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I made a website to share rejection letters
Hi HN,
First time posting on Show HN. Spent two weeks over Christmas and new years to make this fun little full stack web app built with Next.js and Supabase PostgreSQL, hosted on Netlify
open to feedback and hope you enjoy it!
- frantic2821 3y agoit would be great if you could link it to rejection letters from past years and show where they are now? those posts exist out there right?
- baq 3y agoGreat way to stop companies from sending you even that, unfortunately :/
- imiric 3y agoExactly. I'm usually a proponent of informing candidates why they were rejected, if they went through at least a couple of interview rounds. I think it's the least a company can do after they invested the time and effort to apply and go through the interviews. But sites like this make this hard to justify. Most of the ones I saw on the front page are standard generic responses. If that's what it takes to get on rejectedagain.lol then you're encouraging companies to just ghost you instead.
- bitwize 3y agoDon't tip your hand. First of all, it opens up the possibility of a conversation, and disgruntled rejectees are not something you want to be dealing with. Once they're rejected, that's it. They're out of contention and should have no further contact with your team/division/company. Secondly, it could expose you to liability. And yes, ghosting is very much on the table and likely to become more popular with time. There's a reason why the hiring process is enshittified: it helps protect the organization.
- imiric 3y agoEh, sure. So in that sense, professional courtesy is only important while there's a potential interest in establishing a relationship. I disagree. A rejection doesn't need to be a reason to burn bridges. The candidate could be rejected for any reason, even when it's out of their control. By not having the decency to inform them of the rejection, you're effectively closing the door on them applying ever again. And word goes around about companies with shitty hiring practices, so it's probably not in the company's best long-term interest to treat rejected candidates unprofessionally. I don't see anything wrong with going beyond the generic rejection letter and being honest about why they were rejected. This doesn't mean you need to be negative or go into too much detail, but most decent people would appreciate the honesty. Those who don't, and start arguing, or post that kind of rejection on Reddit or a .lol site are just boosting the signal of why they indeed shouldn't have been hired. And the same goes for the people who ridicule such companies. Being unprofessional and shitty is worthy of ridicule. Not honesty and transparency.
- otteromkram 3y agoEh, unless I've interviewed, it's almost "out of sight, out of mind." The generic rejection letter over four months later is just callousness.
- shusaku 3y agoCome to our headquarters on the fifth of march. If you see a yellow handkerchief, it means we want you.
- codetrotter 3y agoIf there is no yellow handkerchief, it might be that we just forgot. In which case, please pitch a tent outside for the following 14 business days, not counting Wednesdays in odd number weeks. Furthermore, please get up before the roosters are crowing and the cows are spinning circles in the pastures, as on certain days (we won’t tell you which), the handkerchiefs may be put up before this time but then promptly taken down again at such time. Thank you for your cooperation, and we look forward to working with you if and when it turns out that you have had the great privilege of getting to be employed by us. We reserve the right to let you go at any moment with or without notice, even when that moment comes before the moment at which you have been notified of employment.
- V-eHGsd_ 3y agoI once got a rejection letter from a recruiter, complete with the boilerplate, "we'll keep you in mind for future positions" from a noreply@ email address.
- napolux 3y agooof
- Tommah 3y agoPoor old Lenore "Nore" Ply is wondering why nobody ever emails her.
- LeafItAlone 3y agoWhat am I missing is wrong with that?
- evilduck 3y agoThey expect it to be from a company that’s better at masquerading that their email is sent from a real human’s inbox instead of lumped in with the rest of their automated emails default config values.
- LeafItAlone 3y agoJust because a message is sent from a noreply doesn’t mean it wasn’t manually composed and sent. I would expect rejection letters to come from such an address even if they are manually typed up.
- V-eHGsd_ 3y agowhy would you expect that? I've been rejected from a few jobs that I've applied to at this point. honestly, this was the only time I can remember that it was an email, let alone an email from a no-reply address. every other time I've been passed on after interviews, the recruiter at least had the decency to call and tell me over the phone.
- smallbluedot 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- beanjuiceII 3y agoI made a site of my rejected letters, unfortunately the body tags are empty flexes
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- politician 3y agoThe worst are the small companies who say that they will keep your resume “on file”. Has that ever worked out for anyone?
- datadrivenangel 3y agoFor my current job, I almost had an issue during the interview process because the recruiter had my old resume that was still in the system from the first time I was referred three years ago.
