You’ll only be nearly 60, applying to GreenWheels and not getting the job. That’s quite a disappointment. But if the denial also says that “you have to remember that Oprah Winfrey was once rejected for being unfit for TV, Steven Spielberg was rejected from three film schools and Elvis was fired after his first live performance.” and “you’ll get there, luckily we don’t have to worry about that” – don’t you feel like an intern of 17 instead of a fifties with over thirty years of work experience?
In any case, my eyes got blotchy when a reader alerted me to this infantile rejection email. Just like readers when I posted it on Twitter. “Absurd” and “To cry, this popiejopie note,” they wrote.
However, such a rejection is unfortunately no exception. You don’t want to believe what people sometimes hear after applying for a job, as it turned out when I asked about it. The examples were so cringe-inducing that I listed the worst ones. Perhaps you will learn from it, recruiters from the Netherlands. It’s not that hard is it?
1 First of all, stop with the ‘general thousand in a dozen’ rejection: ‘Unfortunately you did not fit the profile’. We know them now. Especially if you do fit the profile, but there were other reasons to reject you.
2 Rather be honest and write: you are too old, too educated, too expensive or you made too many spelling mistakes – which is usually the reason.
3 But do write correct Dutch yourself! So not: “We have selected candidates with a suitable CV and have also sent a good motivation.” Please read your answer before pressing send.
4 Don’t go for a jolly walk either. Such as chocolate giant Tony Chocolonely who uses ‘snorry’ and ‘chocolate greetings’ as standard in his rejections, although according to readers this immediately characterizes the atmosphere of the company “where you might not want to work anyway”.
5 Don’t wait for months or years with a rejection, but send people a timely response. Although 8 minutes and 56 seconds after a job application email, as happened to a reader, is very fast again.
6 Also beware of the ‘standard rejection’. For example, one reader received an email with the subject line ‘general rejection’, and another received an autoreply stating that “if you have not heard anything by November 4, you have not been invited for an interview” followed by a request to “no contact to take” – that is very cold.
7 Remember who has been on a call! So don’t send ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ or ‘We’re not inviting you for an interview’ to people you’ve already talked to twice an hour and a half, and don’t have a rejection signed by a ‘HR intern’ either.
8 I also find a ‘multiple choice rejection’ quite disrespectful! Such as: “below our 3 most important criteria, choose which one may apply to you”. Or: “The fact that you have been rejected indicates that you do not meet our criteria, you probably know which one.” But also do not write that you “let the lot decide and the prize did not fall on you” or that you “opened only the first fifty letters.” “I’d rather just say NO,” wrote one reader.
9 Also, don’t invite people whose resumes you already know are inadequate and don’t ask if a rejected candidate wants to volunteer, or worse, become a donor. Come on.
10 Also bad: the post-rejection stairs. Such as hiring someone and telling someone a week later that there was no money after all, saying after a lengthy procedure that the position has been resolved internally, asking if a candidate would like to call again if the first, second and third choice has fallen, or that „ the operator didn’t like you” and that’s why you didn’t become it.
11 The ‘sorry-you’re-pregnant rejection’ is really not possible either. That’s the rejection in which women are sometimes asked how many children they ‘want to have after this’, whether they want to call back when they have given birth, or where you have to promise not to get pregnant in the next five years or else you won’t get the job. – real.
12 But worst of all, as far as possible, readers thought it was not heard at all after a job application. Then you really didn’t understand it as a staff recruiter. Because applying for jobs is not a game, but something on which people build their self-confidence and future. A candidate is not a number, but a person. It is a shame that this has still not penetrated everywhere in the personnel profession.
How was your week? Tips for Japke-d. Bouma through @Japked on Twitter.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of October 6, 2021