HN Explorer

Ask HN: Hiring managers what would it take for you to reply to every applicant?

58 points by deedubaya ↗ HN
Anyone who has applied for a job in the last few years knows the routine: take the time to apply to numerous job postings, maybe get an interview or two, but mostly never get a response yay or nay. You might even get a few interviews in, only to never hear another peep.

If an applicant takes the time to apply to your posting, why not give them a follow up regardless?

What would it take?

Disclaimer: I'm building https://www.hireloop.io to hopefully bring communication full-circle. I really want to make this less painful.

56 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] thread
paradox95
What kind of reply would you want? Would a simple "no thanks" be enough?

I have been in the situation before where replying to everyone with anything meaningful is simply not feasible. Maybe for a recruiter whose full-time job is that but not for a hiring manager who also has to balance their regular duties as well.

I have spent much more time on the applicant side of things than the hirer side so I understand the goal. It can be frustrating to not get anything. If it is a job you really want you may be inclined to hold everything else off until you hear something just on the hope that maybe they haven't gotten to your resume yet. So a little closure would be nice.

So maybe a better question for you is what are you trying to accomplish by getting hiring managers to reply to all candidates? Give them closure or provide feedback? If the former than maybe a simple "no thanks" will do.

By the way, I am speaking clearly to the scenario where a candidate sends in a resume and doesn't hear anything back. In my opinion, even if the hiring manager or recruiter does a phone call the candidate deserves a clear "no" email at a minimum.

dvtv75
A no is always good. In my last 100 or so applications, I've had about three responses (one of them was interviewing).
deedubaya
I think a "no thanks" is enough.

Would you give every applicant a "no thanks" if it was a simple click of a button? Would that be valuable to you?

Twisell
Yup because I once applied to a big company and to this day I still don't now if a human was actually involved in any part of the process... Given the company and given the job it's quit possible that the HR people just filtered out the result using standardized fields and never gave an eye at the CV & resume I took 5 hour to write.

Months later I learn that they fire half of their HR externals contractors (maybe for the best).

So in the end yes, a simple "I read, not interested" would be great.

And if applicable a variation that could be "not for this job, but maybe try another one" or even "you need more experience" would actually be even more useful.

PS: What I learn though is that for big company hiring process is broken. My best chance of being recruited is to build a great project and communicate about it at my current job (but that's not easy if you are at the bottom of the stack and writing code under copyright...), but now I'm even less tempted to even apply to theses big Co.

abraae
Disclaimer: we write recruitment software.

Virtually every recruitment tool in existence already does this. Any company that doesn't send a"sorry" email to applicants is either not using any technology at the point of screening (unusual for anyone of any size) or has a screwed up recruitment process (common in large companies).

You'll need to find other secret sauce.

Your goal could be to find a way to encourage managers/recruiters to provide more genuine feedback.

How about tiered responses, and tools to track and prompt when the tiers are not being used correctly?

T-Winsnes
Any reply would be good. Even if it's a pre-canned copy/paste. It answers the questions that comes up if you don't hear anything: "did my email not send properly?", "did they miss me?", "are they ignoring me on purpose?" etc.

It takes almost no effort, and shows that you care about the people around you. If someone came up to you and asked you in person, would you ignore them and keep walking?

bostik
We respond to all candidates, in all stages.

Now to be honest - we use greenhouse, and their tooling for recruitment workflow is not bad. A decision to accept/reject will always trigger an email. Of course we've templated our own custom responses, but editing the outgoing email before sending is also easy enough.

As for interview feedback, I personally write my interview notes in such a way that if the candidate asks for more detailed feedback, the notes can be pasted pretty much as-is. When the hiring workflow and candidate communication are intricately linked, things are less likely to fall between the cracks. Everyone feels better.

nateps
Lever (YC S12) is a modern Talent Acquisition Suite, and we hear from our customers that writing rejection emails is really difficult, especially when you want to leave a good impression. Here are some tips we wrote up: https://www.lever.co/blog/how-to-write-human-rejection-lette...
shin_lao
Tip 3 is really a bad advice. It's not a good idea to say why you rejected the candidate, you have no idea how it could be taken, especially if you are facing a litigious person.

Best to write some "you were not an exact match for our needs" reply.

nateps
Agree this is definitely true in many cases, especially with applicants. Where it can be OK to give candidates feedback tends to be when you have gotten to later in the process with them and built more of a relationship. The article was meant more for the general case. I totally agree a lot of judgement is needed.

Thanks for you feedback on this!

pytrin
> If an applicant takes the time to apply to your posting, why not give them a follow up regardless?

I'm not a hiring manager, but as the CTO I do review a lot of resumes incoming for technical positions we are hiring for.

The vast majority of applicants do not appear to be taking any time at all aside from selecting their resume to upload and clicking submit. It doesn't seem like they even read the job requirements, since 90% of them do not meet the minimal requirements we post. Some of them are not even developers, but they apply for a developer position.

If someone does appear to be relevant and did also include a cover letter relevant to the position, I will respond, regardless if they're a fit or not.

For me the biggest pain is the sheer amount of irrelevant submissions, which makes you numb after a while. This is why I don't believe in job postings anymore and mostly do headhunting.

Hope this helps!

deedubaya
Thanks for the feedback.

When you do hire, how do you collect/manage your applicants?

pytrin
We used to receive inbound from sites like Ziprecruiter and Indeed. Now I'm using the Stackoverflow Talent service to search for applicants that fit our requirements. I don't start conversations with more than 1 or 2 at the same time, so I don't really need an additional tool to manage them.
erichurkman
When you get to a certain size, if you've got the right culture, referrals will be a huge stream of applicants. For me, about 80% of our candidates are referrals.

I view referral rates as a trailing indicator of culture — if you enjoy working at company X, you'll refer your friends to work there, too. If you hate it or don't believe in its prospects, you won't.

madaxe_again
I thought so too - we recruited heavily this way.

There is however the ever present law of unintended consequences.

Referrals are often friends. People like working with their friends. Whoops, a clique forms. Whoops, the leader of the clique has decided that the clique is going on strike unless the leader is given a promotion and a raise, and the entire clique will quit if you don't. While you're mulling this over the clique explodes as it turns out the leader's lieutenant has been shagging the same married clique member as the leader.

You can't fire them without cause, you can't chasten them for how they conduct their personal lives, you can only hold your head in yourself if hands as you watch politics tear chunks from your business like coursing hounds.

So, referrals are good but I learned the hard way that one shouldn't rely on it - it leads to confusion over whose damn company it is.

junke
When I submit my application, I generally get a confirmation email ("You have successfully applied"). Some companies say "If you don't hear back from us before two weeks, consider yourself rejected". That is good enough for me.
nateps
Check out Lever (YC S12) if you want a tool to help with more of this: https://www.lever.co/hire

I'm one of our founders and CTO, and we individually contact every applicant to our jobs. Lever has the ability to respond via a general email address for your company or your own email, so you can choose the appropriate level of personalization per email template.

dx034
Wouldn't it be pretty easy to send a standard email saying that the application was rejected? Maybe have 2-3 with different reasons, should fit nearly all cases. For the applicant it's still much nicer than hearing back nothing at all.
madaxe_again
That requires one to spend time reading and thinking about whether someone falls under "can't write a coherent sentence", "not remotely qualified", and "this is a cv?!".

We would always give detailed feedback to everyone who came to interview, but candidates who fell far from the field didn't get more than the automated reply. Originally I tried responding to everyone, but it's a sucker's game. It isn't just the time spent replying in the first place, even if it only takes a moment, it's the replies asking "why do you think you're qualified to tell if I'm qualified", "here's my creative writing piece from 11th grade, for a developer position, read it please", "I'll sue you, fucker! I know my rights!", "ok I understand can you teach me to program?", "ok I understand, here's my startup idea, what do you think?".

All it takes is one candidate who responds irrationally to a rejection and your entire day, and attitude to other candidates, can be blown up.

So, just like there's a bar for an invite to interview, there's a bar for a positive rejection.

sameera_sy
Yeah, Exactly. Each applicant is waiting forever to receive an update from their side regardless of what the end result is. It is so unfair from their side that they just stop replying on purpose.
kutkloon7
I find it hard to believe that 90% of the resumes is that bad. To be honest, I have never been in a situation where I have to recruit people.