- SteveDR 3y agoI applied to some internships to 2 huge consulting firms everyone knows, got denied, and I wasn’t able to fill out able to apply to full time roles with the same email address a year later
- ska 3y agoFor what it's worth, I have hired people this way in the past. I know multiple people who keep a "good candidates" file of some sort. Agree sometimes it may be meaningless boilerplate.
- eddd-ddde 3y agoIt actually worked for me. I applied for a position a while ago, no interview. Then one year later a recruiter from the company reached out to me saying I should apply for a new position. So I did, and I got an internship that way!
- bagels 3y agoYes. I got rejected, and then a couple months later they figured out that the role they were trying to fill wasn't actually what they were looking for. I was hired, stayed for 4 years, and built out the team. It was a success.
- jorts 3y agoI've had scenarios where one candidate ticks all the boxes and we hire them, and we have another great candidate who was earlier in the hiring funnel that I stay in touch with even if we don't have an open requisition at the time. I've gone on to hire folks months later if they're still open to looking at opportunities.
- the_gastropod 3y agoIt's funny just how terribly many of these are written. That Palantir example has got to be my favorite. Check out this hum-dinger of a sentence: > It was a pleasure to learn more about your skills and accomplishments; however, I'm afraid that after careful consideration, we regret to inform you that we do not have any positions that are a fit for your experience and skills at this time.
- gnicholas 3y agoI was rejected by Palantir years ago. The recruiter called and said that I wasn't technical enough. I replied that none of my interviewers asked me a single technical question (I was interviewing to be a lawyer there). The recruiter was slightly embarrassed and said she'd follow up after investigating. Of course, I never heard back.
- atkailash 3y agoI had similar. Was told I didn’t have enough troubleshooting experience when my previous 4 jobs involved it centrally or exclusively, and no questions were asked about my process when troubleshooting.
- neilv 3y agoWell before Snowden, there was a techie joke: "Want to work for the NSA? Call your mom and tell her." I guess Palantir doesn't have the same reputation for capability.
- jeron 3y agothe palantir one was one I received, I successfully solved the hackerrank but still got rejected :(
- gnicholas 3y agoIt wasn't the intended purpose, but I might consult this site before sending a rejection letter. Some of the language used is awful, of course, but some of it is fine.
- jtwaleson 3y agoIndeed. I’ve always tried to send decent rejection letters but doing it honestly takes so much effort. Sometimes it just got to the bottom of my to-do list to die. You want to give constructive feedback to someone you met briefly and sometimes the reasons are really not kind: “we don’t think you are smart enough”, “we didn’t like you”, “having seen your blog we are worried you are not able to be professional enough”. This is true feedback a manager might have, or the team has voiced. For most people sending that verbatim is scary as hell. Wording it respectfully but also staying honest takes a lot of mental energy and is still scary. Over the years you build some muscle memory and thicker skin for it, but some copy paste templates of respectfully written rejection letters would be a great resource for hiring managers.
- hasty_pudding 3y agoThat's really funny. I had the exact same idea!!! Glad somebody made it happen. the mobile display needs work ;)
- jeron 3y agohmm mobile is working alright for me - what does it look like for you?
- BugsJustFindMe 3y agoI note that there's zero attempt to verify that any of the messages actually came from the companies they purport to have come from. I dislike corpos as much as the next guy, but there's no reason to treat these as anything other than completely made up by randos on the internet. Personally I'd anticipate a string of defamation lawsuits from something like this. And dick pics. I'm actually surprised that so far there's only a bunch of garbage and not dick pics.
- hashtag-til 3y agoDon’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. These e-mails are all templated waffle, crafted to avoid legal liability. Don’t ever take it personally. I find it very entertaining to read the real and the fake ones.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lifestyleguru 3y agoHad similar idea, e.g. identifying typical sections of a rejection letter and creating random letter from the hundreds of them I have received. Gave up the idea. Nobody cares about your bitterness. It's impersonate, someone found your CV repulsive and simply clicked send button.
- byt3blight 3y agoThe Deloitte one is written quite well. "We have determined that our position isn't ideally suited to your talents...."
