
Ask HN: Hiring managers what would it take for you to reply to every applicant? - deedubaya
Anyone who has applied for a job in the last few years knows the routine: take the time to apply to numerous job postings, maybe get an interview or two, but mostly never get a response yay or nay. You might even get a few interviews in, only to never hear another peep.<p>If an applicant takes the time to apply to your posting, why not give them a follow up regardless?<p>What would it take?<p>Disclaimer: I&#x27;m building https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hireloop.io to hopefully bring communication full-circle. I really want to make this less painful.
======
pytrin
> If an applicant takes the time to apply to your posting, why not give them a
> follow up regardless?

I'm not a hiring manager, but as the CTO I do review a lot of resumes incoming
for technical positions we are hiring for.

The vast majority of applicants do not appear to be taking any time at all
aside from selecting their resume to upload and clicking submit. It doesn't
seem like they even read the job requirements, since 90% of them do not meet
the minimal requirements we post. Some of them are not even developers, but
they apply for a developer position.

If someone does appear to be relevant and did also include a cover letter
relevant to the position, I will respond, regardless if they're a fit or not.

For me the biggest pain is the sheer amount of irrelevant submissions, which
makes you numb after a while. This is why I don't believe in job postings
anymore and mostly do headhunting.

Hope this helps!

~~~
dx034
Wouldn't it be pretty easy to send a standard email saying that the
application was rejected? Maybe have 2-3 with different reasons, should fit
nearly all cases. For the applicant it's still much nicer than hearing back
nothing at all.

~~~
madaxe_again
That requires one to spend time reading and thinking about whether someone
falls under "can't write a coherent sentence", "not remotely qualified", and
"this is a cv?!".

We would always give detailed feedback to everyone who came to interview, but
candidates who fell far from the field didn't get more than the automated
reply. Originally I tried responding to everyone, but it's a sucker's game. It
isn't just the time spent replying in the first place, even if it only takes a
moment, it's the replies asking "why do you think you're qualified to tell if
I'm qualified", "here's my creative writing piece from 11th grade, for a
developer position, read it please", "I'll sue you, fucker! I know my
rights!", "ok I understand can you teach me to program?", "ok I understand,
here's my startup idea, what do you think?".

All it takes is one candidate who responds irrationally to a rejection and
your entire day, and attitude to other candidates, can be blown up.

So, just like there's a bar for an invite to interview, there's a bar for a
positive rejection.

------
hbcondo714
I was recently laid off so I'm on the job hunt. I applied to Snap, Inc and
received this response within 2 weeks of applying

 _Dear [First Name],

Thank you for your time and interest in a career at Snap Inc. At this time,
our team has decided to evaluate other candidates for the [role]. However, we
encourage you to apply in the future for positions matching your goals because
our needs change frequently. Thanks again!

Best wishes, Snap Inc._

They must receive an enormous amount of applicants from all over so even
though I didn't make it anywhere in the interview process, I'm appreciative of
receiving a response and getting closure.

When I was employed, our HR department used Monster's ATS. They found it
difficult to use and didn't bother to inform candidates of their application
status.

------
paradox95
What kind of reply would you want? Would a simple "no thanks" be enough?

I have been in the situation before where replying to everyone with anything
meaningful is simply not feasible. Maybe for a recruiter whose full-time job
is that but not for a hiring manager who also has to balance their regular
duties as well.

I have spent much more time on the applicant side of things than the hirer
side so I understand the goal. It can be frustrating to not get anything. If
it is a job you really want you may be inclined to hold everything else off
until you hear something just on the hope that maybe they haven't gotten to
your resume yet. So a little closure would be nice.

So maybe a better question for you is what are you trying to accomplish by
getting hiring managers to reply to all candidates? Give them closure or
provide feedback? If the former than maybe a simple "no thanks" will do.

By the way, I am speaking clearly to the scenario where a candidate sends in a
resume and doesn't hear anything back. In my opinion, even if the hiring
manager or recruiter does a phone call the candidate deserves a clear "no"
email at a minimum.

~~~
deedubaya
I think a "no thanks" is enough.

Would you give every applicant a "no thanks" if it was a simple click of a
button? Would that be valuable to you?

~~~
Twisell
Yup because I once applied to a big company and to this day I still don't now
if a human was actually involved in any part of the process... Given the
company and given the job it's quit possible that the HR people just filtered
out the result using standardized fields and never gave an eye at the CV &
resume I took 5 hour to write.

Months later I learn that they fire half of their HR externals contractors
(maybe for the best).

So in the end yes, a simple "I read, not interested" would be great.

