8 ms·
Ask HN: Hiring managers what would it take for you to reply to every applicant?
Anyone who has applied for a job in the last few years knows the routine: take the time to apply to numerous job postings, maybe get an interview or two, but mostly never get a response yay or nay. You might even get a few interviews in, only to never hear another peep.
If an applicant takes the time to apply to your posting, why not give them a follow up regardless?
What would it take?
Disclaimer: I'm building https://www.hireloop.io to hopefully bring communication full-circle. I really want to make this less painful.
- paradox95 10y agoWhat kind of reply would you want? Would a simple "no thanks" be enough? I have been in the situation before where replying to everyone with anything meaningful is simply not feasible. Maybe for a recruiter whose full-time job is that but not for a hiring manager who also has to balance their regular duties as well. I have spent much more time on the applicant side of things than the hirer side so I understand the goal. It can be frustrating to not get anything. If it is a job you really want you may be inclined to hold everything else off until you hear something just on the hope that maybe they haven't gotten to your resume yet. So a little closure would be nice. So maybe a better question for you is what are you trying to accomplish by getting hiring managers to reply to all candidates? Give them closure or provide feedback? If the former than maybe a simple "no thanks" will do. By the way, I am speaking clearly to the scenario where a candidate sends in a resume and doesn't hear anything back. In my opinion, even if the hiring manager or recruiter does a phone call the candidate deserves a clear "no" email at a minimum.
- dvtv75 10y agoA no is always good. In my last 100 or so applications, I've had about three responses (one of them was interviewing).
- deedubaya 10y agoI think a "no thanks" is enough. Would you give every applicant a "no thanks" if it was a simple click of a button? Would that be valuable to you?
- Twisell 10y agoYup because I once applied to a big company and to this day I still don't now if a human was actually involved in any part of the process... Given the company and given the job it's quit possible that the HR people just filtered out the result using standardized fields and never gave an eye at the CV & resume I took 5 hour to write. Months later I learn that they fire half of their HR externals contractors (maybe for the best). So in the end yes, a simple "I read, not interested" would be great. And if applicable a variation that could be "not for this job, but maybe try another one" or even "you need more experience" would actually be even more useful. PS: What I learn though is that for big company hiring process is broken. My best chance of being recruited is to build a great project and communicate about it at my current job (but that's not easy if you are at the bottom of the stack and writing code under copyright...), but now I'm even less tempted to even apply to theses big Co.
- abraae 10y agoDisclaimer: we write recruitment software. Virtually every recruitment tool in existence already does this. Any company that doesn't send a"sorry" email to applicants is either not using any technology at the point of screening (unusual for anyone of any size) or has a screwed up recruitment process (common in large companies). You'll need to find other secret sauce. Your goal could be to find a way to encourage managers/recruiters to provide more genuine feedback. How about tiered responses, and tools to track and prompt when the tiers are not being used correctly?
- T-Winsnes 10y agoAny reply would be good. Even if it's a pre-canned copy/paste. It answers the questions that comes up if you don't hear anything: "did my email not send properly?", "did they miss me?", "are they ignoring me on purpose?" etc. It takes almost no effort, and shows that you care about the people around you. If someone came up to you and asked you in person, would you ignore them and keep walking?
- bostik 10y agoWe respond to all candidates, in all stages. Now to be honest - we use greenhouse, and their tooling for recruitment workflow is not bad. A decision to accept/reject will always trigger an email. Of course we've templated our own custom responses, but editing the outgoing email before sending is also easy enough. As for interview feedback, I personally write my interview notes in such a way that if the candidate asks for more detailed feedback, the notes can be pasted pretty much as-is. When the hiring workflow and candidate communication are intricately linked, things are less likely to fall between the cracks. Everyone feels better.
- nateps 10y agoLever (YC S12) is a modern Talent Acquisition Suite, and we hear from our customers that writing rejection emails is really difficult, especially when you want to leave a good impression. Here are some tips we wrote up: https://www.lever.co/blog/how-to-write-human-rejection-letters https://www.lever.co/blog/how-to-write-human-rejection-lette...
- shin_lao 10y agoTip 3 is really a bad advice. It's not a good idea to say why you rejected the candidate, you have no idea how it could be taken, especially if you are facing a litigious person. Best to write some "you were not an exact match for our needs" reply.
- nateps 10y agoAgree this is definitely true in many cases, especially with applicants. Where it can be OK to give candidates feedback tends to be when you have gotten to later in the process with them and built more of a relationship. The article was meant more for the general case. I totally agree a lot of judgement is needed. Thanks for you feedback on this!
- pytrin 10y ago> If an applicant takes the time to apply to your posting, why not give them a follow up regardless? I'm not a hiring manager, but as the CTO I do review a lot of resumes incoming for technical positions we are hiring for. The vast majority of applicants do not appear to be taking any time at all aside from selecting their resume to upload and clicking submit. It doesn't seem like they even read the job requirements, since 90% of them do not meet the minimal requirements we post. Some of them are not even developers, but they apply for a developer position. If someone does appear to be relevant and did also include a cover letter relevant to the position, I will respond, regardless if they're a fit or not. For me the biggest pain is the sheer amount of irrelevant submissions, which makes you numb after a while. This is why I don't believe in job postings anymore and mostly do headhunting. Hope this helps!
