It is a point of professionalism in my department that all candidates receive notification if they are not selected for a job for which they applied.

A personalized letter goes to those who were interviewed in person. An e-mail goes out to everyone else who applied but was not selected for interview.

You would NOT BELIEVE the rude, obnoxious responses that come back to us as a result of not being selected for interview. Just the other day, I had to waste an hour of my time because some moron threatened a lawsuit because they were not selected for an interview! (the candidate did not even bother to send a resume, and only completed a fraction of the application — for a temporary, not even permanent position!)

IMHO, you are darned if you do, and darned if you don’t. I still keep sending them, but sometimes I wonder why I bother. Of course, it certainly enlightens me as to why some of these people are still unemployed!

Have a good weekend…

It is nice that you have the clerking and secretarial skills to use your desktop effectively and to send out friendly notices to unselected candidates. It is also nice that you have the time to do that.

You make the blanket suggestion that if a person doesn’t do these nice little things or interviews too many people, that they should do more screening (interviewing is part of the screening process) and maybe should look at another profession.

There are many types of HR professionals (Generalists, Compensation and Benefits, Selection and Recruiting, Training and Development, etc.) and many varied sets of skills and duties. I didn’t see you even taking into consideration the ROI (Return on investment) for completing these notes for your organization or the RISK ASSESSMENT for possible future litigation by a disgruntled applicant. If you are not in charge of HR at your place of employment, you might sit down with the person who is in charge and discuss these aspects. Perhaps there are things you could be doing that would be considered a higher priority. Be careful, though, with this economy, if it turns out that the company could save money by eliminating your job or combining it with another, you don’t want to be seen doing “busy work,” but making a significant contribution to the organization and the bottom line.

If the world were perfect and I had all the resources I needed, I would certainly apply your suggestion. The world is NOT perfect and I have limited resources. Sending a notice to interviewees informing them they were not selected takes a low priority to other HR activities, and I find that informing them at the time of interview that they would be contacted by a certain date if selected, meets the needs of the applicant and the organization.

And your example for retail about customers leaving if they don’t get an email telling them they were not selected….come on….I can imagine that this would have no significant impact on customers. Sure you may lose some customers because of an emotional response (then be glad you didn’t hire them) and you can be assured if not getting an email would upset them to leave, what else might upset them? No toilet paper in the bathroom, floors not swept, security guard did not greet them with a smile, etc. i would expect that this would be only a small percentage of those you interview. But to put your example into perspective, assume the worst case scenario, if every person you interviewed and did not hire went to do business with a competitor, how many customers are you talking about leaving in a year? What is that compared to your customer base?

Thank your for applying for the (Insert Job Title) position at our company. At this time we would like to inform you that we have selected another candidate for this position.

Again, thank you for your time. Best of luck on your job search.

Some Guy
Recruiter

The above note (or one like it) saved to your desktop and sent out only to candidates who interview… This is too much work? Maybe you should find a new profession. Part of working in HR/Recruiting is having a professional and courteous interface with your customers—your employees and prospective employees. If you can’t take ten minutes to insert a few names and send a few emails you shouldn’t be the person prospective employees come in contact with for your company. God help your company if you work in a retail field–I can only imagine how many bank customers my bank would have lost if we never bothered with a brief follow up email to the people who actually took the time out to come interview with us (no matter how badly they were dressed. Unprofessional dress or a bad interview does not mean its okay to match unprofessionalism).

If you find you are interviewing a huge number of applicants to the point where sending courteous emails takes a huge deal of your time, you probably need to interview less and screen more.

I think this email thing is great. Just because you are in a hiring power position doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a reminder of your ‘professional rudeness.’

I agree, in the most perfect world I would send an email or letter to interviewee’s that were not selected. And yes, it only takes a few minutes to get the address of the interviewee, compose a note, and fire it off to them. I don’t know about you, though, but interviewing and selection are just a part of my job in HR. I am responsible for the safety investigations, grievance investigations, training, policy and procedures, EAP and guidance to supervisors, disciplines and terminations. I get to check things like this blog a couple of times a day when I need to take a break. When I have opennings, I have a rush of applicants and it is not uncommon to fill an entire week with interviews. So those few minutes for 50 interviews turns into a few hours that I don’t have. Once the selections are made, I begin the back ground checks, drug tests, and preparing orientation materials. And you know, that when I do send out emails or a letter, a portion will then call to find out more information and want to get me to reconsider. So there is even more time I will spend that I don’t have. I am an exempt, salaried person working in the nonprofit social services sector. I need to be real with myself to get the critical stuff done in a day or a week.

Toni: You make a big point about candidates taking time out from their schedules. It was then when I realized that some here may be interviewing upper level management and IT positions and may be recruiting from other agencies. So I guess to persuade them to leave their current job to work for you, it is important to follow thru, especially if you plan to try again to get them to come to your agency later. I would imagine that for a postion you might interview 6 candidates? Most of my applicants are unemployed and don’t really have any schedules to speak of to take out from. They are anxious to get a job. They call every day after submitting an application to inquire as to the status (even when posted not to call). Most of my jobs are entry level and part time and I may interview 50 candidates in a week. It’s a cattle call. I agree, that if I had the time, I would send the notes. I also agree that there are situations where it is imperative to make the time (filling key positions).