And if applicable a variation that could be "not for this job, but maybe try
another one" or even "you need more experience" would actually be even more
useful.

PS: What I learn though is that for big company hiring process is broken. My
best chance of being recruited is to build a great project and communicate
about it at my current job (but that's not easy if you are at the bottom of
the stack and writing code under copyright...), but now I'm even less tempted
to even apply to theses big Co.

------
6nf
We get 200+ responses to most job postings. 90% or more of those are from
candidates that just spam every job ad on the internet with their CV even if
they live on the other side of the planet. We can't respond to each of those.

We will respond to everyone that gets past this first round. And if you get a
phone / in person interview we will definitely call you back to say 'no
sorry'.

~~~
kriro
I'd say that you should be able to rifle through 200 responses and sort out
the crap and shove them into a folder where they'll get some friendly auto
response rather quickly. Even if you go a step further and tag the mails as
"not qualified enough" and "doesn't fit the job posting" and have them get
different responses based on that it shouldn't take that long. I'd personally
consider every unanswered job application bad PR for the company/a mild
failure. Takes about a workday if it takes you 2 minutes/application. I'd
guess this can be done in <1 minute though but since you probably have to open
an attachment for many I think two is the safer assumption (from dealing with
a lot of unsolicited mail).

Is it really that unreasonable to spend one work day per job posting to
presort? The task can be parallelized nicely and even delegated down to
interns if you think it's not worth the time of someone in HR (I'd strongly
advocate against this).

~~~
dimino
Why put _any_ effort whatsoever into it? What exactly is the bad PR? The fact
is, maybe you don't _deserve_ a response just because you sent in your resumé.

Also, "why don't you just" is one of those _famous_ things developers hear all
the time and your comment reeks of it.

~~~
kriro
It's a simple long tail problem. People tend to be grumpy if they don't get a
response (at least some people will be, statistically speaking). Those people
will likely act as negative multipliers when it comes to your organization
(especially since some of them will already be in a bad mood if they are job
hunting out of necessity). They may or may not be less grumpy if they get a
response, my hypothesis is that at least some of them will be less grumpy. If
you get 200 replies for each job posting and presumably post a couple of jobs,
preventing some negative feedback (especially in the age of social media) for
a modest amount of work should be a no-brainer.

You can chose to have a "clearly spam" category that you don't reply to I
suppose but apart from these even the worst written applications deserve the
decency of an answer (personal opinion). Similarly I also think even the most
brain dead customer requests and support questions should be answered (once
again personal opinion).

The benefit is obviously very hard to measure which is why I can only make an
argument based on reasoning (or dogma I suppose). The cost however is really
easy to measure so the counterargument is easier to make.

------
SerLava
I just applied to a remote position posted on HN and some other places.

They sent out a mass email about 3-4 days later saying they had 550 applicants
they were trying to sort through- so hold tight basically.

Now I pretty much know I'll get a mass email "no" if they don't decide to
interview me. Which is nice.

~~~
deedubaya
That sounds better than most!

------
adrianmacneil
Pro tip: If you want a reply to your application, try to avoid cold emailing
hiring managers your resume. Often my inbox has a lot happening, and I'm not
inclined to spend time copying your resume into our hiring software unless
there is something spectacular about your email or background. Emailing hiring
managers out of the blue also will not help you bypass any steps in the hiring
process.

