Are You More Tactful Than I Am? Or - How Do I Reject People for a Job?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s a little embarrassing to admit that I am no good at being a boss. I hate, with a passion, having to turn people away, fire them, or do any of the negative “boss” things (luckily, this doesn’t happen a lot). So I turn to the Dopers to help me figure out how to handle the most common type of issue that I cower from.

I regularly run ads looking for people with good English skills for my company. The writing involved is fairly low level - nothing fancy, and I prefer to hire inexperienced people to give them a chance to develop some “real world” experience. In my ads, I state that, due to the nature of the position, care should be taken in their enquiry emails to ensure that they are indicative of their abilities - and I flat out state that messages containing SMS speak will simply be ignored. (It’s much easier to be harsh when I haven’t actually dealt with the people yet.)

At any rate, it never fails that I get countless emails from people who claim to have “excellent writting skills” who are “definately intrested in the job”. If it looks like it might have been an honest typo, I tend to go easy and give them a chance to further demonstrate their actual abilities.

If, however, the message is full of glaring, obvious errors, I get stuck.

My current approach? I ignore the email. This is in large part due to the fact that my inbox is constantly overflowing, and I don’t have a lot of time to deal with email that is (and I hate to sound harsh here) inconsequential. But sometimes, people will persist, telling me in increasingly horrible English that they are sure they can do the job.

So how do I handle this? What do I say to people who are certain their skills are up to par, when they really aren’t? I have not yet figured out a tactful way to say “Sorry, but your English sucks!”

Any advice is overwhelmingly welcome. At this point, I’m ready to hire someone whose sole job is to be mean to be people in a nice way.

2

im sorry butt ur not quiet what were looking 4

3

If they Keep pressing for reasons that I think you have to be brutally honest (yet brief) and say something like “I appreciate your tenacity, but I’m afraid your writing skills are not quite to the standard required”. If not, I’d just give them the “We’re sorry, but your application for the job was not successful this time, we wish you every success for the future”

4

My old company used to send out general letters stating: Thank you for your interest in Company X. Unfortunately, we have filled the position with an applicant whose skills and abilities we feel better suit our needs at this time. Good luck in your future endeavors.

That’s it. And if they respond back saying why you can choose to respond or not. But nothing can protect you from the folks who persist in asking, “But whhhhhyyyyyy???”

Upon pre-view, I find that Mangetout’s response is so similar to mine that I can only conclude that he is a genius. However, I find tdn’s much, much more viscerally satisfying…

5

I used to do a lot of hiring and got a lot of people who would call back to know why? why? why? they didn’t get the job. What they were fishing for were specific reasons I didn’t pick them so they could have a chance to counter them.
Instead of giving them the chance I would say the person I chose had more experience and a broader skill set. Period. Or if I hadn’t got someone yet I’d tell them I was looking for someone with more experience and a broader skill set. Period.

6

Ignore the first e-mail. If they persist, then what the others said.

7

U suXX.

(Not you, the applicant) :smiley:

8

If you’ve ignored one email, you can ignore a million. You don’t feel like you have to respond to spam if it contains a compelling story, do you? Of course not. You’re very busy and the delete key is your friend.

If the people actually call you, however, just say that you’ve been bombarded with resumes and you can’t track down each one. If the company had an interest in interviewing you, someone would have called by now.

9

In some cases, they may not be trying to badger you into giving them the job - they may be genuinely interested to know the reason, so that they can focus on improving any weak areas (or, if we’re being cynical, concealing them better) for future applications elsewhere.

10

TellMeI’mNotCrazy, what kind of jobs are you hiring for? Are these people going to be writing things that customers or subscribers see, or just doing inter-office communications?

I’m not trying to tell you to hire any of these people, I’m just curious.

11

It’s usual business practice that persons who apply for a job but aren’t considered for further inquiry should expect no response. If someone is bugging you repeatedly in a short period of time, they’re not just lacking in writing skills, they’re also a bit clueless.

12

I would include something in the ad to the effect that only persons being called in for an interview will receive a response. Then you can delete the crap e-mails guilt free.

13

This is something I have considered, but most of the time the follow ups aren’t “Is this position still available?” or suggesting that they’re curious as to whether they’ve been selected, but truly (bad English omitted) “I know I can do this. Here is a [horrible] sample of my writing. When can I start?”

This is work that customers and clients will most definitely see; excellent English is an unwavering requirement - it’s really THE requirement.
I have considered the canned “Sorry, but the position has been filled” type response, but as suggest by Ravenman (and on preview, RickJay)I will probably continue to ignore most of the emails. I guess I just have to learn to ignore that little voice in my head that swears I am so cruel. I’m such a bleeding heart.

14

I would recommend using an autotext reply. Something along the lines of “I am sorry, but based on the writing sample(s) presented, we have no opening for a person of your caliber. Thank you for your interest. Do not reply to this email.” It would be concise and as autotext, save you time.

Personally, I never had a problem telling people flat-out why they weren’t going to be considered for hire – I once had a moron apply for a dispatcher position with a trucking company I managed not able to pick out Michigan on a map. A map that was LABELED. Yes, that was part of my interview process. I finished the interview and she asked when I would be making a decision, I told her, “you will not be considered for this job. We require the ability to read maps and give directions and/or route the trucks based on that ability. Michigan is a pretty big state, and, being shaped like a mittened hand, usually the only one people can easily pick out on a map. Your inability to find Michigan on a map where the states are clearly labeled tells me that you would require more training than I have budgeted for this position. Good luck in your job search.”

The reason I had to resort to that type interview process was that the owner had hired a cute girl for the dispatcher position. When she did the route for a truck that was supposed to go to AL, GA, LA, and MS, she instead routed them from AL to KY to LA to WA. I should point out that we didn’t go to WA, I have no idea where she got the addresses that she had routed the driver to, and yes it was caught before the driver left for his route, but it also created a situation where I worked 20 hours straight fixing routes in order for the drivers to leave on time.

All it takes is affecting your own personal life once in a major way to learn how to reject someone without guilt or other similar afflictions!

15

The least confrontational way is to never answer, and if they call back say it’s a long process and you’ll let them know if you want them to interview. Repeat as needed.
This is probably the most common response any applicant gets, so they won’t get too excited when you do it.

16

TellMeI’mNotCrazy, check your private messages please!

17

My coworker (an attorney, no less) has started sending e-mails like this. I almost missed an important judicial decision a few weeks ago because it didn’t occur to me that “intresting case 4 u” was an e-mail that I should read immediately.

I understand that you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, TellMeI’mNotCrazy, because I’m the same way. I think the best course of action is to ignore any applications and writing samples that aren’t up to par. If an applicant wants to know why he or she didn’t get a response, I’d go with Mangetout’s reply. It’s honest, but polite, and it may get the applicants thinking about how to improve their writing.

18

If you intend to outsource it , we can talk further ! we write very well in this part of the world. :smiley: