To call a company that turned me down?

[Eyesonthesize]

There was my perfect job. Increase in salary. I could DO the job. And we need the extra money badly - we are running out of savings as more is going out than coming in.

I spent so long researching, I read everything that the CEO and directors have ever said about anything. I did about 5 drafts of the cover letter. II have never tried harder for a job.

Turned down without an interview. It was a really well paid job for what they were looking for - as they said they've been surprised at the huge number of quality applications - but i wasn't as it was v well paid for the job and sector.

I was fully imagining my job there. My commute, what I would do there. I keep daydreaming about receiving a email inviting me to interview and letting myself imagine myself doing the job.

That sounds crazy right. I just nearly called the company to ask them to re-consider - that's a stupid idea right?

Can someone give me some stern words and help me get a grip.

Definitely.

I’ve had this sort of experience sort of recently but I did have the interview and got down to final 2. They’d already decided an internal applicant had it but I think she was either moving internally for some reason or not decided as I was asked how quickly I could start before, then there was a gap of a month before they got back to me.

It was my bank I’d had for over 30 years including savings and mortgage with them and I was furious afterwards and I do plan to switch accounts. It was a fairly niche department so they could check to see how long I’d been there. I also thought they’d be a good employer.

In your case definitely don’t chase them as they will think you’re strange.

This isn’t true- what if there were 500 applicants who met the essential criteria?!

You would be unreasonable to as them to reconsider. They've already told you that other candidates had stronger CV's so that is your feedback. I'm sorry you are so disappointed, I've been there myself and it is an awful feeling.

We had a lot of applicants is usually code for "we were only going to interview the two internal people we already knew but now need to explain to all these amazing people why we're not calling them, bollocks that'll do as an excuse"

I see no harm in phoning them. Yes, the job may have been ear marked for an internal candidate. On the other hand it may not, or they or the other applicants may not get the job/turn it down.

If you do, have your list of why you are suitable to hand.

I don't think this makes you look weird, it makes you look keen.

No they do not.

www.acas.org.uk/hiring-someone/how-to-advertise-a-job

🤣🤣 my bad I thought they had to. People can chill.

It was a fairly niche department so they could check to see how long I’d been there.

Eh? You think as part of their hiring process they should have checked how long you had been a customer? Apart from being completely irrelevant to your ability to do the job, that would almost certainly be a data handling breach.

My understanding under Equal ops is that ALL applications that meet ALL the essential criteria are called for interview

I think there my be a public sector requirement to interview everyone who meets all the essential criteria and has a disability. But it certainly doesn't apply to everybody who applies to any job. It would be unmanageable.

I'm sorry to hear that, OP, it's absolutely heartbreaking to miss out on what feels like a perfect opportunity.

I'd like to offer a different perspective as a small business owner. Hiring is HARD, and in a small business we don't have HR or recruitment team or anything like that to help us. We have to write the job description ourselves, stick it on Indeed and LinkedIn, and then personally try to whittle it down to a few possible candidates from the tens or often hundreds of completely disparate applications we receive.

It's hugely time consuming and can be confusing and overwhelming, and although we do have a process we follow it still feels pretty random at times. We usually make good hires in the end, but I always finish the process very well aware that there may have been an even better candidate who for some reason didn't make the inital cut for interviewing.

Also, we don't close a job ad until we have had an offer accepted, so we keep getting applications once we are already at the interviewing stage (although I try to minimise this by lowering the ad spend or pausing it, depending on the platform). So unless the interviews were going badly or you were an absolutely stand out candidate, you wouldn't get an interview even if your application was as good as (or even slightly better than) the candidates already shortlisted.

In either case, I would definitely read an email/letter from a candidate I'd rejected, and consider it in the context of where I was in the process and the strength of your application. It's possible I'd realise you had "slipped though the net" and want to meet you.

(I know this all sounds quite shambolic, but it's the reality of recruitment in many SMEs, which are often underrepresented on MN where the assumption seems to be that everyone works for a large, mature organisation).

