Rejected by old boss - argh!

[Greengreengrassblueblueskies]

Name changed for this. I’ve spent the evening feeling very sorry for myself!

A few years ago I worked for a very long time for my old boss as his PA. I always did a good job and got great feedback/reviews and when he moved departments we kept in touch (I stayed in my old role as how our company is structured he couldn’t “take me with him”)

We have kept in touch and I’d actually say we are good friends and also colleagues.

He recently got a promotion to a newly created role and internally they advertised for a PA for him. So I applied and interviewed with him (and another person from his team on the panel). I thought I’d be great and a good fit given I know him and I know his new area he’s been promoted to.

And then at 5pm, I got a rejection email from HR. No feedback. Nothing. To make matters worse, we have spoken since the interview (about normal things unrelated to work).

I feel SO sad. I really wanted to work for him again and he always says how much he loved working with me…so why not give me the job?! Ergh.

AIBU for feeling this way?

He might want someone who he knows less personally. If you’re as good friends as you say you are then surely you can talk to him about it?

I have every sympathy and understand how you feel but my view is you should never apply for a job if you can't accept you may not get it. You seem to have assumed you would, even though he didn't give you any encouragement. Saying you should / could apply is never saying you'll definitely get it.

I was involved (on the panel) in interviews recently where 4 current employees applied for one role. One seemed the strongest candidate, but in the interview, another showed a far deeper grasp of the role so they got it. All had to continue working with us and were gracious over the outcome.

I suggest you process your feelings and then resume your friendly relationship. Otherwise you'll seem bitter and make things awkward for your old boss too. Don't see it as a personal rejection (yes, I know that's how it feels), just that someone else had the edge over you in the way they performed on the day.

I think these sort of PA jobs are different to lots of other roles because they do become more personal and lots of senior people bring staff with them/do some slightly murky HR things re recruitment to get who they want as they become a bit dependent.

I think it was quite shoddy that he didn’t contact you himself with the news and just let you have a generic email from HR. However, if he wasn’t very enthusiastic about you applying then I think you were probably not going to get the role.

He isn’t allowed to do this and if he wanted you but your answers were not as good as the person who got the role (against the JD not each other) then HR would advise him to go for the better candidate on the day.

i once interviewed a person who thought the job was theirs. As a result they didn’t prepare, and were actually not appointable to the role. They were complacent that they would just get it. When they didn’t they kicked up a huge fuss. It was a shame because if they had prepared they would have been a good candidate, but I couldn’t appoint on that basis.

No help but I had exactly the same situation last year. Someone I had worked for for 10 years. She got promoted and phoned to tell me she was “thrilled” I had applied for the new role and talked as if I had got the job. I got rejected with no feedback other than it was so close and there was nothing between me and the other candidate. I’ve heard on the grapevine that he hates the job and I am secretly pleased…

@Notsosure1 my husband is chief executive level and I coordinate with his PA over dates and it makes life much easier. When I need him to do pick-up/drop-offs or leave early etc it helps to have it in the work diary and for meetings to be arranged to accommodate. On the other hand she lets me know when he’s travelling etc and I can put it in my own work diary. Nativities etc are booked in and protected.

Hi PA isn’t buying presents or doing his dry cleaning or any of that stuff but it is very normal to want to have the family stuff clearly in diaries.

The email was from HR, he likely will have been told not to tell you until the applicant who was chosen was accepted, then HR will have told the other candidates they didn't get it. There's a high chance he doesn't even know you've been told yet, especially given the timing of the email.

you really do sound so very immature in terms of relationships, particularly work-based ones.
everything you add makes it more obvious why one shouldn't work with 'friends'

There is nothing wrong in asking for some feedback to find out why you did not get the job. It could be someone more fitting applied to the role or perhaps he thought of you as a friend and thought better not to work together.

I think with every update the Op showed why it would have been a really bad idea and it wouldn't have worked. She clearly sees herself as a close friend and that would have so many recipes for disaster.