- deedubaya 10y agoThanks for the feedback. When you do hire, how do you collect/manage your applicants?
- pytrin 10y agoWe used to receive inbound from sites like Ziprecruiter and Indeed. Now I'm using the Stackoverflow Talent service to search for applicants that fit our requirements. I don't start conversations with more than 1 or 2 at the same time, so I don't really need an additional tool to manage them.
- deedubaya 10y agoThanks!
- erichurkman 10y agoWhen you get to a certain size, if you've got the right culture, referrals will be a huge stream of applicants. For me, about 80% of our candidates are referrals. I view referral rates as a trailing indicator of culture — if you enjoy working at company X, you'll refer your friends to work there, too. If you hate it or don't believe in its prospects, you won't.
- 6nf 10y agoWe get 200+ responses to most job postings. 90% or more of those are from candidates that just spam every job ad on the internet with their CV even if they live on the other side of the planet. We can't respond to each of those. We will respond to everyone that gets past this first round. And if you get a phone / in person interview we will definitely call you back to say 'no sorry'.
- deedubaya 10y agoIt seems like high volume is a problem. How do you manage your applicants? Would you reply to every applicant if it were just one click? Would that even be valuable to you?
- kriro 10y agoI'd say that you should be able to rifle through 200 responses and sort out the crap and shove them into a folder where they'll get some friendly auto response rather quickly. Even if you go a step further and tag the mails as "not qualified enough" and "doesn't fit the job posting" and have them get different responses based on that it shouldn't take that long. I'd personally consider every unanswered job application bad PR for the company/a mild failure. Takes about a workday if it takes you 2 minutes/application. I'd guess this can be done in <1 minute though but since you probably have to open an attachment for many I think two is the safer assumption (from dealing with a lot of unsolicited mail). Is it really that unreasonable to spend one work day per job posting to presort? The task can be parallelized nicely and even delegated down to interns if you think it's not worth the time of someone in HR (I'd strongly advocate against this).
- SerLava 10y agoI just applied to a remote position posted on HN and some other places. They sent out a mass email about 3-4 days later saying they had 550 applicants they were trying to sort through- so hold tight basically. Now I pretty much know I'll get a mass email "no" if they don't decide to interview me. Which is nice.
- deedubaya 10y agoThat sounds better than most!
- sean_patel 10y ago> Disclaimer: I'm building https://www.hireloop.io https://www.hireloop.io to hopefully bring communication full-circle. I really want to make this less painful. https://www.hireloop.io/how-does-it-work https://www.hireloop.io/how-does-it-work Goes to 403 Forbidden. Atleast put something in there??? 403 Forbidden Code: AccessDenied Message: Access Denied RequestId: 4XMR36267413GRGBC72 HostId: BGu7DieumfZVCvftdpMIhXeFm2Qyyy2TyJ+P9jpQr3csSyYNIZBoGKhush8nMc4rHSj6+HighM=3p- All other pages, including Pricing page, work tho ;) https://www.hireloop.io/#pricing https://www.hireloop.io/#pricing
- adrianmacneil 10y agoPro tip: If you want a reply to your application, try to avoid cold emailing hiring managers your resume. Often my inbox has a lot happening, and I'm not inclined to spend time copying your resume into our hiring software unless there is something spectacular about your email or background. Emailing hiring managers out of the blue also will not help you bypass any steps in the hiring process. By filling out the application form on our website, you load all the information into the form for me, and are guaranteed that a recruiter will follow up on your entry. If you want to send an email to the hiring manager as well to explain why you are so awesome, that's fine, but it's probably not going to help your chances of getting a job any more than just applying.
- madeofpalk 10y agoI landed an interview at a larger tech company overseas by doing a hybrid approach of cold emailing and I'm 90% sure that's the only reason why I got the interview, and then the job. After applying online through the traditional route I searched for the recruiter's email or linkedin and emailed them to 'follow up' on my application. It was this that I got a reply to, not (necessarily) the application through the website.
- alanfranzoni 10y agoWell... the converse is true as well. I've already got a well polished CV (I usually keep the resume mostly identical for my job applications, while I customize a summary header and I write a dedicated cover letter), an updated LinkedIn profile, a website, a blog, a Stack Overflow jobs profile... and I need to enter that information AGAIN in your system, which is possibly slow, hard to use and/or requires registration, just because your process says so? You'd better be a great company to work with and/or pay very high salaries, or you won't get my attention. Today the developer market is largely driven by developers, not by companies; make sure your practices are not driving potential good candidates away from your company!
- antisthenes 10y agoThe only lesson from your post is that your hiring software sucks. Sorry.
