To ask for feedback?

[hibiscuslightening]

I recently applied for a role which seemed like a great match for my skills. I could tick every single point in the job description, both essential and desirable. I spent a long time tailoring my personal statement etc. and I am really disappointed I didn’t get an interview.

AIBU to contact the company and ask for feedback at this stage?

You aren't being unreasonable, but if they had a lot of applicants they probably won't bother to respond. Maybe it's a ghost job, or perhaps it was really aimed at someone internal, but they had to advertise externally. You could always say you are still keen on the role and ask to be considered if other candidates drop out.

The same has just happened to me. I was really gutted. I more than met all the essentials and desirables. Didn’t even get an interview. It’s possible there’s an internal candidate which always seems kind of dishonest to me, but I think there’s reasons they’re meant to advertise anyway. I asked them for feedback and they said they don’t give feedback from the shortlisting stage, only the interview stage 🤷‍♂️

You’ve got nothing to lose from asking!

I suppose it’s worth a try but don’t set your expectations low. Recruitment is brutal at the moment.

so many companies don’t give feedback even when you’ve interviewed with them.

I usually put the job and person spec into ChatGPT, upload my application and ask it to score me and suggest improvements.

I suppose it’s worth a try but don’t set your expectations low
er, I mean do set your expectations low.

When I was recruiting to my team we scored applicants against the stated criteria so the only feedback I could really have given was that a candidate did not reach quite as high a score as those we did invite to interview - which probably would not have been terribly helpful.

Worth a try. That said, we got 170 applications for the most recent role we advertised, so unless an applicant's CV REALLY stood out, it was a lost cause.

As others have said request feedback but understand that you might not receive it. I chair many shortlisting and recruitment panels. I see a lot of personal statements that the author has clearly spent a lot of time writing, but that don’t really provide clear examples of how they meet the person specification. I typically receive circa 100 applications per post, many of these just include statements that they can e.g. analyse complex data and present findings rather than give an example of how they have done this. When I’ve given this feedback, I’ve been told that the candidates expectation is that we’d get into that detail at interview, but the reality is that other candidates are including the detail at application and so present as stronger.