OT: Job interview questions, part 2

I always eventually communicate back to people that I interview that they didn't get the job. The problem is that once you pick someone else, there's usually a 5-10 day window where you check references, the candidate takes a few days to think about it  and HR finalizes things where it could still fall through. It's a tough balance to keep your second and third choices engaged without being a jerk and just dragging them along. I really try to be decent to people, but it gets a little dicey sometimes. 

It's pretty frustrating when you get ghosted. It's bad enough when you never hear back after applying for a position, or having a phone interview. But I've even been ghosted after in person interviews, and it never made any sense. Like, you just spent upwards of $1000 to fly me out, put me up for a night, feed me, etc., yet it's not worth your time to let me know I didn't get the job?

Also frustrating are ridiculous rejections. For example, back when I was in undergrad and applying for summer internships, at companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin you had to submit an application for each individual position, so suffice to say I submitted a lot of applications. And with Boeing, I was still getting rejection notifications 6-9 months AFTER the summer had ended. I mean by then what's the point? 

And by far the worst was getting a rejection notification less than 15 MINUTES after submitting the application. I spent more than that filling out the application, and they can't even pretend that they looked at it? That one was absolutely gut wrenching.

As a hiring manager, one follow up is OK. There are sometimes legitimate reasons why the process gets delayed. More than one follow up does not help. 
 

Good luck to your son.  Getting a job is as hard as finding good candidates. 

I'm in the web dev field and I started looking for something new in early December and applied for roughly 20 jobs on Indeed. Of those, only 6 viewed the application, which is something I like about Indeed. I interviewed with all 6 over a phone call, all wanted a second interview, and after the first one I did I was offered a job that was 10k over the listing, and 10k over the listings of the other jobs I was in, so I took it an withdrew from others. Of those others, 2 just didn't respond, and 1 offered me a matching salary but was 5k under what I'd already accepted. 1 of the two that didn't respond had a 4 step interview process that wouldn't have concluded until the end of February, which would have sucked. Of the other 14 jobs, I decided rather than to withdraw my application on Indeed, I just let them stay. Some have been viewed and weren't denied, just have had no contact. In my interviews, I found that every company is of course different, but there were definitely some that were with recruiters that knew next to nothing of the actual company, and others were with the CEO(like the one I accepted). The recruiters needed to pass the info along to superiors, who then looked at it, which is why the process took so long to go from one step to the next. I do think that there's a ton of Ghosting going on, but it also doesn't help that(in my field) there are hundreds of applications going on. What I will say is that a lot of companies don't work the week between Christmas and New Years, so nothing was probably looked at.

Oh yeah! It's Off-Season. I thought for a second we were going to interview transfer portal right tackles.

Ghosting is more and more common, it drives me crazy, but I think its a liability thing.  You can get ghosted even after a verbal offer is made as well.  Fun and joys of letting lawyers anywhere near what should be a normal human process of:  Thanks but no thanks.  

Career Coach here. 

Most companies notify you if they’ve moved on to other candidates, but completely depends on the company culture and professionalism of the hiring manager. I’ve heard of some ghosting that just makes me shake my head. It’s ok to follow up until you hear confirmation from the hiring manager. 

If the company is professional, they should at least send you an email letting you know you didn't get the job.

As far as timing, when I was interviewing last year, when the job market was starting to get pretty hot, I had a couple places stall for up to 5 weeks.  Sometimes they get new directions, or they get confused between candidates.....in short, different reasons can happen.  I had 2 of them apologize and admit they did a poor job of communicating to me.  The place I finally came to in Des Moines was pretty quick on the uptake, but I was exactly what they were looking for.  So while it does vary, IMO, he should hear from them if they decide not to select him.

I'm finishing up an MBA with an HR concentration before heading into an HR role this summer. I think it's completely appropriate to reach out to whoever the primary contact point is with the first team, but I would maybe wait a bit longer. There are likely many other things that are higher priority that the team simply doesn't have the HR capacity to tackle at the same time as maintain good communication (not saying this is right, just has been the case in my, albeit limited, work experience). Personally I like to think that I will not let myself/my teams in the future put recruitment communication that far on the back burner, but with the additional pressures the current environment has put on many company's HR functions I think it's possible that this has happened.

I also have come to expect to be ghosted by a fair number of potential employers though, and even in looking for jobs just a few months ago for decently high-profile roles it still happened ~30-40% of the time. It never hurts to reach back out though in my opinion!

I was recently on the market. I was ghosted for all but one interview. Sometime I would get a form email 6 months later saying it has been filled.

I think a lot of it has to do with employers' perceived control of the labor market. Although, things are tilting in the employees favor now.

One side effect of instant communication is ghosting is rampant across society, including job hunt. I’ve had recruiters text me nonstop up to, during, and shortly after an interview, and then ghost me quicker than a tri delt who gave me her number at skeeps if the company isn’t interested further. Very much a love the one you’re with industry. Can blame variable/commission based pay for overworked recruiters in part for this one. 

For sure send follow up message to get feelers, but yes, companies will ghost candidates they’re no longer interested in. 

