Why wasn’t I hired? Dealing with rejection

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Mary Ortega of Wilmington, Del., has been on 40 interviews for marketing and public relations jobs in the last 10 months.

Before interviewing, she always researches the company and the people she’ll be meeting. She dons a nice suit and comfortable high-heeled shoes. She’s also driven from Washington, D.C., to New York on more than one occasion for job interviews.

Even though she has yet to land a gig, that’s not what’s frustrating her most. She’s angry because she rarely gets constructive feedback or even a phone call on why she wasn’t chosen.

Ortega, 43, usually gets a brief e-mail such as this one she received on March 13:

At this time we have decided to move forward with other candidates whose experience more closely matches our requirements.

“No one seems to have the balls to pick up the phone anymore,” she says. “Have we become a passive-aggressive society?”

There’s nothing more frustrating than putting the time and energy into a face-to-face interview, only to get little to no information on why you didn’t get a job. Unfortunately, this is becoming commonplace throughout the work world, as more and more hiring managers opt to ditch civility and do little to follow-up with desperate job applicants.

There’s a host of reasons why.

Companies are so fearful of lawsuits they want to limit the amount of information they give candidates after they’ve decided not to hire them so as not to make a slip and say something that can be taken as discriminatory.

Many human resource personnel and managers are also too busy to take the time to provide a self-help session for job seekers who are looking for advice on what not to do next time.

And still others just don’t want to have to talk to someone they’ve rejected, opting to use e-mail as a safe haven from a rejected candidate’s wrath or disappointment.

No feedback, group rejections
Ryan R. Miner didn't even get an e-mail after he interviewed on Feb. 20 for a scheduler position for a California congressman.

“I interviewed with his chief of staff and it went very smooth,” says Miner, 23, who’s an unpaid intern for a Maryland TV station, WHAG. “She said, ‘When the congressman returns next week, I will sit down with him and go over all applicants, and figure out who we want to talk to next.’”

That was more than a month ago, and Miner hasn’t even gotten a rejection e-mail.

“I would like to know what they thought I could have done better in the interview or did they think I was not qualified,” he says.

Often these rejection e-mails aren’t even personalized.

Recently, social networking group Twitter Inc. interviewed applicants for a business project manager position the firm had open and mistakenly sent out rejection e-mails en masse.

The e-mail went out to more than 180 people, and every recipient could see everyone else’s e-mail address, making it clear that no e-mail was personalized.

The faux pas ended up on the Web site TechCrunch, which included the actual e-mail:

During the course of our recruiting efforts, we come across many fine candidates such as you, and we carefully evaluate each candidate’s background and interests against our projected workloads and staffing needs. Although we are impressed with your background, the hiring committee has decided to move forward with a different candidate.

We will keep your information on file for six months in case future opportunities arise.

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