The disappearing courtesy of rejection

When you think about job hunting, you might think the process goes as follows: You jazz up your resumé, send it out, get called in for some interviews, then you hear back in one of two ways—you got the job (Whoo!) or you did not (Crap!). However, if you've actually done any job hunting, you know there's a far more common, and even worse response.

Dead effing silence.

Now, some amount of this can be explained away. Companies sometimes receive thousands of resumés is a week, and responding to every one with a "No thanks" could be a full time job (which they could hire someone to do, but that's another story.)

However, if you get an interview, and that interview doesn't end with a job offer or a rejection, shouldn't you assume that you'll hear when a decision has been reached? After all, we communicate at the speed of lint these days, so you'd assume that rejecting people would have become less of a chore than it once was. I'll demonstrate:

"Thanks for your time, Mr. Smith. Although you had remarkable qualifications, we cannot offer you a position at this time. We'll be in contact if we have need of your services in the future."

Less than one minute, and Mr. Smith is out of my life for good. But more important than that, he has closure.

Perhaps it's the same technology that makes communication so easy that also makes it that much easier to ignore. If it will take less than a minute, what's the  harm in putting off another day? With the impetus to respond residing with the recipient and no longer an assistant, no one is making sure Mr. Boss is communicating with anyone.

Ad boys and girls, the only way to fix it is to take it upon ourselves, and vow that we will not do to others what has been done to us. So, here is my promise: Should I ever be so lucky to be in the position to hire anyone, I vow that those I do not hire will be given proper notice.

Until next time,

B

Blogging for the man

Do you have something you really like doing, but you want to stop liking it so much? Here's a tip from ol' Uncle B—get paid to do it. It will start seeming like a whole lot less fun.

It's been, oh, about ten months since my last post. What have I been doing while I wasn't blogging? Blogging. For clients. I've been doing other writing, too, but a few of our clients have pretty active content marketing programs, and someone has to write that stuff.

It's all good, don't get me wrong. I've learned a lot about things I never, ever would have researched on my own. But it hasn't left me in the mood to post anything here.

If this seems like a pointless post—keen observation. But the only way to write is to write. And the only way to blog is to blog. And now there's only one way to go—upward and onward.

'Til next post (hopefully not another ten months), farewell.

B