Employers not responding to applications

Our man in Havana

Is it illeagal or just plain iggorant for employers not to acknowledge an application for a job.

Have applied for jobs and get no answer. Its not fair

Wook

just plain ignorant i'd say.
I dropped in a application for IBM once and after three months they contacted me, and told me to come over as they want to employ me. I told them nicely to go f*ck themselves and that waiting for three months to get a reply is a bad sign of how your company deals with it's employees.

eth0_

It's really all down to logistics. If you're applying for a job that a load of others are applying to, then chances are you won't get any form of acknowledgement, purely because they don't have time to reply to each and every application that is made.

Most people realise that if they haven't had a reply within 2 weeks then they're not really in with a chance. What's incredibly rude is going for interviews and not being contacted by the company even if you interview went really well, as has happened me and a lot of people I know. For instance it took me three applications to get into the company i'm now in, and they never contacted me after the interviews I had for the first 2, and it took them a few weeks to actually offer me this job.

It's not illegal, just a little rude.

leeroybrown

A large proportion of companies don't acknowledge applications recieved as right now most aren't hiring and are recieving a huge volume of resumé's. It's slightly impolite. I don't expect replies from every company I send a CV to. Infact I'd be suprised if over half of them gave any acknowledgement.

Not being replied to further to an interview is pretty rude and unprofessional but nothing more.

GuanYin

I've found most companies will send you a standard letter.

I used to think that "keep you on file" was a polite way of saying get lost, but recently a few companies that had sent me that type of letter have gotten back.

There are some really crappy places though, I had a job interview with a company in Castlebar. Its the middle of nowwhere and it cost me 60 Euro just to get there to attend the interview.

They said they'd get back to me within two weeks. I heard nothing from them for two months (I'd given up mailing them after 4 weeks) and I'd taken another job.

In Dec. I was presenting at a conference and met some senior people from there. We were drinking and I told them what happened, I pointed out the cost to me and the fact they hadn't offered to pay the interview expenses or even bothered to get back to me. The next week I got a letter from their HR with a cheque for my expenses and an explanation on why they never replied (apparently the project was put on hold for various reasons and the HR person went on holiday...very professional) and they even offered me the job.... I laughed long and hard.

As a result, I have warned every colleague, postgrad and undergrad I have met off them.

I think in the long run, companies treating prospective employees badly only serves to do themselves damage. Karma is a bitch.

Acidflash

Originally posted by Bond-James Bond
Have applied for jobs and get no answer.

i've had the same experience. There is nothing worse

:mad:

dazberry

I've had a lot of experience of this recently :mad:. Some of it has been pure downright ignorance IMO, but the number of CVs companies are getting from job adverts are incredible these days, so you have to keep that in mind too.

Simply...

If a position is advertised, even if its just on their un-updated website, they SHOULD :rolleyes: reply.

Ok, if they get really overloaded with applications, I think they should at least reply to emailed applications. I might not like getting PFOs (who does!), but these days I appreciate someone sending me one, even if its a silly stock PFO. It means at least they took the time to hit the send button or put a letter in an envelope, even if it was from their lack of vision .

If CVs arrive on spec., then I don't think companies need to reply, especially if they are not advertising any openings. Its nice if they do, but personally I don't expect it.

D.

Blitzkrieger

Aye, if you're replying to an advertised position, the least they could do is send you a generic : "Dear sir/madam, thanks for applying, blah, blah, blah". If your CV is unsolicited, it shouldn't bother you if they don't reply.

hussey

I put my cv to accenture and for about 1 week I didn't hear a thing .. then I got a phone call saying

"Well I'd just like to tell ya we've received your CV, and will consider it ... sorry for not phoning sooner but we have a backlog of CV's etc"

I thought that was pretty decent, I've never got a call saying we've received your CV!

Imposter

I had similar experiences a while ago and while I understand that companies have a limited HR department (often less than one full-time person), I find that agencies are by far the worst.

