EVEN “UK’S OFFICIAL GRADUATE CAREERS WEBSITE” ADMITS BLANKING ALL BUT SUCCESSFUL APPLICANTS
We all know it happens.
You spend hours slaving over their detailed application form – and never hear a peep back from the recruiter. Not a rejection letter – nothing.
Complete silence.
Forever.
Graduate Fog has been dismayed to watch this ill-mannered policy become the norm among recruiters, who claim they don’t have time or resources to respond to every applicant.
I was not aware, however, that the poisonous practice had now spread to companies that are supposed to work in the best interests of young job-seekers.
During a recent (caffeine-fuelled) expedition into the snoozesome Drosspects.ac.uk – sorry – Prospects.ac.uk, I stumbled across an announcement to anybody wishing to work at their company.
“Due to the number of applications we receive, we are unable to reply to all applications submitted,” it reads.
“If you do not hear anything from us in four weeks, please assume your application has been unsuccessful at this time.”
(Don’t believe me? See it with your own eyes here.)
Still, there is some good news for anybody sitting in silence, listening to the sound of absolutely no response from “the UK’s official graduate careers website”. At least they don’t discriminate.
A further announcement declares:
“At Graduate Prospects, we are committed to providing equal opportunities to all employees and applicants. Our recruitment and selection process is just the beginning of our commitment towards diversity.”
In other words, Prospects is equally rude to all applicants, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
Fantastic.
Call me old-fashioned but I think this policy on responding only to successful applications is unforgivably arrogant.
I think to disregard and dismiss another person’s time and effort like this is heartless. Not even get back to them with a ‘Thanks but no thanks’ – is disgusting.
To my mind, companies that think this is an acceptable practice are declaring outright that they do not understand (or perhaps do not care about) what it feels like to be seeking work.
Anybody – of any age – who has been out of work for more than a couple of weeks knows that job-hunting is not fun. Your confidence evaporates scarily fast – and some days (okay, many days) it’s really difficult to find the will to keep going. Many graduates say they feel isolated and some say they feel dangerously depressed.
I accept that the relationship between recruiters and applicants will always be strained, to some extent. After all, they have the job (and therefore the power) so the balance is always going to be a bit off.
That said, I think it wouldn’t take much effort for this relationship to be dramatically improved – and for job-hunting to become a significantly less miserable experience.
For starters, recruiters should stop treat applicants like an irritating pest.
The should start treating them with more care, respect and courtesy – as individuals.
To me, responding to every applicant (whether successful or not) within four weeks of the deadline seems entirely reasonable. This would enable you (the jobseeker) to cross that role off your list, forget about it and put your heart into your next set of applications.
Adopting this basic courtesy would serve another purpose too. It would show that the recruiter realises that behind the name on your CV is a real-life human being whose effort deserves to be acknowledged.
I’ve heard some recruiters claim that their policy of blanking all but successful candidates stems from the fact that so many candidates’ applications are rushed, careless and not up to scratch. Disposing of the shoddiest applications is, according to recruiters, an enormous waste of their time and resources – which makes them feel less inclined to respond to the rest of you.
I think this utter tosh.
No doubt, some applicants fire off half-baked efforts – but surely the really poor applications are in the minority, no? And isn’t it the recruiters’ job to sort through applications, some of which will be good and some will be bad? And isn’t this a job that they’re being paid to do?
Recruiters also claim that responding to all applicants would be too time-consuming to be realistic. Er, I’m guessing that the time they would spend sending a polite, standard email to all unsuccessful applicants would still be far less than the time it’s taken the average candidate to wade through their application form. So again, they’ll get no sympathy from me on that one.
As I said, I know Drosspects isn’t the only offender here.
But I do think “the UK’s official graduate careers website” should be leading by example, not following the herd.
*Have I got it wrong?
Do you prefer being blanked to hearing an outright ‘No’? Post your comments below.
I can’t comment on Prospects personally but i do agree it would be much nicer to get a reply saying no thanks than just wondering if it even got read in the first place. Assuming applications are actually all read and considered, would it not be extremely quick to copy and paste a generic thanks but no thanks for each declined app? That would only take a few seconds and is hardly difficult. While feedback would be really helpful i do understand this would be far too time consuming
I can’t speak for prospects but I am aware of similar behaviour from other careers/education companies who should really know better. My other issue is how poor the feedback often is when someone has been unsuccessful at the interview stage. In my experience the feedback is usually about the high standard of the successful applicant rather than anything constructive about what the applicant might need to brush up on next time. Surely it’s not too much to ask?
I agree – I think if you’ve bothered to spend time (and money) preparing for and getting to the interview then it would be nice for someone at that company to spend 10 minutes giving you, say, 3 points of decent, helpful feedback as a reward for your effort, rather than dashing something off about how somebody else was better (or never replying at all).
