AIBU to think this is pretty poor form (job interview related)

Anyone here who has a ‘very junior position’, please raise your hand! 🙋‍♀️

The CEO has minions to read his emails, so he/she won’t even see it.

Just seen, sorry!

Hope is already gone on this one

This is very normal. To be fair its a difficult process and if they have made an offer to a candidate they may be waiting to hear from him or her. Just the admin involved can take quite a while, never mind the decision making. Frustrating but extremely common, even in a normal employment market.

Unfortunately as a PP pointed out we’re not in a normal market: the job market is worse than it has been for decades and employers can take their sweet time making decisions.

I wouldn’t give up hope though. In my experience job decisions are really made to timetable.

"for the type of junior/entry level role that you've gone for"

Clearly you never quite made it as far as middle management but like to be condescending to the (probably very few) people who are junior to you.

You see how we can all make assumptions.

I agree. If someone is unemployed as some candidates may be… £78 could be two weeks food shop!

My standard route to rejecting candidates is to call but they rarely answer, then email to say they haven't got it and include a note to say to book a call with me to get feedback. Roughly 90% of people don't ask for feedback. It's really weird, why wouldn't you want it? That's why I don't spend hours individualising feedback in every reject email - I would just be wasting my time. However, when someone books in with me, I will spend 10-15 minutes going through their CV & supporting statement and will give them an overview of what their competition did/had that got them over the line. I would much rather commit a lot of my time to providing proper feedback to a couple of people who ask for it and want it than writing it all in an email that is going to be disregarded and deleted.

You should always ask for this feedback, it is so important in helping you for your next application. Ask for verbal rather than written if you can. I'm sorry you didn't get it, hopefully the feedback will help you for the next one.

Yanbu op. Similar happened to me recently (and I had a thread on here about it) - the difference for me being that the interview was only a 45 minute train/tube ride away.

But I knew they were only seeing 6 people and I ended up being really angry about their lack of communication after the interview. They eventually wrote (not one of the 2 interviewers, some other anonymous bod) an email about 3 weeks later.

On the upside - I now have a better job . Shorter hours, more money, 10 minutes walk to work. I couldn't be happier! Good luck to you @Itsmeanttobesummer.

Ironically the industry I work in is retail.

The people you interview aren’t just potential employees, they’re potential customers too.
So I think for that reason we do take a bit more of a focus on the recruitment process, getting it right and ensuring people have a positive experience.

It simply boils down to how would you like to be treated. Then applying that to how you treat others. It’s not difficult, but clearly some companies struggle with that concept!

I was actually interviewed for a part time retail job for high end fashion (which I'm glad now I didn't get), I have to say that shop has a more strategic focus on how to interview and the interview process than a lot of places I have interviewed for, and they take pride in the process.
Lots of senior managers saying they invest in people, well obviously not courses on how to interview. Fine if your company is informal, baffling if you say you hold high recruitment standards.

Copilot (the paid version) is also very helpful as a starting point in my line of work

Claude is really valuable. I agree that other bots, particularly GPT are way way off the mark but Claude is quite remarkable at writing and also accurate.

I’m always transparent with my students and say I don’t care if they use AI (which is the uni’s policy anyway and always has been) BUT if they give me a shite essay with hallucinated references it’s getting a low grade/potentially a fail in some cases e.g when a student submitted a copy and pasted GPT essay and referred to Miss Lonelyhearts as a female!

Sorry you didn’t get the job OP. I think in future you should assume you didn’t if you haven’t heard back within a day or two.

I’ve done a few interviews over teams. There is no reason not to.

TBF I think three years ago is pretty out of date for the changes in the current market. I don't disagree with AI not being the right way forward but lots of job hunters feel caught in a trap of needing it to hit certain key words and wanting to be authentic. And yes I think you would feel differently applying in the corporate world.

Sorry you didn’t get it

Sounds like you’d already prepared yourself for that answer, but doesn’t make it any easier to swallow!

Well quite.

I can honestly say in my 25+ years of recruiting, I have never had several back up candidates. I may have one additional candidate that did well at interview and passed but was just pipped at the post, that I can tell that to and offer them another role as soon as one becomes available. But I’ve never had 3 or 4 candidates that I’ll go through if the one before declines an offer.

Where I work, we pride ourselves on ensuring candidates have a good experience and if there’s any hold up in decisions/the process they are contacted by me. But that’s because there is communication with the candidate all the way through the process.

I don’t choose the final interview outcome but I am fully responsible for the entire recruitment and shortlisting process and ensuring Hiring Managers know the process and how to interview. I also challenge my Hiring Managers pretty hard if they’re dragging their feet and tell them to give me something to go back to the candidate with, so they have some communication from us.

And if a candidate is successful and they’ve had a really positive experience, they’re far more likely to refer colleague’s to the business also. Lots of businesses seem to forget how powerful word of mouth is.

I got my current role in 2023 and wouldn't have dreamed of using AI in my application (I can't remember if ChatGPT existed at the time). The style of writing it produces is terrible and really off-putting. Having seen many examples of it, I feel it's quite easy to spot, although many people think it sounds better than anything they could write themselves. In my field though, there is an element of people knowing your name and the work you do so that plays a part in being shortlisted. Maybe I'd feel differently if I was applying to huge corporations where I was just one of many people.

Sorry to hear OP - but at least youve heard back - there are so many who dont even bother telling candidates if they've not got the job...

Are you currently actively looking for work? What you have described isn't even a good comparison to the current messed up situation for AI being used for ATS? Obviously the student should of done her own work, that is pretty obvious. The current situation with CVs being automatically rejected if they don't hit key words in ATS is completely different. And if you are currently hiring and can't understand why this is happening you need to also do some research or go on to linkedin to look at the current chaos there.

I totally agree. You either submit your authentic CV or you use AI to help and then you review it yourself to make sure it represents you. The expectation for all candidates to be experts in tailoring there CVs for multiple roles and then writing pages and pages of personal statements is mental and exhausting.
And yes interview questions are not meant to be an exam, it's meant to be able to demonstrate what you know.

Job market is terrible. Ghosting is common, even after interview (though in your case maybe they are still thinking about it). Paying expenses is a rarity. A friend recently had 5 interviews for a single job, and then was rejected (not a senior job) - she got accepted for a different job after 4 interviews. It took her 18 months to get that job.

All of these things are crap.

I'm sure this doesn't help, but you're not alone.

Definitely! I recently had a PhD student hauled over the coals in her viva for AI use. The external examiner was enraged (student had used fake quotes and references produced by ChatGPT).

Eek but surely you wouldn’t want them to be using AI in their research? People still don’t seem aware that what it produces is bullshit and factually incorrect. Maybe it depends on what area you work in but in my area, factual accuracy is paramount so I would be ditching anyone who can’t do a job application or interview without using AI