Basic courtesy is fine. HR can take care of the post card. Do you think courtesy demands more than that? I always get an email thanking me for the interview - I never respond unless I think they have potential and I want to keep the person interested.
Everyone wants the best possible people. Yes there are roles that are filler and you just need a warm body to do basic tasks, but those aren’t the roles I hire for. I can’t remember the last time I hired looking for a candidate that was just okay, middle of the pack.
Ok Bone, I have to ask you this. I work with alot of people with disabilities such as they might not be very smart or hard driven but can do basic tasks like filing, making copies, making coffee, and other basic tasks. Have you ever hired a person for routine tasks that has a disability?
No. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t - but thus far I have primarily hired senior level and above. I have hired a few administrative positions, and from those I still look for the potential that they want more and are willing and interested in taking on greater than their given role.
It can also be an easy way to not say “We don’t like you because you’re a member of a protected class, but we’re just smart enough to know that we can’t not hire a racial minority because they’re a racial minority and expect to not get sued, so we have a nice little fig-leaf that will survive as much of a trial as any prospective employee can afford.”
Everyone pretends it’s a valid reason, nobody feels like they’re being forced to initiate a legal proceeding, everyone avoids the costs of a trial. Nice little polite fiction.
I can tell you right now, the best possible people talk and things like this weigh heavily in their consideration. I’ve spread stories about interviews, both good and bad and I hear other people’s interview stories all the time. One of the interview stories I spread the most is of a company that rejected me but in a way that was so respectful that I encourage anyone I talk to to apply to there.
Many people think they are able to attract the best people but, in reality, what they mean by that is they attract the best of those which they see. They have no idea there’s an entire class of people way above that which they’ve never even seen before because those people don’t even both engage at that calibre.
If I put in a good effort to interview and then you pointedly ignored my email, it would be brought up every time your company came up in conversation with my friends and it would be a big black mark on your reputation when they later decided where to apply to.
The OP hasn’t been back since early yesterday morning, but this is for him (her?). Hiring teams look for three basic things: can you do the job?, will you do the job?, and will you fit in?
The first speaks to your skills and experience, and it sounds like you’re qualified. The second speaks to factors like your motivation, eagerness, attitude and integrity. Hard to tell how you did here. How do you think you did here? And the third speaks to your personality and style and communication. The question for you is, did you think the companies (and people you met) were a good fit for you? Interviews are an opportunity for you to interview them, to find out if the company is a place you want to be with for the foreseeable future. Remember that in the interview, you want to check them out.
You may already be doing this, hard to tell. Good luck in your search.
My company uses “cultural fit” in much the same way that **llcoolbj77 **describes. We are not going to hire any prima donnas, or people who take things personally, or people who can’t have a spirited debate about a project or process without getting angry, or someone who considers certain work “beneath” them. If an applicant is not a self-starter and can’t dig around in data and documentation, if s/he needs hand-holding, if s/he has to check everything they do with someone, that applicant will not do well here.
No one cares what kind of haircut someone has, how old or young they are, what kind of clothes they wear. We don’t care if they have a Mohawk or a bone through their nose. We want to know:
[ol]
[li]does the applicant have the education and experience, [/li][li]are they passionate about data analytics in healthcare (if they aren’t, much of this work is going to be tedious), [/li][li]do we think we can work with you day in and day out? [/li][/ol]
If an applicant has gotten to the interview, we are comfortable about the first item. In the interview, we’re looking at items two and three, above.
Is there a way to search jobs by culture? E.g. is there a way to search for “administrative assistant jobs with a party culture”, “IT helpdesk jobs with a sports culture”, or “nurse jobs with a gossip culture”?
I’ve had interviews where I thought the process was on the level and those in which I thought it was a joke. Most of the time everyone in the building knows who will get the job before it’s posted, yet people go through the process. I think it’d save time if in such cases the interview should be one question: “what is your name?” and the one who gets it right gets the job.
Our organization allows you to get a critique of the interview. I only did this once, even though I heard from a co-worker that I wasn’t going to be selected before the interview. The big boss asked my co-worker who should get it, he said me, and the boss shook his head saying, “Nah”.
You can ask for a critique, you can ask for a reason, but it won’t do any good. Best you can do is suck it up and try again elsewhere.
This is key, at least for professional-level positions. The interview is not to establish that you have the education and/or experience for the position; that’s already been established in the screening process. The interview is entirely to evaluate the candidate’s personality.
I’ve participated in quite a few interview processes over the years, and have again and again argued against candidates because they would have been a poor fit, personality-wise. Regardless of their competence. I can teach a new hire what we need them to know; I can’t change their personality. I’d far rather hire someone that wasn’t top-of-their-class in academics, if their personality is a better fit.
We’ve rejected applicants because they came across as “creepy” to the interviewers, following a hire where they decided to ignore everyones’ impression of the candidate, to our later regret. As I’m often involved in interviewing for engineering positions, this actually comes up quite a bit. I might describe the rejection as “poor fit for the company culture”, but I think HR simply lets interviewees know we chose another applicant but we’ll keep their resume on file for 6 months.
Of course the candidate isn’t owed anything, but they can certainly ask (politely)
Imagine this conversation… Employer: You didn’t get the job. Candidate: OK. I understand I’m not in consideration. Thank you for taking the time to follow up and let me know, and I do appreciate that.
I’m sure you’re busy, but if you have any time at all to pass on any feedback you have from your perspective on either my skills or suitability for the position or my interview performance, or how otherwise I could do better in my future job search, I would definitely appreciate the benefit of your advice.
I worked for one company where in the orientation we were told that people who loved the military would be happy there. One person had a carpool and left at 6 pm - the normal quitting time. It went very badly for him since it was understood that we were supposed to stay until 9 even if nothing got done.
I left there and went to a company in the same industry where management really meant having a good work/life balance. Culture is real, and is not just an excuse to discriminate.
The time to tell people that is during the interview/hiring process, not in orientation. What’s the point of hiring someone who isn’t willing or able to stay every night until 9? You’ll just have to replace him anyway.
Sure, and we do. But we also thoroughly interview candidates to get a feeling for fit. I interviewed with the team, then the medical director, and then two other people in management positions, so it’s not all about the skillset.
Lightray, we’ve also rejected candidates for being “creepy” or “off”. Someone might look good on paper but have a really weird vibe. If the entire team feels it, we don’t move forward.
I like trying to respond with a positive spin, but you still shouldn’t ask why. They aren’t your career counselor. People don’t like to give criticism. Think about if you were doing home renovations and getting estimates from several people. What would you think if one of the rejected handymen called you to ask why you didn’t pick him and what could he do better? Most likely that’s not going to make you think more negatively of him and be less likely to hire him in the future.
Ooops. Meant to say “Most likely that’s going to make you think more negatively of him…”
As to the OP, positions in IT and copier repair take a lot of self-motivation, direction, and problem solving skills. They may have wanted someone who they knew would be able to look at a problem and figure out how to fix it. It doesn’t mean they automatically know how to fix every problem. Rather, it means they can look at a problem and take reasonable, logical steps to determine the cause of the problem and how to fix it. If you want to continue looking in those fields, be sure you highlight your skills in being an independent problem solver.
