Suppose you interview with a firm, make it through several rounds of screenings and discussions, and ultimately receive an offer. After some difficult decision making, you conclude that while there is a lot that the position and company have to offer, for various reasons it's just not the right position for you. How would you let the employer know?
Most likely, you would do the professional thing and contact the employer directly. You would thank them for the opportunity, mention how much you enjoyed talking with everyone, but that for various reasons - some of which you might relate, others which you might not - you felt it was necessary to decline the position. That would be the professional approach.
BUT if you're an employer and you have two finalists for a position, you apparently might consider it professional to let the runner-up learn his/her fate through an automated response like this one:
From: "xxx.yyyyyy@zzzz.com"
To: yourname@yahoo.com
Sent: Thu, September 9, 2010 3:31:12 PM
Subject: Update on resume submittal for Program Manager
This is an automatic notification sent to inform you that your status in our database has changed for the following position: Program Manager.
On behalf of all of us at [COMPANY], thank you for the interest that you expressed in our Program Manager position. Upon careful consideration, although your qualifications are excellent, they do not fully match our needs for this particular position. I am confident, however, that you will be a valuable addition to any company who can put your talents and professionalism to work for them. We will keep your resume on file for future reference.
Thanks again for your interest and the time you spent with us.
In case you're wondering, the above is an actual rejection I received this week after being considered a finalist for a position. (And yes, the former example was how I declined a position I received an offer for.) I spoke with four people at the second company, including a vice-president, and even had a face-to-face meeting with a senior office holder in my area. I presented not only a resume but a slide deck outlining how my skills and abilities matched the qualifications for the position, a one-page summary of my achievements that related to the type of work the company did, and even completed writing and editing tests to show my abilities. At each level, I made a point of saying how interested I was in the opportunity and how happy I would be to move ahead with the process. One would think after so much honest effort that the company, if it decided to go with another candidate for whatever reason(s), would at least have had the courtesy to call and tell me the decision (or at least perhaps send some kind of personalized correspondence) vs. letting me "discover" I had been passed over via an automatically generated message more suitable for initial applicant denials rather than finalists.
But that, apparently, would be a mistaken perception.
Now, to be fair, the company's officials apologized profusely for the way I was advised of their decision. (One fellow even assured me it was improper and that he was "escalating" the issue to ensure it would not be repeated.) But I have to confess that, once again, I found it disheartening not so much that I was turned down for yet another position (although that certainly was depressing) but that the level of professionalism, commitment, and respect I showed a potential employer was once again not reciprocated. Instead, I got yet another lesson about why it is so difficult to be polite and take the high road during the job search when so many around you seem all too ready to go low.
In a sense, it bears repeating once again: If companies want to complain about the lack of professionalism in their applicant pools, they might do well to examine how they treat their candidates. The results might be as surprising as they are enlightening.
Is this better or worse than when companies don't reply to you AT ALL?
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