- ushakov 3y agoThat’s what I told my past co-founder. It’s true in a sense
- idrios 3y agoThe best rejection letter I ever got was a personal note from the person hiring, saying "You were good, but we just needed someone who is stronger with [x], [y], and [z]". It felt actionable because it told me things I could improve on. Aside from that one, the rejections that were the least self-esteem-damaging were ones that said "we've decided not to fill the position". Even if not true, it's a good "it's not you it's me" type of rejection.
- hashtag-til 3y agoAn actionable feedback is quite good. To be fair, when recruiting we usually pass the feedback to those nice HR folks, who basically throw them away.
- drawnwren 3y agoI wonder how much of this is just their salary depending on the hiring market being as inefficient as possible. Seems like clear communication could go a long way to reducing HR workloads.
- blahyawnblah 3y agoA lot of companies won't say why for fear of litigation
- tqi 3y agoYeah, I think the risk is that there is a larger surface area for recruiters or hiring managers to do it badly: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/zenni-49ers-glasses-discrimination-lawsuit-18613322.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/zenni-49ers-glasses-disc...
- tjpnz 3y agoEven in countries where said litigation couldn't happen.
- Beldin 3y ago
- devwastaken 3y agoSounds like a great opportunity to connect and create startups to replace these fumbling monoliths.
- bagels 3y agoSome of these are clearly troll posts. This can't be an actual message from OpenAI though? Thank you for considering OpenAI for your next career move. Amazing that you thought you had a chance. Try Microsoft.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y agoWould be funnier if they said, "Try Deepmind."
- atleta 3y agoI think the joke hints at the recent events when Sam Altman has been fired (for a few days) and MS announced that they would take over the whole team as they said they would quit in response to Sam being fired.
- city41 3y agoThat was the first one I saw and it immediately killed the site for me. Real rejection letters would be interesting to see.
- yonatan8070 3y agoYeah, the PornHub one is clearly a bunch of jokes, it is funny, but no way it's real
- shitlord 3y agoIt definitely got raided by trolls. The second post is Super Mario Goatse (nsfw).
- anticorporate 3y agoMy favorite rejection letters are of the "We received an overwhelming volume of well-qualified applicants" sort. Especially when it's for a position that's so niche that you know there's a good chance that you personally know most of the other people who would actually meet the stated requirements.
- ska 3y ago> "We received an overwhelming volume of well-qualified applicants" Sometimes this is just true though, when it's not so niche. If the "narrowed down" stack is still to big to deal with, it's a bit of a crapshoot.
- anticorporate 3y agoFair enough. Last time I received one of these, though, it was from an organization where there are about five peers globally with a similar program, and I ran the program at one of those peers. That said, I'm sure they honestly did get an overwhelming volume of applications.
- sakopov 3y ago> Thank you for considering OpenAI for your next career move. Amazing that you thought you had a chance. Try Microsoft. This can't be real.
- geuis 3y agoYeah that's not. Notice how the one below it is also a joke, the "banana stand" one. The others read as legitimate.
- sgerenser 3y agoI’d be surprised if the PornHub one is legitimate.
- tombert 3y agoI've applied to OpenAI four times in the last two years, and in my experience if you're rejected, they simply don't respond at all. I haven't gotten any rejection emails, but I seriously doubt they've been been considering my resume for eighteen months.
- eriknj99 3y agoYou might want to add a confirmation popup to the report button. I clicked it not knowing what it was and accidentally reported a post.
- mrkramer 3y agoThis is brilliant! I have quite a few rejection letters too.
- mvdtnz 3y agoI have a doozy but I'm not comfortable sharing it without blanking the name of the company. The short version is I went through a ridiculous 7-stage interview process only to be told at the end (the night before my 8th and final interview) that they really liked me, got excellent feedback but were no longer hiring for that position.
- ok_dad 3y agoFor that reason, and others, I tell recruiters I’ll do a max of three interviews before I expect an offer or rejection, not counting the initial discussion for fit with the recruiter. That’s a few hours of my time, and they shouldn’t expect any more than that. I had one company scoff at that, but I explained to them that they probably wouldn’t dedicate a single person to interview me eight times, because that would be a waste of time for that one person, and conversely individuals don’t have time to talk to eight or ten people over a month just for a single job these days either. By three times I know if I’m a fit for the job and as a hiring manager previously I never did more than three: myself and one person up and down from me in the org structure.
