For example, I’m a Marketing Manager however due to the ineffectiveness of my company which is based in another country, me and my General Manager are the ones who are left to interview in the local country.

I short-listed roughly 100 interviewee’s from a pool of 500 to 600 horrid resumes and we interviewed them and we told them we’d contact them after 3 or 4 weeks with a response. Unfortunately, it’s been a few months and because of our corporate office still “deciding” on the issues of salaries and qualifications required, we can’t possibly tell any of the interviewed candidates yes or no. We’re not doing it out of rudeness, but the situation is as Jason described… months fly by.

As for the anonymous email: just ask yourself what the purpose of sending it is. Nobody ‘deserves’ a response. It’d be nice to have concrete closure but the world is often ambiguous. Don’t think about ‘deserve’, think about what is going to get you what you want. Deserve and should are words that are overused.

As for the rudeness of companies not giving the response: some don’t have the processes in place to respond to all interviewers let alone applicants. Many companies get all their applications by paper (or fax) and don’t have the admin resources to enter all the info into a database for a merge letter.

If you interviewed 20 people for a warehouse job, are so completely swamped that it makes no sense to prioritize the data entry to get response letters out to non-selects, and then remember 2 months later when you do have the opportunity, do you still send the letter? Maybe, but it also makes sense to assume they’ve figured it out by then.

And cowardice is never polite.

This isn’t about weighing in on something you did, it’s about protecting the people you are setting up to get hurt by helping them develop the skills to handle the situation the right way.

My 6 yo daughter appears in some of my vlog entries (including the one on indirect feedback). She knows when she’s done a good job on camera merely by whether or not I ask her to do another take. It doesn’t matter how nicely I ask for a retake, the request itself signals the quality of her performance. Ditto your email. It calls the hirer’s attention to the process, and your displeasure with it. The note could read “pretty please, with a cherry on top,” it wouldn’t matter. And if you re-read your recent posts about interviewing etiquette, along with the tone of the comments, I think you’ll have a hard time defending the assertion that the intent behind the email is anything BUT to offer your readers a (n admittedly clever and funny) way to bitch-slap a “rude” hirer.

@Johnny—I see this constantly, not just with candidates, but with employees, too, who grossly overestimate their abilities and then run into problems when a boss holds them (dare I say it) accountable for better results. For more on this topic, see my article on the Law of Ignorance.

@Ashley—The problem with creative is that no one talks about the missing ingredient: the person trying to pull it off. We like to take charisma off the table and pretend it’s not a factor in life, but tough nuts, it is, and it is in a big way. Give 3 people the same joke to tell, and one will pull it off, one will come across as inept, and one will offend the audience. Same joke—all that changed was the person delivering it.

To understand why a creative strategy works one moment and not the next, you need to understand the the people involved. You need information about the person who did it, the person who received it, the relationship those two had, mutual friends they might have had, conversations they may have had to set up the creative event—everything. Because all that stuff matters!

If you have even the slightest doubt about your ability to pull off a stunt like that, skip it.

As a Millennial, I don’t think I have an inflamed ego or that sense of entitlement that older generations say my generation has. But I do think we’re taught to have it. Like if we work hard enough, we DESERVE reward. Well, sometimes that’s just not the case. Sometimes you work hard and you still don’t get the job. Two years ago I thought I’d graduate college and land a great job with a magazine just because I worked my butt off and got great grades my entire life. Well, other than because the industry took a nose dive, I didn’t get any of the internships for which I applied and, a year later, applied for dozens of jobs and still didn’t get anything. So I sucked it up, stayed with my internship for 14 months and waited until it was my turn. No creative “bitch slaps” to my superiors. Or Angry Grams. Just patience.

Millennials should read this article and take notes. Serious notes.

Best example was a candidate who was referred to me via a connection on LinkedIn and he then in turn started to stalk me. He also called into the switchboard and socially engineered the name of one of the senior directors. He wanted to prove that he was the “right” candidate for the marketing role and bombarded us with analysis and reports that were not only bad, but just plain awful. The kicker, he thought that this would help his candidacy, and it didn’t.

His best bonehead move was when he sent the recruiting team and the senior director an “Angry Gram”. Apparently he didn’t understand the concepts behind the web app and the funny marketing behind the tool. We finally had to tell him directly via a terse phone call to stop.

He didn’t see it, but he was a overaggressive, annoying, tool.

I really do think it’s BS that interviewers display a lack of regard for the time many interviewers put in; it takes me 10 seconds to send an email letting a candidate know I’m not longer considering them for a position.