Recently, my company put a job posting out on Monster.com. We’ve made our decision about who to hire, and I’ve got the lovely job of writing the rejection letters. One will, of course go to everyone we interviewed. My question is, should I send one to everyone who sent in a resume through Monster? Some of these people were completely unsuited for the job, with no experience in the areas we said were required. When I’ve looked for jobs, I haven’t necessarily expected rejection letters from jobs I applied for on-line, but I did them when I got them.
What do you folks think? Should I make a note of every application we received through Monster and send out rejection letters to all of them, or only those we contacted after we received their resumes?
I’d send out letters only to those you contacted. I recently concluded my new job hunt (congratulations me!), and as an applicant, I just assume that they don’t want me if I don’t hear anything from a company I’ve sent my resume too. If they’ve contacted me in return, however, I would expect something telling me that the position has been filled and such.
Monster sends an acknowledgement to the applicant when they submit their resume that “the company will be in touch if they’re interested,” so I say you don’t have to. Let me put it this way: I didn’t. People I interviewed, yes; people who applied via snail mail, yes; people who applied through Monster (and they were legion), no.
When I’ve been involved in job searches at several different companies, we only sent rejection letters to interviewees, and to applicants who were motivated enough to contact us in addition to the cover-letter-and-resume.
Basically, if we called them, or if they called us, we responded. If all we had was that initial letter as contact, we let them figure it out on their own.
I agree that it’s only really necessary to send rejection letters to those people your company has contacted. Unless you have every applicant’s email address in a format that would make it so easy to send out an emailed form rejection letter that you might as well do it as not. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother. Most people probably aren’t expecting it, especially since so many companies aren’t even considerate enough to let people know they’ve been rejected for a job even if they have contacted them. It’s good to know your company isn’t like that.
I would not expect to hear from a company that I applied to through Monster (or any other system like that). I would only want to hear from them if it was a company I had direct contact with.
Look at it this way: when I was in the job market, I’d send out resumes to as many jobs as I could, even if they weren’t great prospects. I’d send at least a few a day, sometimes as many as 10 (or more, depending on what I found). I wouldn’t want to hear from each and every one that I wasn’t going to be hired. I figured if I didn’t hear from them within a few days, I wasn’t what they were looking for.
What’s expected and what will put you up a couple notches as a company are two different things. I was unemployed for 3 months and sent out approximately 100 resumes. I got exactly 1 “fuckyouverymuch” letter. I’ve come to expect that you simply don’t hear back from most companies, even though you’ve sent them a customized resume and personalized letter, highlighting any research you may have done on the company (yeah…I’m bittah…). You will make a poor, unemployed job hunter’s day if you actually acknowledge his efforts. Of course, time is money. If your boss isn’t willing to pay for the time it takes to prepare the acknowledgement, there’s not much you can do.