The worst time I ever had dealing with a candidate was one that had been referred by a friend to our medium sized organisation. Normally that firm either hired

The worst time I ever had dealing with a candidate was one that had been referred by a friend to our medium sized organisation. Normally that firm either hired people via a recommendation from someone who worked in that field (ie "they are perfect for what you need") or via an agency. Never "they might be what you're looking for". What was hard for me, was simply trying to say no. It took me about 1.5 hours of research and help from some of the more experienced people around me, I felt like I was writing a dear John letter. I wanted to explain why it wasn't just a no, that it was due to the fact we needed someone who had more experience in the kind of thing we were doing, as sadly we didn't have time to train within (our normal method at that place). When going the conventional route, I can simply email something along the lines of "failed all questions, got nothing correct simple SQL, couldn't write a for loop." even tell the agency not to waste my time, or large HR firm that we need to have better screening. If they are a small startup, it might be as simple as you didn't gel with them. A friend of mine puts the success of his team down to the fact they all meet up in person, every friday at 11am, at their favourite bar, if people are really stressed with each other about work they drink and play table football until they are friends again. He commented how he couldn't work with a mutual friend because they don't drink and refuse to go to pubs. Obviously you can't say that to the person. So if you've got someone who is busy or who hasn't got very good reasons for saying no to you, then they might simply ignore you. Don't let it get you down, try to understand its not an easy situation for them either and try to be much more detached about applying for roles, it is as they say, just business.