I want to apologize to everyone who’s taken the time to submit a job application to us and never heard anything back. Starting Monday every time we close a role, we'll email everyone that applied to give them data and context on what happened with that specific role. We'll share things like: How many people applied How many people we spoke with What it was that made resumes stand out Stats on any numeric data we collected in our application If you applied to a role with us on or after March 1st, you will get one of these emails in the next two weeks. Please message Forward directly via our company page if you were expecting but didn't receive one of these emails by June 14th. Employers, including us, need to do better. --- Edit: Thank you to everyone who is amplifying this post, your response speaks volumes. To everyone out there who’s looking and whose time and emotional well-being has been taken for granted by employers: I'm sorry. The community here sees you and you deserve better. To everyone fortunate enough to be hiring: I know it can be overwhelming but I hope this makes you want to create a better experience for the folks applying to your roles. What’s good for candidates is ultimately good for you. Here's to a better tomorrow.
Sounds like you need to train your recruiters on how to use the ATS’s rejection button. A commitment to review every applicant, even past #338, before hitting that reject button… now that would be a step FORWARD. But we all know that won’t happen. Cause companies retain recruiters that make “hire” metrics not “review” metrics. The only real way to mitigate your loss on recruiter labor production (or optimize) is to add a stop-loss on the ad at a level that your recruiters can handle. But job boards won’t add that feature cause they’d lose money. So, maybe we just admit that half the applicants in the ATS are not seen and job seekers just need to suck it up. #fifo ..that is Until AI takes over this preliminary applicant review task. Who’s got this ai tool?! Pls dm me!!
Adrian Jank
1mo
I applaud what you are going to do. It's a simple and bold decision to do that. A "hiring" recap would be simple and much appreciated. Avoiding privacy concerns should be easy by focusing just on getting past the hm screen. You could then include this recap on the next similar job posting so we understand what we need to highlight we had 2000 applicants, 300 of them were viable applicants: Of those 15 were selected to move forward by the hiring manager: General Avg YOE: X% had recent [define]experience in our industry X% had recent experience [define] in these adjacent industries [a,b,c] X% most recent "customer" was [insert business model B2B, B2C, B2C2B, internal] X% most recent revenue model was [insert SaaS, Consumer subscription, ad driven, ecom, etc] X% had recent [define] customer or revenue experience X% had recent [define] experience at a company with less than x employees X % had average # of years managing people Skill: The hiring manager selected candidates with these clear and demonstrable top [3 or 5] skill profiles 70% had x years of experience doing X % had all, etc
Robert Olivieri
1mo
Bravo, Peter. I really like the idea. There is nothing more frustrating than taking the time to research, prepare, and apply for a job, and then getting rejected or ghosted with no explanation. I’ve never understood the various excuses from HR organizations for this behavior. Innovation and change for the recruiting/hiring process has been sorely needed for some time, and it’s refreshing to see companies like yours taking the lead in improving the experience.
Patrick L Newman
1mo
Most of that sounds good, but a description of who you hired sounds unnecessary and like a breach of privacy. I wouldn't want a company that I joined to send a description of me to the other candidates.
I love this initiative and thank you for addressing it. There can be no progress if we cannot look within our own internal processes and continually tweak them to create process that positively impacts all internal & external factors. That said, I do believe a bigger factor and issue here is not necessarily yours to own. I’ve learned that a lot of candidates are “spraying & praying” in an act to complete as many apps as they can in hopes to land a job asap due to desperation. I get it. I’m in the same boat, however I only apply to jobs I am a fit for. When companies have fo take the time time respond to every single app, it becomes timely and inefficient when the majority of those applicants are not a fit for the role at all. It also doesn’t help the job seeker who IS a fit because that app becomes buried by apps who are not. Thank you for taking charge here. I love this and appreciate you so much and hope more companies follow in your footsteps. Amazing !!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Zunaira Akbar
1mo
Me looking into my gmail account for proof
Daniel Juárez
1mo
A few posts ago you said you don't work with recruiting agencies. Maybe you guys need to check this policy to avoid feedback issues.
Susan Thayer
1mo
Every ATS known to man allows you to make a template with a kind rejection response. If you have a TA team that is not notifying applicants that they won’t be moving forward, or if you are not calling candidates who took the time to interview with your team to let them know why they aren’t moving forward, I am shaming you in my mom voice. Horrible.
This is an excellent move, and I appreciate seeing it! I would give the gentlest pushback on the who we hired description - I would suggest keeping that quite vague if you're moving ahead. Possibly instead do a "here's why" we moved ahead with a bit more detail than "stronger alignment" or similar?
Engineering Leader | Founder at Forward
1moSloan S. thank you so much for helping us figure out how to do this