Comment by tjic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tjic | Hacker News Reader

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> The most likely reason is to stay "in charge" of your interviewing process. If Johnny sends in a resume and he is unqualified, what do you say?

When I'm hiring, I respond to each and every resume. 99% of them get a canned "Thanks for applying. Unfortunately, it's not a match, but we wish you the best of luck."

Is that so hard?

My personal answer? No. It's not.

You're programmers. Write a macro. Then tap the key.

> No company wants to pay someone $25,000-$100,000 a year to reply to the Johnnys of the world ad infinitum.

First, this is ludicrous; even if you're sending thousands or tens of thousands of these letters, you can have a process that doesn't cost but a penny or two more than REVIEWING the email in the first place does.

Second, any company that can't design good processes that work well and cheaply isn't a place where I want to work.

> Is that so hard?

Yes, actually. To say that it isn't implies that either (a) you aren't doing much hiring, or (b) that the number of applicants you get is very small. For an admin position, we might get 150 applications. Of those, less than 50% will have met the stated job requirements/pre-reqs. Even if I were to automate it, how much time have I spent automating it? Maintaining it? And for each person, there's certainly a few seconds/minutes of "Let me make sure I get the name right..." And that's just one position. It is hard to do what you're saying, unless (a) you aren't doing much hiring, or (b) that the number of applicants you get are very small.

So in other words you're saying that your time is so incredibly valuable that you should be made exempt from the generally acceptable standards of behavior?

(I've spent 20+ years in the tech biz. I've probably hired a few hundred people myself. I've never been "too busy" to live up to the bare minimum professional standards of behavior. To me this smells less like being too busy - and more like being too arrogant.)

Time to hire a recruiter. His/Her job would be to be a point of contact, responding to candidates and filtering them, even with the help of talenbuddy or the likes.

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