- trevyn 10y agoIf this is how you're applying to jobs, you're doing it wrong. Target a small handful of companies strongly relevant to your experience and interests, and start informally chatting with people who work there. Ask about the culture. Get coffee. Ask how they like working there. Talk about what you've been working on that's related. Ask some questions about interesting problems they're trying to solve. Be interested and interesting. Points for going straight to an Eng VP or CTO -- even if they don't have the time to talk to you, they'll pass it to one of their underlings who does, and when your VP/CTO tells you to follow up with someone, you do. The resume should be mostly a formality AFTER they've expressed some interest in your skills and have invited you to formally interview. And if it doesn't pan out, you've already made personal connections with people there. Get coffee again for feedback.
- dimino 10y agoIf you're already employed and looking to change positions, sure. But if you're unemployed, you don't have this luxury.
- ohwello 10y agoI found that a wide funnel was very useful when changing jobs recently. Getting a lot of offers meant that I didn't mind rejection, and didn't feel dependant on or attached to any company in particular. This improved my negotiating power and my decision-making process.
- hbcondo714 10y agoI was recently laid off so I'm on the job hunt. I applied to Snap, Inc and received this response within 2 weeks of applying Dear [First Name], Thank you for your time and interest in a career at Snap Inc. At this time, our team has decided to evaluate other candidates for the [role]. However, we encourage you to apply in the future for positions matching your goals because our needs change frequently. Thanks again! Best wishes, Snap Inc. They must receive an enormous amount of applicants from all over so even though I didn't make it anywhere in the interview process, I'm appreciative of receiving a response and getting closure. When I was employed, our HR department used Monster's ATS. They found it difficult to use and didn't bother to inform candidates of their application status.
- jasoncrawford 10y agoIf I were using a system where rejecting a candidate was a one-click operation, and it also sent them a notification, I would click it. That's what it would take--it would have to be that easy. There are too many resumes. (That's at resume review stage. If a candidate has actually talked to you, including any kind of interview, then they deserve a response, and I do follow up with everyone who gets to that stage.)
- WhiteSource1 10y agoThat works for automated systems, where you get an automated response. But hiring managers are busy, have multiple processes with HR, and with the rise of job sites end up getting hundreds of resumes, most of which are completely irrelevant, since it's so easy to blast our resume across the Internet.
- jasonkester 10y agoAs a hiring manager, your job is finding somebody to hire. And that's it. If you want somebody to critique your cover letter and resume writing skills, interviewing ability, etc. I'm sure you can find somebody to do that. But they will charge you for the service. It seems a bit silly to expect some random company's hiring guy to provide you that service free of charge.
- codingdave 10y ago> I really want to make this less painful. For who? Replying to every applicant, the majority of which are borderline spam, is just extra work with zero added benefit to the business. Even if you make it easy, it is extra work. Not to be heartless, but people might then actually reply to you, and you spend more time dealing with someone you didn't even want to interview in the first place. I get that as an applicant, this sucks. But as a hiring manager? Full communication with every applicant is MORE painful. And that is why they do not do it.
- smoyer 10y agoWe have several people that apply for every job we post (and there are hundreds per year). On top of that we receive resumes that clearly have nothing to do with the position as well as cover letters that have the job title wrong. Some attach these materials without actually filling out the online application. When there's no effort put into applying for our position, I don't see the need to put effort into a reply ... And eventually a flag in our system will send them a generic rejection (approved by legal I'm sure). On the flip side, we're currently looking for a Google-style SET to work on testing Enterprise Java software and have received almost no resumes that fit the position as we envision it ... That's a pretty clear indication that the job description we posted needs work. EDIT: This position is still open ... My email is in my profile if you're interested.
- agrafix 10y agoMany applications that we get do not meet the key requirements from the job posting and are very generic. If the applicant did not put any effort into the application - why should I? Maybe this process can be automated with some ML/NLP to check if the application (a) matches at least SOME requirements and (b) is not too generic but actually hand written to match your posting and company.
- invaliduser 10y agoThis is probably bad practice, and I don't hire much anymore, but when I did, I could usually put the resumes in three slots: 1/ Good match, want to see 2/ Maybe 3/ No I generally give an immediate answer to 1 et 3. 2 are applicants that may do the job, but I am not really convinced, don't seem as great for the job as 1, and want to see them only if nobody in 1 gets the job. Also, 2 is definitely all the applicants that never received any answer from me, because I don't feel like telling them a straight no (in cas I'd need to interview them), and the job process usually takes a very long time. In the end, I either forget/procrastinate/feel like it's been to long to decently answer, so no answer. As I said, I'm not proud of that, I know this is bad and not respectful to applicants, just being honest at how bad I am at the recruitment job.
- rvpolyak 10y agoI received 155 resumes for the last postion I posted it would be too time consuming to reply to every single one. However I always contact all candidates by phone that came in for an interview to let them know we have chosen not to pursue them for the position.