- ushakov 3y agoBest interview experience I had was a 3 hour after-work meetup with 3 people from the company. No coding challenges, but nice and insightful engineering chat. I got to meet the team and had an offer ready within week Worst was when a company told me they used my open-source project and wanted me to do 5 interview rounds, two of them being whiteboard-style. I didn’t expect that
- ok_dad 3y agoMy favorite interview involve no code. If you can only tell if someone is proficient at coding from a coding quiz, you’re a bad software dev manager.
- blauditore 3y agoI very much disagree with this. There are bad engineers good at "sounding good", as long as it never gets too deep. Interviewed many people myself where they only started showing their real face while actually coding.
- tombert 3y agoI'll post it on your site as well to give it a bit of traffic, but here's one of the goofier rejections I've gotten. ----------- I applied to a large newspaper (I won't say the name but you've definitely heard of it) as a software engineer. They made me do some idiotic Myers-Briggs style test that took me about two hours to do, which was annoying, but the pay seemed like it would be ok and I was unemployed anyway. Outside of an ITIL certification that I had to get for college, my resume is extremely technical, as I've only ever done engineering. I have bullet points about different tech I've used, programs I've written, and basic tasks I did for the company. I've had a ton of jobs so the resume is long, and basically devolves into a bunch of software engineering buzzwords. We can argue all day on whether it's good or not, but I don't think anyone would claim it's not technical [1]. Nowhere on my resume (outside of one line that said I mentored some junior and mid-level engineers and some lecturing I did for two semesters) does it say that I've done any kind of "people management", but the response I got from the recruiter was as follows: > Does not show technical keywords or statements in his resume. Showing to be more of a PM and not a hands-on coder. Not see enough Java experience. I don't see him as a focused Java developer like the other candidate you've sent us. Needs someone who can write the code. I found this extremely bizarre, as I don't really think my resume could in any way be interpreted as a PM's resume, and assuming I wasn't lying I feel that it's pretty obvious I am a "hands on coder". I think what happened is that the hiring manager already knew who they wanted for the job, but for legal and/or bureaucratic reasons they had to have a pretense of "trying to find the best candidate". I suspect that they never even looked at my resume, had some basic boilerplate rejection text that had some vague plausibility, and was just going to reject every candidate sent to them. That's fine, but I really wish they had done this before I had to spend multiple hours trying to get a read on my personality. I think a lot of hiring managers are sociopaths. [1] https://gitlab.com/tombert/Resume/-/blob/master/resume.pdf?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.com/tombert/Resume/-/blob/master/resume.pdf?r...
- dghlsakjg 3y agoCould it be that they just sent the wrong person's feedback?
- 3y ago
- tjpnz 3y agoThe Pornhub one's brilliant and even comes with feedback for the applicants pleasure.
- luplex 3y agoI have recently gotten a few letters to the tune of "we have already filled the position". This would have been good to know before applying.
- bitwize 3y agoI like sending these to companies I applied with that seem interested but about which I discovered something God-awful. "Unfortunately, after careful consideration I have decided not to move forward with my candidacy, but I wish you the very best of luck in your search to fill the role" and that. It's a little passive-aggressive, but it makes me feel good and shows them about as much good will as they would show me.
- dog_boxer72 3y agoYou are owed a rejection letter but we shouldn’t shame companies for sending them, who cares what platitudes they give you, all that matters is you didn’t get the job and they are doing the courtesy of telling you. You would be surprised how many companies in other industries don’t even bother, they just leave you hanging
- mayormcmatt 3y agoThe companies that told me I was a rejected applicant via email, I was disappointed for a short while, but moved on. The companies that left me hanging and never said a thing, I still hold a grudge. My respect to the companies that care enough to offer us that swift closure.
- hmcq6 3y agoAnd then there are the companies that leave up job postings from 6+ years ago...
- lucb1e 3y ago> all that matters is you didn’t get the job For many people, what matters is to get a job > who cares what platitudes they give you The person who can't use them to improve
- seshagiric 3y agoWow, is the one from OpenAI for real?
- ionwake 3y agoThe most shocking and hurtful letter I ever got ( which makes me laugh now looking back it) was from Spotify a few years ago. I was like wtf It was particularly hurtful as it somehow re-enacted a scene from highschool. Which in retrospect now comes across as a brilliant troll. It officially read ( and I paraphrase the important part ) : Dear ionwake, Thank you for your application. But we dont want you in our band. Regards, xxxx Spotify
- StreetChief 3y agoWow the way they handled it seems very unprofessional to me.
