I strongly agree that better rejection emails would be helpful. A handful of templates would likely suffice. Heck, “rejection email templates” could even be crowdsourced by the EA community, with a Google Doc listing a dozen or more of the most common reasons why application are rejected, and each of those reasons having two or three polite, respectful, professional, firm messages available to plug-and-play. A rejection email for a candidate for the reason of insufficient professional experience from Organization A doesn’t need to be very different than one from Organization B
Last week I applied to a job for which I have several years directly relevant experience, and I received nothing more than an email stating “Thank you very much for your interest… We appreciated the chance to learn more about you and your professional experience. Unfortunately, we won’t be moving forward with your application at this time.” This would have stung a lot less if they had said any of the following:
although you seem to be qualified for this position, we have chosen to move forward with an applicant that has even stronger qualifications.
we want an applicant to start by DATE1, and you indicated that you are not able to start until DATE2.
you had type-os in your resume, and based on that we chose to reject your application.
we would prefer a candidate that has more experience working with X.
we would prefer a candidate that has skill Y.
Z is important to us, and this was not demonstrated by your application materials.
we didn’t see anything in your application to suggest that your commitment to CAUSE meets our expectation.
we spoke to some friends of ours about you, and it turns that everyone we spoke to thinks that you suck and you be a horrible addition to our team.[1]
This one is a joke, but only somewhat. Sometimes I think that maybe this is what happens. Considering the level of transparency there is in the process, for all I know this is what happens.
I really like the idea of crowdsourcing. In conjunction with everything you said above, I’ve seen a lot of rejections that seem to be written by someone who seems very uncomfortable with the idea of rejection and/or isn’t imagining what it’s like to be on the receiving end.
I think crowdsourcing could give a distance that allows analysis for rejection letters that they’re rarely written with—e.g., think about what impact it will have on EA, think about what impact it’ll have on the recipient.
I strongly agree that better rejection emails would be helpful. A handful of templates would likely suffice. Heck, “rejection email templates” could even be crowdsourced by the EA community, with a Google Doc listing a dozen or more of the most common reasons why application are rejected, and each of those reasons having two or three polite, respectful, professional, firm messages available to plug-and-play. A rejection email for a candidate for the reason of insufficient professional experience from Organization A doesn’t need to be very different than one from Organization B
Last week I applied to a job for which I have several years directly relevant experience, and I received nothing more than an email stating “Thank you very much for your interest… We appreciated the chance to learn more about you and your professional experience. Unfortunately, we won’t be moving forward with your application at this time.” This would have stung a lot less if they had said any of the following:
although you seem to be qualified for this position, we have chosen to move forward with an applicant that has even stronger qualifications.
we want an applicant to start by DATE1, and you indicated that you are not able to start until DATE2.
you had type-os in your resume, and based on that we chose to reject your application.
we would prefer a candidate that has more experience working with X.
we would prefer a candidate that has skill Y.
Z is important to us, and this was not demonstrated by your application materials.
we didn’t see anything in your application to suggest that your commitment to CAUSE meets our expectation.
we spoke to some friends of ours about you, and it turns that everyone we spoke to thinks that you suck and you be a horrible addition to our team.[1]
This one is a joke, but only somewhat. Sometimes I think that maybe this is what happens. Considering the level of transparency there is in the process, for all I know this is what happens.
I really like the idea of crowdsourcing. In conjunction with everything you said above, I’ve seen a lot of rejections that seem to be written by someone who seems very uncomfortable with the idea of rejection and/or isn’t imagining what it’s like to be on the receiving end.
I think crowdsourcing could give a distance that allows analysis for rejection letters that they’re rarely written with—e.g., think about what impact it will have on EA, think about what impact it’ll have on the recipient.