You are basically saying that you don't send a simple email because people don't send you a proper resume. However, by sending you a resume they have already put in a lot more effort than you do. It comes across as very arrogant when you don't even send an automated mail. I would even argue that it IS arrogant.

jarofgreen
> To be honest, I have never been in a situation where I have to recruit people.

I have (tho admittedly, not in the tech sector). But I can believe it.

pytrin
There is no way to automate it with the systems we worked with. We receive the resume through their interface, it doesn't go directly to our Email and doesn't share the contact details directly.

Honestly, if you'd seen the kind of resumes we received you would not think most candidates put any effort at all. Like another person said here, it looks like most of them are spamming all job listing on those sites.

slosh
What about software that auto emails/ calls / text everyone not the new hire? is that too much to ask spend? what if someone like monster.com sponsored the service?
lj3
> since 90% of them do not meet the minimal requirements we post.

What minimal requirements are those? Most companies post a laundry list of every little framework and tool they're working with looking for the unicorn that already has years of experience in the same exact stack. Years of those types of posts have trained engineers to apply anyway, since most employers don't really care if you have every requirement on the list.

pytrin
For example, we posted a job for a mid-level front end developer. We got a bunch of resumes from people who just finished a code bootcamp earlier this year, when we specified 3 years of front end development experience as the main requirement. Why does someone who finished a bootcamp 3 months ago and hasn't done any professional work yet thinks they should apply for a mid-level position, is beyond me.

Other candidates apply with 0 development experience - their resume frames them as "project managers" or "Search engine specialist" with no development related prior experience anywhere. I feel I wasted my time everytime I go through one of those.

6nf
We get 200+ responses to most job postings. 90% or more of those are from candidates that just spam every job ad on the internet with their CV even if they live on the other side of the planet. We can't respond to each of those.

We will respond to everyone that gets past this first round. And if you get a phone / in person interview we will definitely call you back to say 'no sorry'.

deedubaya
It seems like high volume is a problem. How do you manage your applicants? Would you reply to every applicant if it were just one click? Would that even be valuable to you?
kriro
I'd say that you should be able to rifle through 200 responses and sort out the crap and shove them into a folder where they'll get some friendly auto response rather quickly. Even if you go a step further and tag the mails as "not qualified enough" and "doesn't fit the job posting" and have them get different responses based on that it shouldn't take that long. I'd personally consider every unanswered job application bad PR for the company/a mild failure. Takes about a workday if it takes you 2 minutes/application. I'd guess this can be done in <1 minute though but since you probably have to open an attachment for many I think two is the safer assumption (from dealing with a lot of unsolicited mail).

Is it really that unreasonable to spend one work day per job posting to presort? The task can be parallelized nicely and even delegated down to interns if you think it's not worth the time of someone in HR (I'd strongly advocate against this).

dimino
Why put any effort whatsoever into it? What exactly is the bad PR? The fact is, maybe you don't deserve a response just because you sent in your resumé.

Also, "why don't you just" is one of those famous things developers hear all the time and your comment reeks of it.

kriro
It's a simple long tail problem. People tend to be grumpy if they don't get a response (at least some people will be, statistically speaking). Those people will likely act as negative multipliers when it comes to your organization (especially since some of them will already be in a bad mood if they are job hunting out of necessity). They may or may not be less grumpy if they get a response, my hypothesis is that at least some of them will be less grumpy. If you get 200 replies for each job posting and presumably post a couple of jobs, preventing some negative feedback (especially in the age of social media) for a modest amount of work should be a no-brainer.

You can chose to have a "clearly spam" category that you don't reply to I suppose but apart from these even the worst written applications deserve the decency of an answer (personal opinion). Similarly I also think even the most brain dead customer requests and support questions should be answered (once again personal opinion).

The benefit is obviously very hard to measure which is why I can only make an argument based on reasoning (or dogma I suppose). The cost however is really easy to measure so the counterargument is easier to make.

_coldfire
I'm making an assumption about your job offerings, but think this is a common problem with remote work. We live in a global economy where equivalent positions can earn vastly more than others. Such disparity can breed the mountain of applications for decent roles. There's no easy solution, can easily say the polar opposite of having few applications is hardly any better having worked in a company that struggles to fill vital roles yet refuses to go down the remote path.

