Lack of Feedback

Unfortunately I regret to inform you of my misfortune about being unfortunate in my latest employment application misfortune. It soon becomes irksome to be told bad luck over and over again isn’t it? At best it’s an excuse for others to gloss over your shortcomings, thereby helping them avoid the awkwardness of direct criticism and comforting you with the illusion that you couldn’t have done any better.

I’ve been doing job, internship and work experience applications for two years now and that’s pretty much the only feedback I’ve been given by companies as to why I’ve been rejected. The best I got was a brief chat after an interview where the only mistakes that got highlighted were obvious ones I knew I’d made at the time. I’ve found this to be the habit across the board, from small local companies to multinationals, the public sector to the private.

I’m not going to claim I deserved all these jobs but after a while it’s not just rejection that increases apathy but also the realisation that nothing has been achieved from hours and hours of questionnaires, psycho-metric tests and competency interviews all done from the sore-inducing discomfort of my home computer chair. Not one constructive word of feedback in the growing pile of emails lamenting my misfortune.

This may sound petty but how else are people going to improve their prospects if they’re not sure what to improve on? The latest response I received from a company I’ve applied to on numerous occasions was: ‘We would like to thank you for the time you have invested in your application and hope you will consider applying for future opportunities with us.’ But should I bother? I’m not exactly sure where my application fell down, was it; lack of experience, poor responses to questions or that they did not like the look of my name? I’m never told so I’m none the wiser.

Companies of course don’t owe all applicants detailed feedbacks, to do so hundreds of times would be a great waste of their time. Yet each employer has said they’ve considered me so they’ve evidently made their decision for a reason and got a record of it, so why not share it? Give me something more constructive than your pitiful, ‘unfortunatelys.’ It could even be a generic feedback phrase sent on-mass to hundreds of people based on what category of failure they fit into; ‘not enough experience’, ‘your test score was…’, ‘too many consonants in your name.’

This bitterness probably extends from the fact that for most companies I’ve had to indulge in flattery by talking about their success, benefits to customers and dedication towards training up newly hired talent yet they can only offer shallow sympathies to those who wanted to be a part of it.