Iâm on board with a lot of your emotional care advice, but,,,
Donât reject people immediately after their submission; wait a couple of days. If Alice submits a work trial task and less than 24 hours later you reject her, it feels to her like you barely glanced at her work, even if you spent several hours diligently going over it.
...I feel like your mileage may vary on this one. I donât like being in suspense, and moreover itâs helpful from a planning perspective to know whatâs up sooner rather than later. Iâd say instead that if you want to signal that you spent time with someoneâs application, do it by making sure your rejection is conspicuously specific (i.e. mentions features of the applicant or their submissions, even if only superficially).
I also think you missed an entire third category of reason to want feedback, which is that if I stand no hope of getting job X, no matter how much I improve, I do really want to know that, so I can make choices about how much time to spend trying to get that job or jobs like it. It feels like a kindness to tell me I can do anything I put my mind to, but if itâs not true then youâre just setting me up for more pain in the future. (Similarly, saying âeveryone should apply, even if youâre not sure youâre qualifiedâ sounds like a kindness but does have a downside in terms of increasing the number of unsuccessful applicants; sometimes itâs worth it anyway, but the downside should be acknowledged.)
There is a sort of a trade-off to notifying people immediately or notifying them after a couple of days. My best guess is that it generally wonât make a difference for someoneâs planning to be rejected from a job application in less than 24 hours or to be rejected within a few days. But there is probably a lot of variation in preferences from one person to another; maybe I am impacted by this more than average. Iâm probably heavily influences by a typical mind fallacy here as well, as I am very sloppily generalizing from my own internal state.
Iâve had a few job applications that I submitted and then got rejected for an hour or two later, and emotionally that felt so much worse. But at the end of the day I think you are right that âyour mileage may vary.â
Iâm on board with a lot of your emotional care advice, but,,,
...I feel like your mileage may vary on this one. I donât like being in suspense, and moreover itâs helpful from a planning perspective to know whatâs up sooner rather than later. Iâd say instead that if you want to signal that you spent time with someoneâs application, do it by making sure your rejection is conspicuously specific (i.e. mentions features of the applicant or their submissions, even if only superficially).
I also think you missed an entire third category of reason to want feedback, which is that if I stand no hope of getting job X, no matter how much I improve, I do really want to know that, so I can make choices about how much time to spend trying to get that job or jobs like it. It feels like a kindness to tell me I can do anything I put my mind to, but if itâs not true then youâre just setting me up for more pain in the future. (Similarly, saying âeveryone should apply, even if youâre not sure youâre qualifiedâ sounds like a kindness but does have a downside in terms of increasing the number of unsuccessful applicants; sometimes itâs worth it anyway, but the downside should be acknowledged.)
There is a sort of a trade-off to notifying people immediately or notifying them after a couple of days. My best guess is that it generally wonât make a difference for someoneâs planning to be rejected from a job application in less than 24 hours or to be rejected within a few days. But there is probably a lot of variation in preferences from one person to another; maybe I am impacted by this more than average. Iâm probably heavily influences by a typical mind fallacy here as well, as I am very sloppily generalizing from my own internal state.
Iâve had a few job applications that I submitted and then got rejected for an hour or two later, and emotionally that felt so much worse. But at the end of the day I think you are right that âyour mileage may vary.â
Good point! I hadnât thought of that, but that would be very helpful feedback to have.