REJECT: Wait, how is this from?

You have to love when you get the random email from some company and they fail to include anything other than a cryptic reference to their company name. Certainly takes the sting out of getting rejected if you don’t know who is doing the rejecting.

We have received your application for the position of . After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that you have not been selected for this position.

We will retain your candidate file in our database and we also invite you to visit the Career Section on our Web site regularly.

We thank you for your interest in and wish you all the best in your career search.

REJECT: Hey, yeah so um, let me get back to you

You have to appreciate the soft nature of this rejection. Feels like a friend telling you that Friday night isn’t going to work out because they are hanging with another friend but another Friday might work. I mean they do say to contact them with any questions.

We have reviewed the applications for the position of and have chosen to proceed with a few of them. We regret to inform you we will not proceed with yours. We would however like to save your application on file for any relevant positions that come up in the future.

We thank you for the interest for and wish you luck in your search for employment in the future.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!

REJECT: Not an exact match

With their careful review they found an “i” without a dot or a “t” that was not crossed. This just feels so cold and sterile. A little compassion would go a long way.

Thank you for your interest in the . After careful review of your background, we have elected to pursue other candidates at this time whose qualifications more closely match our needs for this position.

Although we did not see an exact match with your background for this position, we encourage you to visit our website often to explore other opportunities, keep your internal resume up to date, and set up a “Search Agent” so that the system will notify you of future openings based on your criteria. In the meantime, thank you again for your interest – we wish you the best of luck with your search.

REJECT: Not on the short list

Ouch, didn’t even make it to the short list. Better luck next time.

Thank you very much for your application for the position of .

We received numerous CVs for this role from extremely high calibre candidates and it has made our selection process very difficult. However, l regret to inform you that on this occasion you have not been short listed for interview.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest shown in the and wish you all the very best for the future.

REJECT: Keep it short

There really is nothing like cutting to the chase in these emails. In fact this one did not require any edits at all. Go HR with the generic message.

Thank you for your interest in our company. We are pleased that you considered us at this stage of your career planning. However, we have selected another individual for the above-referenced position.

We appreciate your interest in this position and wish you success in achieving your career goals.

REJECT: Hang in there, keep trying

Don’t forget to up date the profile in the off chance that someone in HR actually searches on our system.

Thank you for your interest in furthering your career within our company; however, we have selected another individual for the above-referenced position.

We appreciate your continued focus on growth opportunities within and ask that you submit your resume for other positions that may interest you as well as update your online profile should there be changes.

REJECT: A short one

Short and sweet.

Thank you for submitting your CV/Resume for the position of ,. Unfortunately we have decided not to pursue your application at this time because other candidates’ qualifications more closely match the position requirements.

Thank you for your interest in . Please check our website for more opportunities in the future.

REJECT: Sorry, you’re not suitable

This style message suggests that you just are going to cut the mustard so why not look at something else. The “close look” is pretty funny as it would suggest that a person looked at this rather than just automatically filtering out someone.

Thank you for your interest in bringing your individual passion to and your application to our .

We’ve had a close look at your suitability for this position and after careful consideration, we’ve decided not to progress with your application. However your skills and talents may be suited to other opportunities within one of our seven brands. To find out more about how you can be yourself at .

Again, thank you for the time you have taken to consider us as a potential employer and we hope that may be a great match for your career in the future.

REJECT: Sorry you’re no good, but do you have friends?

This type of thing really lights a fire. In summary this emails says that you are not good enough to work with us, but we would love for you to refer people. They present this under the guise of a high number of applicants. Can someone explain why the applicant would want to refer a friend into their application process?

Thank you for your interest in the Product Manager position with [redacted]. The quality of applications for this role were particularly high and we regret to inform you, we will not be progressing your application any further for this particular role as there were others whose skills and experience matched our requirements more closely.

We appreciate your interest and will definitely keep your application on file. Unfortunately we are unable to give individual feedback at this stage of the process, however we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in [redacted] and request that you continue to visit [redacted] to look for other roles that maybe a good fit for your skills and interests. As you will see we are always looking for top talent. If you happen to come upon a role that is a better fit for a colleague or friend, please send them our way!

REJECT: Your application stinks

After a “careful” review this copy/paste response was sent to the applicant. Interesting to note that the application has proven unsuccessful at this time. So it was the application that was not successful. Perhaps you should consider making the application a little more intuitive rather than forcing applicants to navigate a minefield.

Thank you for your recent application for the position of Product Manager within [redacted].

After the very careful review of your CV, I regret to inform you that your application has proven unsuccessful at this time.

We thank you for the interest you have shown in our organization and we wish you the best with your future career.