Op, I think your former boss has actually done everything right. He would have been the wrong person to contact you to say you had or hadn't got the job. He's given you space to lick your wounds. Honestly I don't think he could say anything that would make you feel better at the moment, so he's better to say nothing.
He may well have talked about it with HR and asked for advice. And I'm sure this is what they would have said to do.

If you do want feedback, go through HR. Give him the compliment of being as professional as he's been. Then you don't mention how disappointed you were, run down or ask about the successful candidate etc.
This is separate from your friendship and if you want to keep your friendship, you need to keep it separate.

It would be interesting to know who got the job. Sometimes the results are driven by HR based on criteria needed. About a year ago, I worked in HR on a short temp contract assisting with recruitment and when vetting applications they were obsessed with (a) if the candidate was female (b) if she wasn't white (c) if she wasn't heterosexual. The HR director first told us to separate the applicants by gender (the male ones didn't make the shortlist), then she wanted the women divided by race which led to lots of uncomfortable conversations and assumptions as one candidate had a Brazilian sounding name (we had to google) and then there was a huge discussion as to whether she would be black as there was no trace of her on LinkedIn and she hadn't disclosed her racial demographic.

When discussing this later at lunchtime, my co-worker told me that 'this was how it was done these days' and that we shouldn't discuss it outside of work. When no I mentioned that it felt like social engineering, she said no - it was positive discrimination and that everyone was doing it.

Maybe your boss didn't get to make the final decision?

This.

The woman he's hired will be younger than you, attractive, and less experienced.

I'd put money on it.

Nothing to do with you at all. Decision made with dick not brain.

Depending on which way it goes, the job may be made available again soon. I had a boss who went down this route once and he fired the girl after a month when she still couldn't pronounce the company name correctly when taking calls. And yes, she was a native and native speaker.

I wouldn’t want a close friend working for me, if that’s what you’ve become.

It also wouldn’t be a very good look for him at the company if he gave the impression of just hiring whoever he’s closest to, even with your previous collaboration in mind.

This sounds to me like he values your friendship and perhaps prefers someone he doesn’t have a friendship with as his employee. If he didn’t think you were professional and good at your job he wouldn’t have stayed friends with you. Sometimes bosses don’t have time for pleasantries and chit chat and he doesn’t want to be in a situation where he comes across as abrupt to a friend when he’s really just focused on business . I think I’d feel the same. Perhaps he can refer you for another great role?

Agreed. Don’t take this personally OP, maintain your good friendship with your old boss, a valuable connection and a friend

Hi OP, sorry you're feeling so hurt by this. It does sound like you feel too close to him as a friend. One of the most important things in leadership is to be able to keep people at an arm's length and be respectful and decent but not friends.

There are many people I've had in my teams who i like but needed to create some distance from because they wanted a friendship. It's not personal, just the best way to avoiding confusion/expectations of favourable treatment and perception of favouritism.

It sucks! But possible that your old boss had a similar thought process x

But if there’s a scoring system, they can only score the candidate on what they actually said in their interview. So even if you know someone was great in the role before, if they don’t explain that themselves in their answers, you can’t score them on it. And you have to offer the job to the highest scoring candidate.

When did all this scoring system become a thing? It definitely didn’t used to be year’s ago before I took several years out to be a full time mum.

I think you answered your own question!
It's been a scoring system for as long as I can remember interviewing -20 plus years

Ah, I left the work place early 2000s for many years.

Scoring systems tend to be a thing in public sector / non-profit sector where there needs to be more transparency over hiring decisions. They are not really used in the private sector.

I don't think the OP is coming back.

I think he’s up to something eg an affair and because you know him so well he knows you would find him out and that’s why.

I'd hope it didn't, it's not fair interviewing to factor in things like that.

He may have even voiced a conflict of interest and let the panel decide on you in order to be fair to all candidates

I can imagine how you feel. Nothing worse than when you think you are a shoe in for a job and you don't get it, especially when a friend is involved. I think you need to wait for him to raise the subject tbh, see what he has to say.