By filling out the application form on our website, you load all the
information into the form for me, and are guaranteed that a recruiter will
follow up on your entry. If you want to send an email to the hiring manager
_as well_ to explain why you are so awesome, that's fine, but it's probably
not going to help your chances of getting a job any more than just applying.

~~~
alanfranzoni
Well... the converse is true as well. I've already got a well polished CV (I
usually keep the resume mostly identical for my job applications, while I
customize a summary header and I write a dedicated cover letter), an updated
LinkedIn profile, a website, a blog, a Stack Overflow jobs profile...

and I need to enter that information AGAIN in your system, which is possibly
slow, hard to use and/or requires registration, just because your process says
so?

You'd better be a great company to work with and/or pay very high salaries, or
you won't get my attention. Today the developer market is largely driven by
developers, not by companies; make sure your practices are not driving
potential good candidates away from your company!

------
jasonkester
As a hiring manager, your job is finding somebody to hire. And that's it.

If you want somebody to critique your cover letter and resume writing skills,
interviewing ability, etc. I'm sure you can find somebody to do that. But they
will charge you for the service.

It seems a bit silly to expect some random company's hiring guy to provide you
that service free of charge.

------
smoyer
We have several people that apply for every job we post (and there are
hundreds per year). On top of that we receive resumes that clearly have
nothing to do with the position as well as cover letters that have the job
title wrong. Some attach these materials without actually filling out the
online application.

When there's no effort put into applying for our position, I don't see the
need to put effort into a reply ... And eventually a flag in our system will
send them a generic rejection (approved by legal I'm sure).

On the flip side, we're currently looking for a Google-style SET to work on
testing Enterprise Java software and have received almost no resumes that fit
the position as we envision it ... That's a pretty clear indication that the
job description we posted needs work.

EDIT: This position is still open ... My email is in my profile if you're
interested.

------
sean_patel
> Disclaimer: I'm building [https://www.hireloop.io](https://www.hireloop.io)
> to hopefully bring communication full-circle. I really want to make this
> less painful.

[https://www.hireloop.io/how-does-it-work](https://www.hireloop.io/how-does-
it-work)

Goes to 403 Forbidden. Atleast put something in there???

403 Forbidden

Code: AccessDenied

Message: Access Denied

RequestId: 4XMR36267413GRGBC72

HostId:
BGu7DieumfZVCvftdpMIhXeFm2Qyyy2TyJ+P9jpQr3csSyYNIZBoGKhush8nMc4rHSj6+HighM=3p-

All other pages, including Pricing page, work tho ;)
[https://www.hireloop.io/#pricing](https://www.hireloop.io/#pricing)

~~~
deedubaya
CloudFront was giving me troubles. Thanks for pointing out my malfunction!

------
jasoncrawford
If I were using a system where rejecting a candidate was a one-click
operation, and it also sent them a notification, I would click it. That's what
it would take--it would have to be that easy. There are too many resumes.

(That's at resume review stage. If a candidate has actually talked to you,
including any kind of interview, then they deserve a response, and I do follow
up with everyone who gets to that stage.)

------
trevyn
If this is how you're applying to jobs, you're doing it wrong.

Target a small handful of companies strongly relevant to your experience and
interests, and start informally chatting with people who work there. Ask about
the culture. Get coffee. Ask how they like working there. Talk about what
you've been working on that's related. Ask some questions about interesting
problems they're trying to solve. Be interested and interesting. Points for
going straight to an Eng VP or CTO -- even if they don't have the time to talk
to you, they'll pass it to one of their underlings who does, and when your
VP/CTO tells you to follow up with someone, you do.

The resume should be mostly a formality AFTER they've expressed some interest
in your skills and have invited you to formally interview.

And if it doesn't pan out, you've already made personal connections with
people there. Get coffee again for feedback.

~~~
dimino
If you're already employed and looking to change positions, sure.

But if you're unemployed, you don't have this luxury.

------
invaliduser
This is probably bad practice, and I don't hire much anymore, but when I did,
I could usually put the resumes in three slots: 1/ Good match, want to see 2/
Maybe 3/ No

I generally give an immediate answer to 1 et 3. 2 are applicants that may do
the job, but I am not really convinced, don't seem as great for the job as 1,
and want to see them only if nobody in 1 gets the job. Also, 2 is definitely
all the applicants that never received any answer from me, because I don't
feel like telling them a straight no (in cas I'd need to interview them), and
the job process usually takes a very long time. In the end, I either
forget/procrastinate/feel like it's been to long to decently answer, so no
answer.

As I said, I'm not proud of that, I know this is bad and not respectful to
applicants, just being honest at how bad I am at the recruitment job.

------
WhiteSource1
That works for automated systems, where you get an automated response. But
hiring managers are busy, have multiple processes with HR, and with the rise
of job sites end up getting hundreds of resumes, most of which are completely
irrelevant, since it's so easy to blast our resume across the Internet.

------
rvpolyak
I received 155 resumes for the last postion I posted it would be too time
consuming to reply to every single one. However I always contact all
candidates by phone that came in for an interview to let them know we have
chosen not to pursue them for the position.

------
codingdave
> I really want to make this less painful.

For who?

Replying to every applicant, the majority of which are borderline spam, is
just extra work with zero added benefit to the business. Even if you make it
easy, it is extra work. Not to be heartless, but people might then actually
reply to you, and you spend more time dealing with someone you didn't even
want to interview in the first place.

I get that as an applicant, this sucks. But as a hiring manager? Full
communication with every applicant is MORE painful. And that is why they do
not do it.

------
agrafix
Many applications that we get do not meet the key requirements from the job
posting and are very generic. If the applicant did not put any effort into the
application - why should I? Maybe this process can be automated with some
ML/NLP to check if the application (a) matches at least SOME requirements and
(b) is not too generic but actually hand written to match your posting and
company.

