Why don’t employers get back to me when they hire someone else?

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I wish that I had $1 for every conversation I’ve had with recruiters and other talent acquisition leaders at small, medium, and large employers about why they don’t promptly acknowledge the receipt of every application — even via automated email — and why they don’t inform all applicants that they’ve hired another candidate.

Most of the employers state that with the added attention being given to creating a positive candidate experience that they personally get back to candidates if they’ve interviewed those candidates and use automated systems to acknowledge the receipt of resumes.

But when you talk with candidates, you hear a very different story. Most candidates will tell you that most employers never get back to them, even when the candidate has spent hours going through round after round of interviews and sometimes even traveled at their own expense to be interviewed at the organization’s headquarters.

There is no doubt that some organizations have a process in-place to ensure that every candidate receives an answer, good or bad. But those organizations are the exception so one candidate may be treated quite differently from another even when they’re equally well qualified and apply to the same job with the same employer.

Why do some recruiters fail to provide bad news to candidates? There are a number of reasons. Most who admit to not getting back to candidates will claim they don’t have time, but it seems to me that we should all have enough time to send a copy-and-paste email especially to candidates who have been interviewed. It’s just basic, minimal, courteous behavior.