Responses (or lack of)

Tabatha_Kitten

jonnygee2 wrote: »

Problem is, when you start sending 'thanks but no thanks' emails, people start replying to them (can I have some feedback? Is it because of my Visa? What else is coming up? etc). You can end up with hundreds of concurrent conversations that take up all of your time. Not replying is safer.

Appreciate that it's not great for external communication. Applicants are often also customers or work at related businesses. Tricky, but I still sympathise with those who choose the silence approach.

Totally agree with Jonny. I recruited for a small business and replied to all applicants because I felt it was the right thing to do and what I would have wanted if I was the applicant.
I sent a polite "thanks but no thanks'" email is to those who didn't fit the profile but was met with a number of questions and some abuse. Not replying is safer.

Dakta

Tabatha_Kitten wrote: »

Totally agree with Jonny. I recruited for a small business and replied to all applicants because I felt it was the right thing to do and what I would have wanted if I was the applicant.
I sent a polite "thanks but no thanks'" email is to those who didn't fit the profile but was met with a number of questions and some abuse. Not replying is safer.

Thanks for this post. again it's another angle and I was interested in reading this side of it.

it doesn't surprise me much that you get the odd rude or abusive client (who doesn't in business) - was this quite common?

Tabatha_Kitten

Dakta wrote: »

Thanks for this post. again it's another angle and I was interested in reading this side of it.

it doesn't surprise me much that you get the odd rude or abusive client (who doesn't in business) - was this quite common?

Just my opinion from a (very) small business point of view.

Couldn't possibly comment on protocol in the Corporate world as I thank my lucky stars on a daily basis Im no longer part of it.

TBagpuss

I think it is very common.
I'm (one of the ) owners of a small business and we do try to respond.
However, I think it is pretty common not to.

I do think some of it is down to volume of applications.
I know when I was job hunting some years back, one of the people I hd an interview with mntioned that they had had over 200 applications for a single post. They were a small company and I undersatand that it would have been a huge task for them to send out individual responses to that volume of applicants.

I think therules for those claiming job seekers benefits have added to the problem, as it does tendto mean you get a lot of poor quality applications which are wholly inappropriate to the job posted, so dealing with applications is already time consuming.

I do think that it is polite for organisations to send out a response, even if it is generic one line e-mail to say you have not ben sucessful this time, but I understand why a lot of places don't.

eamon

I think its bad manners and exploitative of recruiters and employers to not respond especially when there are cheap and quick methods for doing so.


1. Stick a few lines in the job advert, closing date and stick a time limit for any contact from them, after that any applicants not at the next stage will know that its not them.


2. As others have said if its electronic job recruitment a "No Reply" email is perfect.


But I have reserved a place in Hell for no response if you have attended an interview and then heard nothing.

Doshwaster

Tabatha_Kitten wrote: »

Totally agree with Jonny. I recruited for a small business and replied to all applicants because I felt it was the right thing to do and what I would have wanted if I was the applicant.
I sent a polite "thanks but no thanks'" email is to those who didn't fit the profile but was met with a number of questions and some abuse. Not replying is safer.

Recruiting for a small business is one thing but once you get to large enterprises which have hundreds of vacancies at anyone time while at the same time HR departments are continually being cut back and much of the recruitment process is now outsourced which don't care about those who aren't offered positions.

[Deleted User]

TBagpuss wrote: »

I think it is very common.
I'm (one of the ) owners of a small business and we do try to respond.
However, I think it is pretty common not to.

I do think some of it is down to volume of applications.
I know when I was job hunting some years back, one of the people I hd an interview with mntioned that they had had over 200 applications for a single post. They were a small company and I undersatand that it would have been a huge task for them to send out individual responses to that volume of applicants.

I think therules for those claiming job seekers benefits have added to the problem, as it does tendto mean you get a lot of poor quality applications which are wholly inappropriate to the job posted, so dealing with applications is already time consuming.

I do think that it is polite for organisations to send out a response, even if it is generic one line e-mail to say you have not ben sucessful this time, but I understand why a lot of places don't.

