Have you ever crushed an interview, gotten the old "we decided to move forward with other candidates", and then saw the job get reposted? So it was all BS right? There weren't "other candidates". You just objectively weren't good enough.
Nope nope nope. NEVER under estimate how inpersonal, bureaucratic, and just broken the hiring process is.
I have watched so many botched recruiting attempts over years, some of them nothing short of infuriating. It's such a shame. I recently watched the previously mentioned scenario happen too :(
There's always something misaligned among Recruiters, the hiring Manager, and HR. Great candidates end up getting rejected or ghosted way too often. Now AI has made it much harder to screen candidates. It will get worse before it gets better.
So never take it personally, never get too invested in one position. Just apply apply apply!
What if you've done 5+ interviews? Projects? Then ghosted.... Should you not take it personally? Granted, a lot of people need reality checks and/or are unreasonable in expectations but never take it personally? Apply apply apply? That's what me and countless others are doing or have done and it gets nowhere.
At a previous company I worked at, we had a star candidate get through almost the entire interview process and we expected to send an offer. Right at this time, the company rolled out their new interview process and we weren't allowed to grandfather this candidate in. We had to start over and send them through the entire new interview process.
We were obviously livid and the manager desputed with upper management for awhile. Not sure what the Recruiter/HR was telling the candidate during this time they were kinda in limbo. But almost certainly from the candidate's perspective, it would appear we weren't interested in them. Which was far from the truth.
The candidate eventually took another offer and we lost them.
Good for them. What in the ever living crap was your upper management thinking, treating people like that is such a travesty.
Common corporate behavior. Particularly in the United States.
That's weapons grade bullshit. That company doesn't deserve to have employees at all.
Common corporate behavior. Particularly in the United States.
Well they laid off a whopping 30% of their over 1000 employees all in one go. So I guess... careful what you wish for? Lol!
What sort of business is this?
Guess the candidate took it personally. Good for them.
Interestingly, this just happened to a friend of mine in the middle stages of recruitment. He emailed the head of HR with an appeal, and was moved forward to the final recruiting stages. Some places aren't soulless.
Last time we hired an engineer for our team, we had sit down interviews with 5 people. 3 of them were qualified for the position and we ended up splitting hairs to pick 1 of them. The 2 others that didn't get picked were just as qualified.
The best is "we think you'd be a great fit" just to be ghosted like an ex GF
Great advice: do not take things personally and do not overinvest in one position only, keep building your pipeline
Apply and forget, move on. After the application, give them as much energy as they give you. I always remind myself of this whenever a rejection does hit hard: If I find myself with the time and expectations to take rejections personally, I'm not busy enough trying to bang the door down.
I was screamed at during a job interview--by the interviewer--who rejected me. And once I was almost hit in the head by an employer who threw a heavy silver paperweight at me. I work in the literary community, where acquisitions editors keep bottles of bourbon in their desk drawers.
Always easier said than done but you are 100% correct. Often we do not know what goes on behind the scenes and it is very easy to dump our anger off on individuals as opposed to the organization sometimes...at least for me. I would say rejection gets easier the more it happens to you but ive been looking for a permanent full time role for over a year and it just makes me more depressed each time. Stay strong friend and hopefully you will find your next role soon
Consider just mailing your resume to the head of the company.
I feel like my great-Grand-Pops is speaking to me from Heaven!
Never be too invested is indeed the way… learned it the hard way and it took a toll on my mental health fr