They don't even acknowledge an application for an advertised position that you are qualified to do. Add that to the fact that they then persist in sending you updates of positions they have available, often containing the one you applied for, for months afterwards. I'm started to think that maybe some of these jobs don't even exist in the first place :rolleyes:

Then when I went to the agencies in person I met a human face-to-face and it was funny. It was just getting to the stage where these agency reps jobs were starting to go on the line. I was so sad about it all!

RicardoSmith

Have to say its been my experience that 60-80% of employees never respond to applications. Its a good indication of the professionalism of the employer.

As previously posted if you haven't heard within 2 weeks though, then forget about it and move on. They either want you or they don't. If they can't manage something as simple as job applications, it not an encouraging sign.

Also bear in mind that a great many jobs are trolls and a means for some companies to harvest CV's and get some market research on the jobs market. I have seen jobs advertised and readvertised for months and months. So either job isn't real, or theres some other purpose to the job advertisment.

I've also noticed a trend of the same job being advertised repeatedly across a variety of different agencies. This is a curious thing to do, and I haven't quite figured out why a company would advertise with 4 or 5 agencies at the same time. Doesn't make sense to me. Any thoughts?

RicardoSmith

Applied for a job yesterday and this morning an "receipt of application" arrives in the post. I'm amazed!

ToxicPaddy

Originally posted by Imposter
.....I find that agencies are by far the worst.

They don't even acknowledge an application for an advertised position that you are qualified to do. Add that to the fact that they then persist in sending you updates of positions they have available, often containing the one you applied for, for months afterwards. I'm started to think that maybe some of these jobs don't even exist in the first place :rolleyes:

Ive had many an experience like this.. from what Ive been told by a number of people, its common practice for agencies to falsify positions and advertise them as real positions, just to attract people in those areas to send in CV's then once they have them on file they send ths CV's out for other positions..

One case I had a few years back was with a small enough agency where they had 4 or 5 positions with various companies advertised on their website that I was interested in, so I sent in a CV stating that Id like to be considered for each..

I spoke to the guy who was looking after the IT jobs and he said he would be on to me in the next few days to arrange for me to call in.. I put the number in my phone for safe keeping.. and the next time I heard from him was about 18 months later..

Needless to say he wont be calling me back and I asked him to take my CV off his books and if he tried sending my CV to anyone else Id take legal action against him :rolleyes:

A**HOLE!!!!!!!!

Our man in Havana

Thanks Guys for your input.

The reason I asked in the first place was that if you are on the dole you have to keep the inspector happy. You need to show him you have looked for jobs. If you have no refusal letters then how are you supposed to prove you are looking?

Just my 2c

James

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Bond-James Bond
Thanks Guys for your input.

The reason I asked in the first place was that if you are on the dole you have to keep the inspector happy. You need to show him you have looked for jobs. If you have no refusal letters then how are you supposed to prove you are looking?

Just my 2c

James

Yeah I had the same problem. I dunno, you pay your taxes, prsi for years and years, off a few months and you get the spanish inquistion. I wasn't a happy bunny I can tell you. It doesn't help your mood when the office is full of obvious freeloaders. I'll say no more.

If you register on the sites like recruit ireland and monsters, it keeps a back history of the jobs you've applied for. I printed these out and showed them that. I also had a few emails I had kept from various agencies and companies. Though as most companies insisted you attach a word CV to your applications I hadn't been saving my application emails. I am now. Rarely are you asked to apply in writing these days and rately do you get a response in writing. The inspectors are just way out of date with their thinking as to how you find and apply for jobs these days.
Also its good to keep a record of what agencies you have registered with and when you registered with them.

Since you get so few replies from applications in general, its a bit difficult to prove you have applied. I can see situations where people just apply to anything, just so they have a paper trail for the inspector. I was very annoyed about it, though I appreciate they have a hard time with the freeloaders.

Our man in Havana

Thanks Ricardo

I understand how you feel. Hope you got sorted out with something.

Regards

James