Out of the various soul-sucking elements of a standard hiring process, one of the bigger ones has to be “We’ll keep your resume on file.” If you’ve actively applied to jobs 2-3 times in your life and been rejected a handful (or thousands) of times, you’ve gotten this line in a rejection email very frequently.
In the early days of receiving such an email, there is a small glimmer of hope. “Keep my resume on file? Nice!” After a while, you realize it’s largely bullshit. 2-3 companies may come back to you six months or more later, but in general, once a company rejects you, that’s the end of that relationship.
This is all part of why it’s such a shame that recruiting is so rushed and awful these days. You basically could have the best employee ever sitting right in front of you, but you’ll reject him for some subjectively asinine reason and never speak to him again. That’s called good business? Execs literally chase down projects 191,473 times if they need to. They go back and back and back to the well.
But that’s not how it works with “We’ll keep your resume on file.” But why? What’s the overall deal here? What really happens?
We’ll keep your resume on file: The baseline
Job searches these days regularly pull in 100+ applicants. People are busy. There are only so many hours in a day. To many, the real job of HR is putting out fires and avoiding lawsuits. This “candidate screening” stuff? Meh. Automate it. (That actually is more effective, yes, so long as the automation program is looking for the right things at top-of-funnel hiring stages.)
So the baseline reason for “We’ll keep your resume on file?” People don’t really care that you got screened out, but they want to say something to sound nicer/more human/be able to feel better about themselves. They toss on that line because by now we’ve all assumed it doesn’t mean anything anyway.
Could it mean something?
Of course. Let’s try an example with some simple math.
100 people apply for a marketing manager job at Company A. 1 of them gets it. That means 99 did not get it, but Company A has those 99 resumes. In general, about 60% of resumes submitted are not qualified (sad but not illogical), so let’s say 59.4 people (60% of 99) aren’t qualified. Drop them out of the funnel. Now we have 1 new hire and 39 or so qualified resumes we didn’t hire.
Three months later, Company A has another marketing managerial position. It’s a little bit different — job role is often unclear — but still, why not try those 39 people as a place to start? Heck, you might even save money because 1 of them, that you’ve already somewhat vetted, could be the ideal candidate. No posting/recruiting fees and no wasting of people’s time screening new resumes and letters.
This whole idea is called “talent rediscovery” or “candidate rediscovery,” and technology is helping it along.
How’s that?
Unlike “dumb” ATS technology, this type of intelligent software uses AI to automatically find previous applicants in your ATS that are good matches for your current open positions.
Over the years, large companies will amass thousands – even millions – of resumes. But once these resumes go into your ATS, the majority of them get lost in the ATS black box and are never looked at again.
This is because the typical ATS just wasn’t designed to have this functionality. An ATS tends to be “dumb” technology that can’t learn and improve its screening and matching function.
Nice. Another reason to hate Applicant Tracking Systems! They’re not actually designed to work with the whole “We’ll keep your resume on file” world, even though that’s what companies are preaching in their canned rejection emails. Well, that’s good to know.
Be effective instead of sanctimonious
A contrast:
Sanctimonious: “We’ll keep your resume on file, i.e. we hope to never speak to or think of you again. We believe Dave here that we hired is the future.”
Effective: “Dave totally flamed out and also couldn’t tolerate our culture, so we need someone and we see we already have you here, somewhat vetted — your resume was kept on file — so let’s talk about how this could look.”
One idea could make hiring processes more effective, which the working world desperately needs. The other idea is essentially a lie placed in an email that’s already shitty to receive. Which one should we be focusing on?
We’ll keep your resume on file — think hiring would get more effective if companies actually did in a searchable way, maybe using AI?
I’ve gotten a couple of rejection e-mails over the years that contain something along the lines of “We’ve made our final choice, and we’re very happy with them!!” or “We’re confident we made the right choice!!” which I always thought was like getting a letter from an ex talking about how great of a time they’re having with their new romantic partner.
I’m of the opinion that if I didn’t get a job, I don’t really care that you feel you picked the right person; that doesn’t mitigate my disappointment. Unless you managed the interview process communications explicitly and courteously and took the time to make me feel welcome for applying and interviewing, you haven’t developed the relationship to the extent that I am happy to be rejected.
Ideally, I believe that a rejection (especially if it’s a form letter) for a job you applied but didn’t interview for should read “Thank you for your time applying to this position. We have decided to move forward with other candidates. Best of luck in your search” and nothing more. When ending a relationship in this manner, I believe it’s best to keep it short, assertive, and definitive.
A rejection letter for someone who has taken the time to interview should contain one thing (at least) about that person you liked, if not (legally permissible) feedback about why they were rejected. Enough with the “while we were impressed with your credentials” nonsense. Also, if you’re going to leave it at “we felt the other person was a better fit” garbage, I’d rather you say “we’re not legally allowed to share that information”.
(on the “better fit” angle, btw: Vu Le of Nonprofit AF wrote a thoughtful piece about “cultural fit” in nonprofit hiring today: http://nonprofitaf.com/2017/07/why-we-need-to-end-the-culture-of-cultural-fit/)
I wonder if there’s money to be made in working with companies to improve their communication tactics with applicants/interviewees…
That actually does seem like a decent business model, but I don’t know if any check-writer would actually, well, write a check for it…
At best I would assume “keeping your resume on file” will mean they’ll do a keyword search, or something slightly better in the future. The only decent way to get into a company is through a connection (85% of jobs are via referral), where your buddy puts your resume in the hiring managers hands so that manager doesn’t have to read any of those boring resumes.
It’s higher than 85 by now, brother.