That said, it is often the case that the fact that there was simply a slightly stronger candidate than you really IS the reason you didn’t get the job! in other words, you might have done, if this other better person hadn’t applied! but they could still give you an idea of the areas in which the successful candidate was stronger than you – that would be something.
No doubt employers will say they don’t have time to do any of this – but again i feel that’s unfair given the time YOU’ve spent on the application – and it sends out a clear signal that employers think their time is more important than yours, which is not only disrespectful but also really demotivating over what can turn into a long job-hunt lasting several months.
I agree completely – I’ve been job hunting for about a month (which I appreciate is not that long compared to some), and have applied (at great length) to probably over 20 positions – not *one* of which has responded with anything – and I am by no means careless or unemployable.
I have been on both sides of the equation, and can say that both applying, and recruiting for graduate jobs are difficult and stressful experiences.
One problem is that quite often there are several layers of HR/Admin between you and whoever you end up interviewing. So you may not even be aware of a large number of applicants because they often will be filtered before they even arrive at your desk.
Contrary to what Tanya G writes, the selectors in several posts are often NOT paid to sort through and shortlist/ interview, we do it unpaid in addition to whatever job we have been hired for. I have always been expected to squeeze it in around what I already have to do(or work unpaid overtime) to shortlist. So why do it at all? Well the downside of picking the wrong person to work with us is often disasterous.
I agree that employers should treat people with courtsey and respect, and would like to see more reminders and indications of success, or not. Ideally online so you can keep track of your applications. However, I do think whatever you do (short of offering everyone applying a job) will cause upset. Some feel that automatic email responses are unhelpful or impersonal. When offered constructive feedback (which we give to everyone who we interview) lots of people can get quite distressed, angry or self blaming -which again puts people off going to the trouble to do so.
Objectively, some of this is a question of supply and demand and priorities. It will always take more effort for the average candidate to write an application because there are more graduates than there are graduate jobs, which makes it a buyers market for employers. If it was the reverse situation it would be the employers putting in far more effort. Moreover, most organisations usually have a core purpose, which is their main priority, and thinking about the feelings and motivation of graduates, most of whom they will never see, is an understandably lesser priority.
Thanks for your comment, Ian. It’s helpful to see it from both sides – and I know recruiters aren’t just blanking jobseekers because they enjoy it!
But for me, your last paragraph hits the nail on the head. In the cold, hard world of business, respect and courtesy for jobseekers is way down at the bottom of the list of priorities for recruiters. And, as you say, with more graduates than there are jobs, it’s a ‘buyers’ market’.
I would like to say again, however, that a human cost to this – which I would like to see employers take more responsibility for. Being rejected again and again for jobs (whether through a letter, email or just never hearing back) has a huge psychological impact on the jobseeker – the person who you point out most recruiters ‘never see’.
Well, I can tell you that I DO see them – here, on this website. And I get emails every day from graduate jobseekers struggling to stay motivated during their (often long) hunt for work.
I know recruiters are busy – and to them, the name on the top of a CV is just a name.
But at Graduate Fog we know that name belongs to a real person, who took a lot of trouble over that application and was really hoping to get called for an interview for that job. And we think that person deserves better than to be ‘blanked’ in the manner that has become the norm.
Let’s treat job-hunters with greater respect.
I take the view that if people have worked their asses of getting good degrees are not just going to get snapped up into something worthwhile then I do not want to have anything to do with a recruitment process that even if you get to interview feels more Barack Obama being interviewed for a job by Nick Griffin!
If theres too much radomness and chance to getting recruited,however good the degree, then don’t peddle to people that doing a degree for the effort involved in getting that means anything.
Or do employers not just really think something like:”sigh! Its not Oxford is it?”
@Avarice – do you feel it should be made clearer to school / sixth form pupils considering going to uni that a degree is not – in itself – enough to guarantee a good job? If so, I agree with you! People sneer at graduates who assumed that this would be the case – but of course you did, because everyone told you that it would! And you were only 17 when you made the decision to go to uni. That’s not old enough to vote, but it is old enough to sign up for 23k of debt without really understanding what it will (or won’t) ‘buy’ you…
I simply take the view that if it is said of anyone by anyone that they are “university material” then ,in terms of how the world of recruitment really works, they should actually know what they are talking about!
How much time can it take to send a standard rejection email? The ‘not practical’ excuse is B*lls. As Tanya says, telling people that they are rejected would at least allow people to stop wondering.
The recruitment department of the University of Plymouth are guilty of this also. I sent them an application form for a post of a teacher and this job went alongside the opportunity to undertake a PhD, so I spent a really long time researching, seeing supervisors, you name it, I did it. They didn’t even bother to respond with anything! After all that work! How demeaning. There is simply no excuse because of the effort involved in such an application. They certainly need to be named and shamed.