That said, this thread is quite cathartic to read, there's been times where I've heard no response at all and gotten quite disheartened, nice to see things from the other side.

foobazzy
Well, I am guilty of this. I do apply to jobs on the "other side of the planet" if it includes the keyword `remote`. Or if the job is too interesting to me, I shoot a mail asking if they are looking for overseas/remote work candidates.

The problem comes when I don't get a response. I tend to forget where I applied to months ago and I can't search my mailbox for a response. Assumptions: 1) No human saw it. 2) Maybe their policies changed, so let's ask again.

And hence, I become a spammer. I really don't know how to solve this.

quesera
That's what your Sent Mail folder is for. Or some trivial record keeping.

Not being able to resolve that for yourself seems like a demonstration of sketchy problem-solving skills. This is a bad approach when trying to get hired.

SerLava
I just applied to a remote position posted on HN and some other places.

They sent out a mass email about 3-4 days later saying they had 550 applicants they were trying to sort through- so hold tight basically.

Now I pretty much know I'll get a mass email "no" if they don't decide to interview me. Which is nice.

sean_patel
> Disclaimer: I'm building https://www.hireloop.io to hopefully bring communication full-circle. I really want to make this less painful.

https://www.hireloop.io/how-does-it-work

Goes to 403 Forbidden. Atleast put something in there???

403 Forbidden

Code: AccessDenied

Message: Access Denied

RequestId: 4XMR36267413GRGBC72

HostId: BGu7DieumfZVCvftdpMIhXeFm2Qyyy2TyJ+P9jpQr3csSyYNIZBoGKhush8nMc4rHSj6+HighM=3p-

All other pages, including Pricing page, work tho ;) https://www.hireloop.io/#pricing

deedubaya
CloudFront was giving me troubles. Thanks for pointing out my malfunction!
adrianmacneil
Pro tip: If you want a reply to your application, try to avoid cold emailing hiring managers your resume. Often my inbox has a lot happening, and I'm not inclined to spend time copying your resume into our hiring software unless there is something spectacular about your email or background. Emailing hiring managers out of the blue also will not help you bypass any steps in the hiring process.

By filling out the application form on our website, you load all the information into the form for me, and are guaranteed that a recruiter will follow up on your entry. If you want to send an email to the hiring manager as well to explain why you are so awesome, that's fine, but it's probably not going to help your chances of getting a job any more than just applying.

madeofpalk
I landed an interview at a larger tech company overseas by doing a hybrid approach of cold emailing and I'm 90% sure that's the only reason why I got the interview, and then the job.

After applying online through the traditional route I searched for the recruiter's email or linkedin and emailed them to 'follow up' on my application. It was this that I got a reply to, not (necessarily) the application through the website.

alanfranzoni
Well... the converse is true as well. I've already got a well polished CV (I usually keep the resume mostly identical for my job applications, while I customize a summary header and I write a dedicated cover letter), an updated LinkedIn profile, a website, a blog, a Stack Overflow jobs profile...

and I need to enter that information AGAIN in your system, which is possibly slow, hard to use and/or requires registration, just because your process says so?

You'd better be a great company to work with and/or pay very high salaries, or you won't get my attention. Today the developer market is largely driven by developers, not by companies; make sure your practices are not driving potential good candidates away from your company!

antisthenes
The only lesson from your post is that your hiring software sucks.

Sorry.

trevyn
If this is how you're applying to jobs, you're doing it wrong.

Target a small handful of companies strongly relevant to your experience and interests, and start informally chatting with people who work there. Ask about the culture. Get coffee. Ask how they like working there. Talk about what you've been working on that's related. Ask some questions about interesting problems they're trying to solve. Be interested and interesting. Points for going straight to an Eng VP or CTO -- even if they don't have the time to talk to you, they'll pass it to one of their underlings who does, and when your VP/CTO tells you to follow up with someone, you do.

The resume should be mostly a formality AFTER they've expressed some interest in your skills and have invited you to formally interview.

