Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Is silence better than honesty?

Hell no -I'd rather know.

I had an interesting thought regarding the comments to my last post. I had posted a particularly bad rejection notice (email) I received during my academic job search. Almost uniformly the comments honed in on my example of why industry values its workers more than academics.

I don't necessarily agree.

Yes, I have gotten my fair share of rejection letters from my academic job search, but I've gotten far less contact in previous industry searches. I honestly think that although some letters are egregiously written and not flattering to the institution that sent it, the very fact that someone took the time to let me know I was no longer in the running shows that they do care about applicants.

Contrast that to the seeming black hole of industry job applications. Although my most recent experiences are only in watching fellow lab mates during their job searches, I think the one overall truth that appeared was that the majority of the jobs you apply for will not contact you. Ever. Doesn't matter if you weren't a good fit or if they went in a different direction.  You only know you didn't get the job because either 1) you're following the company on LinkedIn and see the new hire posted or 2) it's been so long that you forgot that you ever even applied.

Call me crazy, but I'd much rather hear bad news early, even if it is poorly worded and inspires a ranting blog post.

Because then I can move on. And I appreciate the honesty it took to let me know of the situation.

9 comments:

  1. Honesty. I can't stand the silence. Some schools haven't even sent out rejections and I had to figure it out on my own. Lame as rejections are, at least it's something I can cross off my list. I'd rather know than anything else.

    I recently was told I wasn't qualified for a position I applied for, which made no sense...but at least they let me know.

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    1. I hear you. It's the not knowing that kills me. Although after a certain period of time I just assume that if they haven't called, they're not interested...

      As for the qualification issue - do you think you needed to do a better job of selling how you "fit" with the department? If so, how would you go about doing that?

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  2. I think I can understand why a small startup, if they get hundreds of applications, might not have the resources to respond to every single one, not even with a form letter. But for large companies with applicant tracking systems...couldn't the system just generate an automatic email? Especially if the system itself rejected the resume, based on keyword matches? Doesn't seem that technologically difficult...

    I think academic jobs should get back to every candidates...I mean, they're not like an HR department dealing with a ton of applications...isn't it more like, once a year, there is an opening?

    Correct me if I'm wrong in any assumptions, but my point is that if you can, you should get back to every applicant. I used to work at a small startup so I understand that sometimes it's not, but seriously...a software that generates automatic emails? How hard is it?

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    1. I think you're pretty much asking the same question I've been wondering (and don't know the answer to).

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  3. While it's true that an academic department may be dealing with 1-2 lines/year, often we lack the resources to reply to every candidate in an efficient manner. Or, let me restate that based on my experience as the chair of a hiring committee: In order to let all of the 100+ applicants to the position know that they were not selected I personally would have to sit down and go through their files one by one to find their email addresses and send them emails. I suppose I could go for paper letters, but that adds the burden of printing, addressing envelopes, and figuring out how they heck you deal with postage (I think there's a form; never had to do it). It's a couple of hours worth of work, there's no admin I could push it off on, and it's work on top of all of the hiring committee meetings, coordinating and running phone interviews, scheduling campus interviews and coordinating travel and reimbursements, etc. I've done two searches in the last few years. Once I got the letters out. Once I did not. I felt bad about it, but I really struggled to find the time.

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    1. I'm not really looking for an individual answer as to why I didn't make the cut. I suspect that the vast majority of rejections come from either 1) not appearing to have the background for whatever the job posting asked for or 2) not making a clear, persuasive argument supporting how the applicant fit with the department.

      All I want is a simple notification letting me know they went in a different direction. If I'm feeling ballsy I might ask the committee chair why, but I honestly would not expect a response.

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  4. profgrrrrl

    I'm the same anon from above. I understand now why it is difficult for you to go through each file and pick out all the email addresses. In this day and age of online applications for everything, I imagined that faculty candidates applied online, so there was an online "system." And you know, for these online systems, you login with an email making the whole looking through files to find emails unnecessary. I moved overseas and this is how some faculty applications were done, and all you had to do was click the applicants you wanted and the rest would get an automatic email. But then in this same overseas country, it is not possible to apply for admission to graduate programs online, you must mail your application in...so who knows. Guess you really just can't make any assumptions these days.

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    1. Anon, interestingly enough we DO have an online application system ... but as with many things at the university, it doesn't work in any efficient manner. HR has access to that system, and all applicants must fill out that application form. HOWEVER, applicants must also send cover letter, cv, etc. to the search chair. As search chair, I was given enough access to see the online applications, but of course there was no way to download a spreadsheet or something with all of the email addresses, no way to select applicants to whom you wish to send a message, etc. I could just see flat screens of data (I don't even think email was included on the info sheet I could see) and download a cv if one had been uploaded. And it was about 7 clicks with slow refresh rates to do anything in the stupid system and I often got logged out if I tried to switch from one applicant's file to the next. When I called HR, they told us to just send them a list of the applicants we had on the closing date and then they could check it against their list and let us know if we were missing anyone who was in their system (or vice versa, although they wouldn't re-open the system for anyone who didn't fill out their form in time; I did spend a lot of time pre-closing date checking the system on my own to make sure that the good looking applicants were all in the system).

      Frankly, I thought it would have been nice if HR sent out letters for us.

      I did make sure that I answered any queries from applicants quickly and kindly, and the folks who made the first cut (down to 20) and were notified of such I did manage to keep in the loop on both searches. But yeah, that one search there were so many applicants and there was some other stuff going on at the time and ... it just didn't happen. When I did have time several months later, it hardly seemed worth trying to send letters. I remembered getting a rejection letter a few years back the following fall (after which time I had long since figured I was not going to be interviewed) and kind of felt like receiving the letter at that point was insulting. But that may just be me; I know others may appreciate it whenever it comes.

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  5. Silence and rejection both stink. But I agree, it's better to know and move on. Though painful.

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