“Joyce, I read your column regularly.  I would like you to touch on the subject of employers who do not inform potential employees of the outcome of interviews. With high unemployment rates, I can understand that they cannot possibly respond to everyone who sends them a resume. However, no employer should ignore someone who has interviewed with them for a position. It’s just plain rude to keep someone’s hopes alive if there is no offer forthcoming.”    — A Reader
How hard can it be to say, “We’ll not be hiring you for this job. We’ve found someone that we believe is a closer match to what we need.”?
“Easy for you to say”, says one interviewer. “But it’s not that easy when you have argumentative applicants on the other end of the line. Some of them cry, some yell, some try to convince you to change your mind, some threaten to sue, and some just threaten. People are really stressed right now. Companies are still laying off, the economy’s iffy, and world events are unsettling. I don’t know about you, but I try to avoid needless confrontation with people at times like these.  That’s why I’m not apt to call when all I have to share is bad news.”
I can understand wanting to avoid difficult conversations, but is there anything that keeps you from writing a rejection letter?
“I could write the letter”, says another interviewer, “it’s just that I’m real busy and it slips my mind. We’ve laid off a number of people and I’m responsible for doing more work than I have time.”
Is writing that letter a low priority for you?
“You probably don’t want to hear this anymore than I want to say it, but, yes. Writing that letter is a low priority when compared to more pressing issues we have to confront. We interview and we give everyone a fair shake. One person gets hired. And the rest don’t. Mature job seekers understand that.”
“We don’t call the people we don’t hire”, says another interviewer. “We’ve started making that clear in the interview. We do, however, send a standard ”thanks, but no thanks” letter to those who don’t make the grade. We may want to call some of these people at a later date so we don’t shut the door completely.”
A third interviewer described their policy as situational. “I’ll feel an obligation to call an applicant that we decide not to hire, is if that person has been recommended to us by someone on the management team or someone outside the company that we really respect. Other than that, it just makes better sense to not go there. Those calls are very uncomfortable for the caller as well as the person receiving the call. We do however, send a letter to each person who has interviewed with us, thanking them for their time and interest and letting them know that we will keep their application in our files should we have a need and a better match down the road.”
Here’s a related concern from another reader:
“I had what I thought was an excellent interview. The interviewer was very encouraging and said that I would hear back from them within a week. That was a month ago. I assume they’re not considering me, but I am aggravated that I was told I’d receive a call and it never happened. I’ve been out of work for close to a year. We live on hope at our house, and this doesn’t help.”
I contacted several local employers about this matter and the following comments are a composite summary of what they said:
“Interviewers usually act in good faith when they say they’ll call back within a specific time frame. What they cannot control, however, are the business emergencies that keep those meetings from taking place.  We understand how stressful a time this is for job seekers, particularly those who are currently unemployed. The best advice we can give is to those applicants is to find healthy outlets for those frustrations. Taking them out on prospective employers only diminishes the possibility of interviews turning into a jobs.”