[varelaz]

This will never happen. No matter what you think, sending you reject email is opening can of worms with no benefits for the company. You can start arguing, wasting their time and resources and one day all these emails can go public with harm to their reputation.

[pyrale]

I have received many refusal emails for job applications ranging from "Unfortunately, we have filled that position" to "Following your interview, we have selected another applicant, but we'll keep your resume" to "We do not have an open position currently, but we may contact you later". I really don't see how these answers could harm these companies. Some of them actually incited me to followup a couple years later, and land a job.

On the other hand, the rude option of not answering harms the company's HR brand.

[steveBK123]

Well all three response examples would be a lie if they then keep the job open, which might trigger some people into more back & forth ?

[A1kmm]

> with no benefits for the company

The talent pool is not infinite, and a rejection means "we don't have a vacancy for which you are the right candidate right now", not necessarily "No way will you ever work for this company". So the core benefit of treating rejected applicants fairly, and perhaps providing them conditions under which they can re-apply ("We won't accept further applications from you in the next year, but we'd encourage you to re-apply for a suitable role after then"), and some things to work on before they could be successful in the company, then they might be an asset for the company in the future.

Likewise, companies which have a reputation for providing feedback and a polite thanks but no thanks are more likely to get applications than companies that have a reputation for ghosting.

> You can start arguing

Just have a rule that all communications with the candidate go through HR (or the person responsible for coordinating hiring overall in a smaller company), and then if they reply at all to candidates arguing, just have them be firm that under policy, the decision has been made, and can't be reviewed. It's okay to ignore further correspondence if they argue.

> these emails can go public with harm to their reputation

What's worse though, a reputation for ghosting candidates, or a reputation for privately sending transparent but polite feedback based on the interviews?

[voidUpdate]

When I was trying to apply for jobs, I got two replies of any kind out of the over a hundred applications I sent out. One of them got to a pre-interview stage before rejecting me, with reasons. I currently work at the other place. How many people contest their job rejection emails when they get to a pre-interview stage or later? How many would contest them if they were immediately rejected?

[dan-robertson]

I think there’s some selection bias: your experience is of being a normal person where you think ‘I and the people like me are not like that’ but in the set of people that a company rejects, a higher percentage will be eg people who apply to and get rejected from a lot of jobs (and are therefore still applying to more) and so they may behave differently. I don’t really believe the thing about opening a can of worms though. My guess is more that there isn’t much upside to doing this, and companies maybe want to ‘leave doors open’ sometimes by eg not responding in case the person they’re hoping to hire turns them down and they need to interview more candidates again.

[huhtenberg]

We had a case when some dude was arguing against our location requirements. The listing said "the EU" and he was from Armenia or thereabouts and kept sending long emails saying that our requirement was wrong, that we should consider people from elsewhere, how good it will be for the company, etc. It was really bizarre, because he did all that before applying.

So, yeah, a can of worms. They are rare, but they sure are pungent.

[arp242]

Just ignore replies, especially when they're argumentative or rude. It's not a hard problem to solve.

Not sending a simple "sorry, we're proceeding with other candidates" is detrimental to everyone, because without knowing if you've been rejected or not you're just incentivised to send out more applications, which doesn't really benefit anyone, including companies who will now have even more applications to sift through.

Also I've had companies ghost me after doing several what seemed like promising interviews. It's okay they decided to pick someone else, but outright ignoring at this stage is just being a dick. "Begone peasant, you're not even worth talking to".

[Ekaros]

If they don't have this courtesy, should they expect anything from the candidates in various parts of the process? Like maybe the offer was not good enough. So is it reasonable for candidate to just totally stop communicating?

[bravetraveler]

It does happen considerably more than "never"... happened plenty of times for me! They generally won't accept risk and make a dialogue about it, getting into details like 'why'... keeping it high-level informative.

I've also had places keep it ambiguous and send an offer nearly a year after interviewing. Game theory applies, as always.

[gwervc]

This is the exact kind of "treating people like shit" even before they start working that feed quiet quitting and the sentiment for employees (a word banned in the corporate lingo of my country, we are "collaborators") that jobs and companies are totally disposable too.