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(If this annoys you too, please share. If you like my writing generally, please share.)<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s piece is a rant. By nature, I\u2019m a ranty sort of person, so writing a rant should be easy\u2014all I need is a topic, and the title of this piece should give you a clue what it is.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m old enough to have received employment rejection letters in the mail. My first such letter was from the BBC\u2014I wanted to be a production technician, but they didn\u2019t see me in their future. Since then, I\u2019ve had very few. I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve had more acceptance letters than rejections.<\/p>\n
But at some point (I don\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n
Whatever the reason, it must have been a compelling one, because \u201ceverybody\u201d (the quotes connote liberal interpretation of the word) started doing it.<\/p>\n
This was in the days before ubiquitous email and such. Back then, anything was possible on a computer\u2014it 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\u2026) Nowadays, provided you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
We also have application development platforms that enable programmers (and wannabes) to churn out basic apps within hours if not minutes.<\/p>\n
And we have phones that are more powerful computers than the ones I started work on. Heck, even the microwave oven\u2019s processor has more power\u2014a Univac 9400 wasn\u2019t capable of monitoring how warm my leftover takeaway was and alerting me when it\u2019s ready!<\/p>\n
So why in the name of all that is good hasn\u2019t someone put an app on the market that will collect email addresses of applicants and notify them semi-automatically when they\u2019re out of the running for a job?<\/p>\n
Or perhaps the apps are out there, but organizations have decided they prefer their current modus operandi<\/em>? (Someone, please tell me\u2026)<\/p>\n I think that it\u2019s one of the more heartless and demoralizing features of the whole employment-seeking process\/industry that the hirer doesn\u2019t have the decency to let people off the hook. It\u2019s bad enough to get a rejection, but not knowing is worse\u2014that comes over as indifference, and indifference hurts: ask anyone who, as a kid, threw a hissy fit in order to get some kind of<\/em> attention from its parent.<\/p>\n It\u2019s left to the applicants to guess when the hiring process has completed its cycle and assume the job isn\u2019t theirs. This wait time could vary from days to weeks, and for some positions and some organizations, months.<\/p>\n The automation of rejection notices should be easy to design and code. If you\u2019re a developer with an entrepreneurial streak in you, feel free to run with the following \u201cfag packet spec\u201d. (an IT term from the UK in the 1970s and 80s.)<\/p>\n 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\u2019s the simplest thing in the world to store contact info for every applicant against a posting number\u2014I wouldn\u2019t even dignify the design with the title \u201cdatabase\u201d although that\u2019s how it would be implemented. During the resum\u00e9 reviewing\/vetting\/weeding\/culling process, the reviewer can assign a score or colour or emoji or Simpsons character or whatever to each applicant\u2014or for today\u2019s managers they could swipe right, left or down for \u201cyes\u201d, \u201cno\u201d and \u201cmaybe\u201d\u2014and 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 \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cmaybe\u201d applicants can be auto-notified. Doubtless there are refinement opportunities\u2014perhaps a choice of verbiage in the rejection letter based on how unsuitable the candidate was.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to design and code, and represents almost zero additional effort to operate: I defy anyone to tell me otherwise.<\/p>\n It\u2019s bad manners to ignore people, and that\u2019s what the current process does\u2014ignore people. People seeking employment\u2014especially those who are applying whilst unemployed\u2014are in a period of uncertainty in their lives. If they\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n The technology is there. With middle management becoming increasingly populated with millennials, I cannot believe that the willingness isn\u2019t there. All it takes is someone with an app and a marketing flair to fix this indignity.<\/p>\n And in case you\u2019re wondering, this rant wasn\u2019t prompted by a failed job application\u2014I run my own business. I\u2019ve only applied for one job since 1995\u2014and I got it. If there\u2019s any motivation at all for this piece, it\u2019s the thought that in a few years\u2019 time I might want a job as a greeter in the evil empire, and I\u2019d hate the thought of dying without finding out if I got the job!<\/p>\n (If this annoys you too, please share. If you like my writing generally, please share. If you disagree with my point, please tell me<\/strong><\/em>… and share.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (If this annoys you too, please share. If you like my writing generally, please share.) This week\u2019s piece is a rant. By nature, I\u2019m a ranty sort of person, so writing a rant should be easy\u2014all I need is a topic, and the title of this piece should give you a clue what it is. I\u2019m old enough to have… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[603,604,601,602],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rant","tag-ignorance","tag-indifference","tag-rejection-letter","tag-rudeness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}