May have already been said but it's possible your son is being slow played a bit by the teams he's waiting to hear back from. They likely ranked the candidates and sent offers to the top choice and then the next, etc. If each candidate has a period of time to weigh the offer before accepting or declining then they will likely communicate in as vague of terms as possible to lower ranked candidates in hopes they can still give them an offer if they miss on the higher ranked candidates. So it's possible he's not a "no" and they're hoping he's still available if necessary. 

I can say from experience that when we rank candidates we very quickly give offers to our top choices and allow them time to decide. If somebody is a clear no then we thank them for their time but do let them know. It's the "yes, but we like somebody else better" candidates that are in limbo for a bit. 

They grow up so fast, don't they? It seems like only yesterday you were posting about his entry to college. 

I re-entered the job market about 5 years ago and ghosting was far and wide the norm, and I can only imagine it’s the same or worse out there today. 
 

BofA was the only company that reached out to let me know someone else was selected, and even gave constructive criticism when asked. 

I am a physician who works in pharmaceuticals, and not hearing anything back after an in-person interview when I am not getting the job is the norm, whether small biotechs or big pharma companies that are well known. It still surprises me. Whenever I have interviewed people but not offered a position, either the internal recruiter will let them know (usual) or I will (when there is a possibility of future employment). Maybe the internal recruiter isn't really following up, but I doubt that. And this completely predates COVID-19.

In a lot of cases, HR recruiters are entry level employees. Turnover can be pretty significant with that role, meaning youre not always going to get the "proper" treatment. Its not the right thing but it happens.

Always do your own due diligence and follow-up. 

I interviewed for a couple jobs as I was flirting with a company-change early last year.  I had 3 interviews where I talked to the full staff, CFO, CEO, Director of Contracts, President, On-air talent etc and 1 I was offered and turned down, 2 I never heard from. The 2 I never heard from were an American-run Middle Eastern media company (think of America's on-air response to Al-Jazeera) and a mid-sized defense contractor.  I had multiple interviews with each, was down to the final two with each and never heard anything back.  The media company was still looking a few months ago because a recruiter reached out to me to see if I was interested. 

I think there is a change in HR over the recent years as a younger crowd is moving into roles as the older employees retire.  In DC, it's similar to what's happening in the tech world.  My company is about $600m and the CEO, CFO, and director of Accounting are all 41. Most of the older employees are former military/intelligence & the younger ones are specialized or tech.  

It depends. I do a lot of hiring and we usually let people know if they are for sure nos--the ones that are maybes are tougher as we are interviewing other candidates so it may takes some time.

I don't know anything about the MLB hiring process, but if you get an in-person (now Zoom) meeting and there is an HR department, they (HR) lets you know that you didn't get the job (via email). 

It's unprofessional for them to not let you know, again if you had an in-person interview. The exception being if there is a small/ no HR department.

I'm in the process of interviewing for some mid-level jobs in the health tech and medical education space. I've been working with a couple of recruiters for the last month or so. One reached out to me directly on LinkedIn. I talked to her about my CV, and she emailed me back when the company had no further interest. The other recruiter I'm working with now has been very active setting up interviews and following up with me. I had a final round of interviews yesterday, and I am almost positive I will hear back one way or the other.

I don't know how it goes for new graduates, but I've had success working with recruiters.

I've worked a bit with an MLB team, and got some general insight into how they run. This isn't specific to HR/interview/hiring, and may or may not be generalizable to every team in the league. But, my sense is that a lot of them are run like a small family business, more disorganized and dysfunctional, than you would expect given their size and influence. Which means they're more likely to have just dropped the ball (pun intended) on the follow-up. It's possible the person in charge of hiring is some inexperienced nepotism hire that doesn't really know how to be respectful to interviewees, compared to what you would expect from a more professional operation. Again, this is speculation and I don't mean to imply this covers all 30 franchises, just what I have seen and heard in my experience.

My advice is similar to most others on the board: be patient but don't be afraid to reach out and advocate for yourself (or himself, in the case of your son). It's probably especially important for the entry-level type job he applied for. It's more likely to be ignorance than actual malice on their end with the wait and potential ghosting.

In my world it would be a very rare occurrence to never hear back after interviewing (and would reflect poorly on HR and the hiring manager).  Hearing back later than originally indicated would be much more common, though.  Often times managers (or HR) can be a bit optimistic around next steps and if things don't go perfectly then it can take a little more time.  My experience is that's not usually a great sign for the candidate (may mean they're trying to work something out with a preferred candidate but don't yet want to let their #2 candidate go yet, for example), but there are plenty of circumstances where the candidate may still get the job.

I think I am spoiled being in tech (software).  I'm not sure I've ever been ghosted from an interview during my career.  So it probably has a lot to do with # of potential candidates per job.  Tech has always been in demand over the past 20 years so the HR departments are nice to us. :)

They don't want to give definitive "no's" in the off chance they might one day want to hire the person.  Better for them to keep folks around given how tough the market is these days.  This, of course, is ridiculous thinking but I do think it prevails.

Sort of like how prestigious golf clubs that blackball someone may never actually tell them they were rejected, they just never tell them they got in.  Most folks get the hint (and such a thing is rare anyway). 

Both situations help a bit to spare folks hard feelings and potentially lawsuits. 

If they haven’t said no thank keep pursuing the job until they do.

Interviewees should be notified in the least.