Regarding the “so many unqualified people applied so we have no time to respond” line — I think that’s just an excuse. If you can click a button and push out a job posting to a dozen different outlets, you can do the same for the applicants that aren’t moving forward — which is just about everyone.

If I take 3 hours out of my day to fill out your ridiculously over-complicated online application, then you can take 30 seconds to send me a canned response that at least pretends to care.

Finally — if I spend 6 hours interviewing with everyone at your firm, including the guy who fills the snack machine, I deserve both a polite rejection and a little bit of what went into the decision.

All this being said, (and sorry for the mini rant) I do understand why folks don’t like to give feedback — b/c sometimes the candidate doesn’t understand that the ‘no’ is final and the feedback isn’t a request for more information in the same way a salesperson might try to counter an objection. I was seriously told that I didn’t have enough product experience, even though I had double what the director of the department had. It became awkward when I pointed that out, and I was a little slow to realize that it was just an excuse.

I seriously don’t know how anyone gets hired these days for anything…