A rejection is not a personal note

The 4- by 5-inch ivory-colored envelope arrived looking like a socially correct invitation or personal note. The first indication that it was something less than that was the postage meter stamp in the upper right-hand corner. Then there was the return address, with logo, of an organization that had advertised a job recently. I also noted that my name and address were printed on an address label that did not match the color of the envelope.

When I slit open the envelope, I found what appeared, again, to be a social note, neatly folded with the organization name and logo in a bright, distinctive color. Unfolding the note, I found a mass-printed rejection without any illusion of personal correspondence, just a form letter with a signature preprinted from a name in the Human Resources Department. It read: "Your resume and qualifications have been reviewed and while your credentials are certainly impressive, we have other candidates whose experience and qualifications more closely match our organization's needs. Thank you. Good luck with your job search."

The wording was reminiscent of the preprinted rejection slips sent to authors by publishers returning an unsolicited manuscript: "We regret that your manuscript does not meet our current needs." Non-judgmental. Not too harsh. Not critical. Simply a matter of a mismatch of needs.

Having been on the other side of this hiring dance dozens of times over my newspaper career, I can appreciate the awkwardness of telling people they didn't make the cut. But I never adopted a form letter (OK, I never had all that many applicants to reject, either). I always made a phone call or wrote a personal letter or e-mail. It might have said essentially the same thing the preprinted form I received said, but it was addressed to one person and was personally signed, and the language, if not oozing sincerity and empathy, was at least not boiler-plate.

In a deep recession such as this one, job seekers get used to rejection. Either applications and resumes are sucked into a black hole and are never heard from again, or a polite response informs the applicant that his/her qualifications do not match the description of the ideal candidate. Or an initial screening interview leads to nowhere. I've collected in a file the written rejections I've received (my favorite, an e-mail about an online job, said the company received more than 1,000 applications), but I have lost count of those that simply never acknowledged my application. A note rejecting an application is better than ignoring the application altogether, but, please, don't try to soothe the pain of a rejection by masquerading that rejection as a personal note. I'm not sure I'd want to work for an organization that is so disingenuous.