The Courtesy of a Reply

American businesses can't seem to make the time to communicate with unsuccessful job applicants. That's shameful

by Liz Ryan

As an HR person for 25 years now, I'm tired of having to apologize for my profession. Yet I don't find the criticism of me and my colleagues misplaced. It's depressing at times to answer scores of e-mails from job-holders who share stories of bureaucratic, officious, even hateful treatment at the hands of their company's human-resources staff. But as poorly as many HR departments treat employees, their dealings with prospective hires are 1,000 times worse.

I thought I had heard it all, until a friend in Silicon Valley wrote me with her story of having made eight -- eight! -- visits to an employer, to interview with people on the management team. After that many interviews, you would expect a phone call if you hadn't gotten the job, wouldn't you? No such luck -- she got no call, no letter, not even a boilerplate e-mail brush-off. No communication whatsoever, after eight visits during which she had made friends with the receptionist and met half the managers. How could a company rationalize that kind of shoddy treatment?

The behavior of corporations toward job-seekers is a national shame, unbecoming a country that leads the pack in many other aspects of business practice. Multiple résumés go unacknowledged. Post-interview follow-up is poor, if it happens at all. And if you're lucky enough to get a job offer, don't expect to have all your questions answered or to have been "sold" on the company before receiving it. "Take it or leave it" often is the prevailing philosophy.

THE HIDDEN LINK.

HR people blame the mega-job sites for their worsening manners. When an employer posts a job online and receives hundreds or thousands of résumés in return, recruiters complain, how can they reply to all of them? So they don't. In fact, they often don't reply to any of them.

I thought about the intersection between online job sites and résumé-acknowledgement -- and realized that there is indeed a correlation. Think about this:

You're on a team that's developing what will be one of the Web's largest job-posting sites -- say, Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com. There are dozens of people on the team, evaluating the product as it's built. You do tests -- usability tests, Q&A sessions ad infinitum, and demos for focus groups -- to make sure you check out every bell and whistle.

HIT A KEY.

And so you launch. And what's missing? The one feature that would demonstrate the tiniest shred of concern for job seekers -- namely, the ability for the recruiter or hiring manager to respond quickly or, better yet, automatically, to these people with a few keystrokes.

Isn't it the most intuitive thing in the world, to suppose that as you, the recruiter, review résumés, you could add a check mark next to those that really interest you? Then you could hit a key that would send a pre-written "No thank you" letter to all the other job-seekers -- right through the site. Instantly you would have completed the loop with these people, by communicating four important things:

a) We got your résumé.

b) We thank you for sending it and appreciate your interest in our company.

c) We don't see a good match between your background and this job we're filling, so we won't be including you in the group to be scheduled for interviews.

d) But thanks again -- and please buy our products!

The big sites lack this obvious feature.

TEST TAKERS.

I've talked to reps at Monster.com and CareerBuilder about such a function. Monster.com offers recruiters the ability to construct a quiz, and to send an auto-response e-mail message to people who fail it, letting them know that they're out of the running.

That's not a bad feature, but it doesn't answer the basic question: "How do I let hundreds of people whose résumés don't pass muster know that they won't be considered for this job?" If you already know that someone isn't right, why would you make the person take a quiz?

Anyway, there's no quiz you could construct that an applicant would fail just by virtue of being unsuitable for the job.