminology is off-putting!) stopped telling you if you were unsuccessful in a job application. Was it cost saving? Was it the sheer number of applications for each position?
Whatever the reason, it must have been a compelling one, because “everybody” (the quotes connote liberal interpretation of the word) started doing it.
This was in the days before ubiquitous email and such. Back then, anything was possible on a computer—it was just a matter of how much a person was willing to pay. (One of my system software support instructors told me that, so it must have been true…) Nowadays, provided you’re okay with your device being carpet-bombed with adverts, you can acquire apps that do the most weird and wonderful (and pointless!) things for the low, low price of zip/zero/bugger-all.
We also have application development platforms that enable programmers (and wannabes) to churn out basic apps within hours if not minutes.
And we have phones that are more powerful computers than the ones I started work on. Heck, even the microwave oven’s processor has more power—a Univac 9400 wasn’t capable of monitoring how warm my leftover takeaway was and alerting me when it’s ready!
So why in the name of all that is good hasn’t someone put an app on the market that will collect email addresses of applicants and notify them semi-automatically when they’re out of the running for a job?
Or perhaps the apps are out there, but organizations have decided they prefer their current modus operandi? (Someone, please tell me…)
I think that it’s one of the more heartless and demoralizing features of the whole employment-seeking process/industry that the hirer doesn’t have the decency to let people off the hook. It’s bad enough to get a rejection, but not knowing is worse—that comes over as indifference, and indifference hurts: ask anyone who, as a kid, threw a hissy fit in order to get some kind of attention from its parent.
It’s left to the applicants to guess when the hiring process has completed its cycle and assume the job isn’t theirs. This wait time could vary from days to weeks, and for some positions and some organizations, months.
The automation of rejection notices should be easy to design and code. If you’re a developer with an entrepreneurial streak in you, feel free to run with the following “fag packet spec”. (an IT term from the UK in the 1970s and 80s.)
Most job applications these days are made online. An applicant applies for a specific posting (which the software at the server end knows about) and is required to provide contact information (duh!) in a named field. It’s the simplest thing in the world to store contact info for every applicant against a posting number—I wouldn’t even dignify the design with the title “database” although that’s how it would be implemented. During the resumé reviewing/vetting/weeding/culling process, the reviewer can assign a score or colour or emoji or Simpsons character or whatever to each applicant—or for today’s managers they could swipe right, left or down for “yes”, “no” and “maybe”—and the underlying logic could notify the rejections at that point. Then when the position is filled, all it takes is for some HR minion to flag the posting as filled and the other “yes” and “maybe” applicants can be auto-notified. Doubtless there are refinement opportunities—perhaps a choice of verbiage in the rejection letter based on how unsuitable the candidate was.
It’s easy to design and code, and represents almost zero additional effort to operate: I defy anyone to tell me otherwise.
It’s bad manners to ignore people, and that’s what the current process does—ignore people. People seeking employment—especially those who are applying whilst unemployed—are in a period of uncertainty in their lives. If they’ve been laid off, they may be smarting from the feelings of rejection that layoff precipitates. (No matter how big the severance package!) The least a prospective employer could do would be to let unsuccessful applicants know.
The technology is there. With middle management becoming increasingly populated with millennials, I cannot believe that the willingness isn’t there. All it takes is someone with an app and a marketing flair to fix this indignity.
And in case you’re wondering, this rant wasn’t prompted by a failed job application—I run my own business. I’ve only applied for one job since 1995—and I got it. If there’s any motivation at all for this piece, it’s the thought that in a few years’ time I might want a job as a greeter in the evil empire, and I’d hate the thought of dying without finding out if I got the job!
(If this annoys you too, please share. If you like my writing generally, please share. If you disagree with my point, please tell me… and share.)