Appropriate time to mail regret letters?

HR in Oregon · March 2003

When do you generally mail regret letters to those you've interviewed for a position and not made the cut? Typically, we wait until the position has been filled and the ad removed from the paper. However, this sometimes can take weeks, even months, and I hate the idea of those candidates I interviewed just waiting and waiting. Just curious as to your standard procedure....thank you!

crawfod · March 2003

My preference is to send them the bad news as soon as I am 100% sure we would not hire them. But if a candidate could still be a possible hire because we went through the other dozen or so, then I would have to string them along. I'm sure we've all been on the other side at some point and while disappointing to get "The Letter", at least we could move on and not hold out false hope.

eborowitz · March 2003

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 03-28-03 AT 04:35PM (CST)[/font][p]When you send them right away, do you ever get upset phone calls from the candidate wondering why? At that point, what is a lawful response?

cebudragonlady · March 2003

With an upset phone call from a candidate, above all- remain calm, first tell the candidate that the company has chosen another candidate which better fits the company's needs, then say you can't go into specifics about the other candidate because of privacy concerns, next wish the caller good luck, finally pleasantly say goodbye and have a nice day - and hang up the phone! Works for us.

Chari

ray a · March 2003

I typically mail responses after the new hire has actually started. Once, I sent out the letters in advance and the candidate then rescinded their acceptance. I had to go to the number 2 candidate and explain that we were interested in them after all, after they received the rejection letter. They realized that they were not our number one choice and it gave them a bargaining advantage.

Sometimes, when the process takes longer, candidates may call me. I will tell them we are in the process of making an offer to another candidate - provided I truly am. Then they realize their chances for the job are slim. I will follow up with a letter at the appropriate time.

Clare · March 2003

As a general rule we notify candidates after we have an accepted offer. The one time I deviated from this practice got us in trouble. Our search for the right candidate was taking a long time, and our ads were continuing to run. We had one candidate who was literally calling every day "demanding" that he be given the position. He even began calling the department manager who was hiring, and actually showed up at our facility a couple of times approaching our manager and another supervisor in that area in a pretty intimidating way. I had previously interviewed this candidate and received a very negative reference on him. To stop the harassing contacts, I wrote a letter to him stating that we have narrowed down our list of candidates based on work experience and references. Unfortunately, that set him off and he filed a failure to hire claim - he was in a protected class. Since then, I have stayed with our policy of notifying candidates only after we have an accepted offer.

jmpmo · April 2003

Our typical response is to send them out as soon as we know they won't work out. They showed respect by coming to the interview, so we want to return that respect. If they call upset, our standard response is this, "We interviewed a lot of great candidates for this position, but unfortunately could only choose one. We wish you all the best in your future endeavours." Repeat, repeat, repeat if necessary. We have not gone wrong with this yet.

Appropriate time to mail regret letters?

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