SINGAPORE: One Singaporean job seeker recently asked on Reddit why more and more companies don’t inform candidates they’ve been rejected. Taking to r/askSingapore on Thursday (May 9), the job seeker asked, “Is there a valid reason for this?
There’re couple of companies that have gone silent on job applications (yes, I’m aware it means I’ve not been accepted) but I’m just curious why they don’t update? Is it their SOP that rejected= ghosting? Genuinely wanna know.”
In the comments section, Singaporean Redditors outlined four reasons companies don’t send rejection letters.
It’s extra work
A few Redditors in the discussion pointed out that sending rejection emails can be time-consuming and tedious, especially when dealing with hundreds of candidates for a single position.
One Redditor revealed, “We receive about 150-200 applicants daily on top of processing successful ones and also handling those who will keep calling to ask.”
Another Redditor urged the job seeker to put himself in the HR position, saying, “You need to think of the reverse too. If you apply for 100 jobs and get accepted for one, will you tell the other 99 that you are no longer available for hire?”
They don’t care
One Redditor, who briefly worked as an HR assistant, shared that some companies simply don’t care about informing candidates of their rejection.
She stated, “We had people call in to ask why they haven’t heard an answer yet too and HR person’s response was just to ignore. Now you know.”
It’s their backup plan
Another reason given was that these HR departments were considering the possibility that their top candidate would back out or quit in a few weeks.
So, by not sending rejection letters, they can easily refer back to the list of rejected candidates and reach out to see if any of them are still interested and available.
According to them, it’s like having a backup plan ready just in case things don’t go as planned with their first choice.
One Redditor added, “To keep the door open indefinitely, in case they have to resort to offering position to the 10th candidate, because the first 9 rejected it for whatever reason.”
They got in trouble for it
One Redditor also explained that some companies have avoided doing so because they got in trouble for it in the past.
He shared, “Once every few months, some random candidate would get mad and forward the rejection email to LHL and the whole of PMO etc to complain about the selection process and demand to know why they weren’t shortlisted.
Then the HR peeps would have to dig up the background and draft submissions to internally explain the full rationale and clear a polite reply to the candidate that essentially says nothing new.”
Another Redditor explained, “Probably they are also protecting themselves from Lawsuit (legally more talk = more mistake) from a very disgruntled candidate (e.g. discrimination etc…) even if it’s baseless.
So they might as well not say anything and let us hang dry.”
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