- Woshiwuja 3y agoDear Ionwake, You suck. Bye
- ionwake 3y agoHah it was worse then that tho it was like they were having fun in a band and I sucked lol
- at-fates-hands 3y agoMy favorite rejection letter - if you can call it that. I had two interviews with a smaller agency that I knew of and really wanted to work there because of their reputation and the work they were doing. The last interview was with one of the founders of the company. She was really cool and we had a great rapport. The interview was about 90 mins and we covered a lot of ground. She said she would be reviewing my resume with the other devs I interviewed with and asked when I would be available to start. I figured, cool, I got this in the bag. A week goes by. . . .then another four days and now its been around two weeks since I heard from them. I practically checked out at my last job thinking I would be leaving and now I was getting nervous. By sheer coincidence I run into one of the devs from the company at a conference that weekend. He was stoked to see me again since we had some common hobbies outside of development. I immediately asked WTF was going on, I hadn't heard anything from his company. He looks at me and says, "Nobody called you to tell you what happened?" I said, "Yeah, no man, nobody called me, WTF happened?!" He does that nervous look around and then looks back and says in a hushed tone, "Two days after your interview, the founder you interviewed with? She sent an email to the other founders just saying, "I have to flee the country, and I've taken all the cash from the petty cash fund. I'll send back my phone and laptop when I'm in a safe country." So yeah, I didn't get the job because one of the founders fled the country, took the companies petty cash fund along with their phone and laptop.
- neilv 3y agoAfter interviewing with a few teams and execs I'd be interfacing with in a Principal role, there was a pause, so I pinged them, and I got a rejection email. Then the HR contact reached out, to say they thought I'd be a great fit for the company, and would I be interested in any roles there in the future. Then I learned that they'd had a surprise big org chart upset (maybe AI poaching). I suppose it's reasonable that surprise changes high up the org chart can prompt a company to pause other changes, while they assess the new situation.
- kunley 3y agoThese letters seem fake. What is the real reason behind this site?
- the-mitr 3y agoworst are the companies/people which don't even have courtesy of telling you the result of the interview if you are not selected.
- squarefoot 3y agoSmall quirk/bug report: maximized images can only be closed by clicking outside of them (no "X" or other control for that function that I could see), but the code doesn't take into account a browser window that is smaller than the image; in that eventuality the image can't be closed and the user is forced to close the tab because also the back button doesn't work.
- jeron 3y agoNice catch, I’ll look into this one!
- rldjbpin 3y agocurrently applying for jobs and just getting automated, boilerplate rejection letters. there are companies that don't respond to your application at all, and i have started to feel that it is ironically a better approach. funnily enough, one time i applied for a role in a company, which i never heard back from. however, someone else in there looked at my CV and sent me another job offer, which I ended up getting in the end.
- foobazzy 3y agoAfter 1 round of technical interview for a Manager position: > "Sorry, we're on a hiring freeze" I pressed my contact to reach out to the guy who interviewed me. He said, 'Yeah. I like the guy. I gave a positive feedback' (I would've been his manager, actually). So, what really happened? > Sorry, we're only looking for women candidates for this position. (My name can apply to both genders. The recruiter called and heard my voice before scheduling the interview.)
- lmihaig 3y agoWhile the site you provided is completely off the rails now (thank you for the lesson in content moderation). I see people have been using this comment section to complain about rejection messages, while I share the feeling and in no way condone about how poor the situation is, I think it's too negative and depressing. On a light-hearted note I'd like to share the best rejection message I received. Whilst still a student in university I messaged Valve my resume, I knew they only hired wizards or people with extreme seniority, but I really liked what I knew about the company and I said hey I'd be really cool. I received a rejection in ample time, sent by an account that has an actual person's name (not just hiring@company.name). The message was a few paragraphs long of (what seemed like) personalized non-auto reply text about what skills I lack, what Valve looks for in a hire, and how the people at Valve acquired their knowledge. Checking back on the details of the person I now see it wasn't even just an HR person, but an actual engineer. And I do need to say I applied to a lot of considerably smaller (in number of people) companies than them and never have I received such a nice experience. It is not enough to say that after dealing with hundreds of rejections that one was actually the first uplifting one I ever received. And also the only. So for that I want to thank that person @Valve.
- mistersquid 3y agoSite currently unavailable and plain http reports as malware/phishing site.