And if it doesn't pan out, you've already made personal connections with people there. Get coffee again for feedback.

dimino
If you're already employed and looking to change positions, sure.

But if you're unemployed, you don't have this luxury.

[dead] ohwello
I found that a wide funnel was very useful when changing jobs recently. Getting a lot of offers meant that I didn't mind rejection, and didn't feel dependant on or attached to any company in particular. This improved my negotiating power and my decision-making process.
hbcondo714
I was recently laid off so I'm on the job hunt. I applied to Snap, Inc and received this response within 2 weeks of applying

Dear [First Name],

Thank you for your time and interest in a career at Snap Inc. At this time, our team has decided to evaluate other candidates for the [role]. However, we encourage you to apply in the future for positions matching your goals because our needs change frequently. Thanks again!

Best wishes, Snap Inc.

They must receive an enormous amount of applicants from all over so even though I didn't make it anywhere in the interview process, I'm appreciative of receiving a response and getting closure.

When I was employed, our HR department used Monster's ATS. They found it difficult to use and didn't bother to inform candidates of their application status.

jasoncrawford
If I were using a system where rejecting a candidate was a one-click operation, and it also sent them a notification, I would click it. That's what it would take--it would have to be that easy. There are too many resumes.

(That's at resume review stage. If a candidate has actually talked to you, including any kind of interview, then they deserve a response, and I do follow up with everyone who gets to that stage.)

WhiteSource1
That works for automated systems, where you get an automated response. But hiring managers are busy, have multiple processes with HR, and with the rise of job sites end up getting hundreds of resumes, most of which are completely irrelevant, since it's so easy to blast our resume across the Internet.
jasonkester
As a hiring manager, your job is finding somebody to hire. And that's it.

If you want somebody to critique your cover letter and resume writing skills, interviewing ability, etc. I'm sure you can find somebody to do that. But they will charge you for the service.

It seems a bit silly to expect some random company's hiring guy to provide you that service free of charge.

codingdave
> I really want to make this less painful.

For who?

Replying to every applicant, the majority of which are borderline spam, is just extra work with zero added benefit to the business. Even if you make it easy, it is extra work. Not to be heartless, but people might then actually reply to you, and you spend more time dealing with someone you didn't even want to interview in the first place.

I get that as an applicant, this sucks. But as a hiring manager? Full communication with every applicant is MORE painful. And that is why they do not do it.

smoyer
We have several people that apply for every job we post (and there are hundreds per year). On top of that we receive resumes that clearly have nothing to do with the position as well as cover letters that have the job title wrong. Some attach these materials without actually filling out the online application.

When there's no effort put into applying for our position, I don't see the need to put effort into a reply ... And eventually a flag in our system will send them a generic rejection (approved by legal I'm sure).

On the flip side, we're currently looking for a Google-style SET to work on testing Enterprise Java software and have received almost no resumes that fit the position as we envision it ... That's a pretty clear indication that the job description we posted needs work.

EDIT: This position is still open ... My email is in my profile if you're interested.

agrafix
Many applications that we get do not meet the key requirements from the job posting and are very generic. If the applicant did not put any effort into the application - why should I? Maybe this process can be automated with some ML/NLP to check if the application (a) matches at least SOME requirements and (b) is not too generic but actually hand written to match your posting and company.
invaliduser
This is probably bad practice, and I don't hire much anymore, but when I did, I could usually put the resumes in three slots: 1/ Good match, want to see 2/ Maybe 3/ No

I generally give an immediate answer to 1 et 3. 2 are applicants that may do the job, but I am not really convinced, don't seem as great for the job as 1, and want to see them only if nobody in 1 gets the job. Also, 2 is definitely all the applicants that never received any answer from me, because I don't feel like telling them a straight no (in cas I'd need to interview them), and the job process usually takes a very long time. In the end, I either forget/procrastinate/feel like it's been to long to decently answer, so no answer.

As I said, I'm not proud of that, I know this is bad and not respectful to applicants, just being honest at how bad I am at the recruitment job.

rvpolyak
I received 155 resumes for the last postion I posted it would be too time consuming to reply to every single one. However I always contact all candidates by phone that came in for an interview to let them know we have chosen not to pursue them for the position.