OP, I would not call back. It would not reflect favourably on you. Your personal motivation or dreams of getting that job is irrelevant. Can you imagine if every applicant phoned up and begged for an interview as they 'deserved' or 'wanted' the job more?

Last week I had to reduce 38 applicants down to a manageable number to interview. Selection is brutal - and something made them say no to you.

Move on, find that next opportunity and apply.

.

My understanding under Equal ops is that ALL applications that meet ALL the essential criteria are called for interview. As an employer, they have now met the lawful requirement of giving the opportunity to everyone capable equally )

That really is not the case.
You give everyone a chance equally through the application process.
You can then choose who the heck you like - from no-one to everyone - for interview.

Have to agree that calling them won’t achieve anything and might make you feel worse.

When I was a manager, we used to get 50-100 CV’s for every job we advertised and that just the external applicants. Our HR whittled them down so they only sent me the most suitable 10-12 and we probably interviewed 5 of those.

It applies to any employer which has signed up to the disability confident scheme (used to be two ticks).

There is no legal requirement to interview people who meet the essential criteria otherwise. It would be completely unmanageable if that was the requirement!

Yes. And some of them have been dreadful but even the worst ones generally had a fairly basic grasp of data protection. I'm sorry that your experiences have been otherwise.

@LazylikeasundaymorningThis isn’t true- what if there were 500 applicants who met the essential criteria?!

^^ It is indeed true ...🙄

What would you do, because you cannot then change the set criteria on how to get an interview?

I have certainly read in my younger years that 250/350 people have applied for the same job and certainly more over qualified applicants for a much less paid position - #Thatcher/milk snatcher austerity.

In the history of my working career ( 34 years ) I have NEVER encountered a position personally nor ever heard of 500 applications ALL meeting ALL of the essential criteria!
If this was the case, you ( we) would need to contact all 500 applicants and inform them, other criteria would need to be considered.

( This is only Government - Local Authority equal opportunity practices regarding employment & recruitment) Your employment HR policies and practices might be more robust, or much less perhaps?

Let go of this job, it’s gone to someone else.

Do email the person who applications go to (HR?) asking extremely politely if it would be possible to have any feedback on your application so that you can better tailor applications in future.

Do not phone them.

If you have too many applications that meet the essential criteria, that's when you use the desirable criteria.

There is no legal requirement to interview everyone who meets the essential criteria. Individual employers can of course apply their own policies, but very few would be stupid enough to commit to this.

Where I work we have essential criteria and desirable criteria. If all the candidates meet the essential criteria, we move onto the desirable ones. We still can't interview everyone who meets all the criteria, but some of those criteria are subjective and we can score them to see which candidates meet them more convincingly/impressively. So you either do or don't have a specific qualification, but if the criterion is something more like 'experience of managing a team', some candidates will have more of this than others, or more varied experience. We have to have a fair and robust process for considering applications, but we do not have to interview everyone who qualifies!

If we regularly had too many people meeting all the criteria, I think HR would ask us to think a bit more carefully about how we write the criteria though.

But surely that's just too obvious to state! Of course without question you would use the desirable criteria.
My initial post, was to state, something essential would have been missed.
The point being, you wouldn't get an interview if this was the case.

No harm in bumping your CV to HR, saying you’d be very keen to interview if any similar roles come up?

Oh don’t be sorry! I’ve had some delicious gossip via HR people over the years.

It’s the main reason for being friends with them

They sound dreadful.

Same thing happened to me once - I knew I was perfect fo the job but didn't get an interview. I did contact them about it (very politely) and it turned out there'd been an admin error. I was interviewed - and got the job!

I wouldn't mind at all as an employer if someone wrote an polite friendlty email, pointing out that they were interested in the company, had been disappointed in not being interviewed, listed some of my good points and asked if I could be kept in mind in the future.

No harm in it I reckon. We are quite small though and handle recruitment ourselves, a big outsourced recruitment would be very different - in that it just wouldn't register rather than putting them off you.

Just leave it OP.

Make it a rule that you will never ever contact someone who has either openly or covertly rejected you - your self respect will thank you in spades.