Thank You For Your Interest

Dear Yael,

Thank you for your interest in our position. We appreciate the time and effort you put into your application, a sentence we include because our applicant tracking system will not send the email without it.

After careful review, careful consideration, and careful deliberation, we have decided to move forward with other candidates whose experience more closely aligns with our current needs at this stage at this time. We are not going to tell you which needs. Rest assured that they were needs.

We want to be clear that this decision reflects the strength of the pool and not your qualifications, which we will now praise in specific and affectionate detail before declining to employ you, or in many cases, even interview you.

Your background is awesome. Your experience is impressive. We loved learning about your approach. Nobody has a better understanding of your skills and expertise than we do, which is why we feel comfortable telling you that they are not what we are looking for.

Please note the following:

If you applied to multiple departments at our organization, this email represents your standing with only one of them. It also represents your standing with all of them.

You may check the status of your other applications on your candidate dashboard. Your candidate dashboard says "Under Review." It has said "Under Review" since April. It will say "Under Review" when you die.

We received an overwhelming number of applications. An unprecedented volume. The most competitive search we have ever run. Nearly 300 people. We mention this so you understand that the problem is arithmetic and not you, and also so you understand that you were one of 300.

We will retain your application and personal data indefinitely in case we think you might be good for another position. We will never think this. You may request deletion via a link that does not resolve.

We noticed the Pulitzer. Congratulations! It did not come up.

Let's stay in touch. We encourage you to check our careers page periodically, connect with us on LinkedIn, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and join us on Reddit, where you can learn about the exciting problems we are solving without you.

Please do not be a stranger. Please understand that "do not be a stranger" is a closing formality and carries no obligations on our end whatsoever.

We would also like to gauge your interest in freelance work, so we can benefit from your expertise without offering you benefits. We have not thought about what that would look like, or any conflicts of interest it may create. We wanted to check with you first.

We wish you the best of luck in your job search, your future endeavors, your professional endeavours, your career journey, and your continued success.

Regards/Best/Sincerely/Warm regards/Respectfully,
The Recruiting Team

This message was sent at 7:05 a.m. It is identical to the one we sent you five days ago about a different role. We did not notice.

Appendix: variants received

The Referral Special
Thank you for being referred! Our recruiting team will review your background and reach out if there is a fit. This is the last sentence you will ever receive from us. You will spend some time wondering whether it was a rejection. It was.

The Sincere One
I just got word that our selected candidate was confirmed. "Just" is carrying the weeks between the date you were told to expect this and the date you got it. We went with someone who had more of the one thing you had less of. It was a delight meeting you. This letter is warm and specific and written by a person, and it still ends the same way, which is somehow worse.

The Apology
I apologize. I interpreted your last message as you withdrawing yourself from a process you were not aware existed. The roles are filled. Best of luck.

The Escape
Your application has been withdrawn. Not by you.