The comment about the applications from individuals that are just applying to say they have applied for a certain number of jobs is a good comment, as I reckon this happens a lot.

I'm curious to know though, if you compared companies or businesses that recruit by asking for a CV over businesses that ask you to complete a lengthy 16 page application form, whether they get many inappropriate and applications that are just individuals who are sending for the sake of it because I would imagine the 16 page application form would deter this and only bring in interested parties.

Savvy_Sue

jonnygee2 wrote: »

Problem is, when you start sending 'thanks but no thanks' emails, people start replying to them (can I have some feedback? Is it because of my Visa? What else is coming up? etc). You can end up with hundreds of concurrent conversations that take up all of your time. Not replying is safer.

Appreciate that it's not great for external communication. Applicants are often also customers or work at related businesses. Tricky, but I still sympathise with those who choose the silence approach.

Our approach - small charity - is to send brief rejections with 'sorry but we can't provide feedback, lots of applicants, some of them very strong' to those who don't make it to interview. Doesn't stop people asking ...

Then post-interview we do give feedback, sometimes by phone, it would worry me to have to do that (I'd prefer a 'sorry' email with brief feedback). But we don't always do that immediately for anyone we'd be prepared to appoint: we wait for the first choice to say 'yes' and only send to those we wouldn't be prepared to appoint.

MarkN88 wrote: »

The comment about the applications from individuals that are just applying to say they have applied for a certain number of jobs is a good comment, as I reckon this happens a lot.

And they can usually be spotted fairly rapidly ... it's the reason we stopped advertising at the Job Centre. For one thing you have to jump through So Many Hoops to get the advert approved, and then you get multiple unsuitable applications. NOT advertising there helps, but doesn't rule out the 'random' applications completely.

MarkN88 wrote: »

I'm curious to know though, if you compared companies or businesses that recruit by asking for a CV over businesses that ask you to complete a lengthy 16 page application form, whether they get many inappropriate and applications that are just individuals who are sending for the sake of it because I would imagine the 16 page application form would deter this and only bring in interested parties.

Asking for an application form doesn't rule out people just sending their CVs because we can't possibly MEAN it when we say we want an application form, can we? Plus (at one stage anyway) the Job Centre were providing a 'standard application form' which claimants were completing rather than our own. It was VERY basic ...

Doshwaster

MarkN88 wrote: »

The comment about the applications from individuals that are just applying to say they have applied for a certain number of jobs is a good comment, as I reckon this happens a lot.

I'm curious to know though, if you compared companies or businesses that recruit by asking for a CV over businesses that ask you to complete a lengthy 16 page application form, whether they get many inappropriate and applications that are just individuals who are sending for the sake of it because I would imagine the 16 page application form would deter this and only bring in interested parties.

In addition, these days you don't have to pay for the paper, envelope and stamp in order to apply for job. The cost of emailing a CV with a generic covering letter is effectively zero.

Dakta

It's me again, thanks for the responses some good points made

I had the pleasure of speaking with a relative who actually used to work with HR and associated admin - its a few years ago now so probably a different world but their small department handled 300 staff and it was policy to reply to all applicants.

I am a bit unsure about the workload thing, I know if you're a small company and have one vacancy and you get 200 applicants its an unenviable position to be in! However on the other hand I've worked in a company that had 7 employees, for some reason one dedicated HR person (employee retention problems? haha) yet you ask for a form, or you send an email or ask in person for anything and you had an obligatory 3 day wait for it and thats internal. Took nearly a month for a result of the interview. I used to wonder how the eckers you'd fill your time in that role in a company that size

anywya I digress, I just hate silence, because whilst I think a company's doing an employee a lot of good by considering them, I also realise that a serious applicant actually invests resources equally in the job searching aspect and to have stony silence is. in a way slightly disrespectful.

You can't change the world, and if this is the way the world works now then what can you do, but I notice it
I'm an introvert by nature but the world seems as a whole to be quite reclusive now