Someone once said, you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat the waiting staff in a restaurant. In the world of work, I think you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat support services, and especially HR. This is particularly important when applying for a new role. If you are unfortunately unsuccessful in the role, it matters how you react. In this article I want to discuss how to be turned down gracefully and how to make the most of it. I know it is not always easy and you may feel shabbily treated (I know this from recent personal experience) but it is never worth burning bridges and you never know where people you have treated badly are going to turn up again.
it, it can be incredibly rewarding. In my last role we implemented ‘anonymous’ applications which actually makes the selection for interview much easier by removing any clues to gender, ethnicity, race and age. It makes the process a lot fairer as does the introduction of fair recruitment advisors onto panels on our more senior grades.
ut experience over the years has shown me both the graceful and the disgraceful ends of human behaviour when the selection process concludes.
Being turned down for a job is never pleasant and when in that position, asking for feedback is a must. But to get good feedback and something you can learn from, takes skill, a good approach and grace. Like revenge, feedback is a dish best served cold and pushing too hard or challenging the recruitment manager is not going to create a positive view in the mind of the recruiting manager one bit. Raising an complaint because you didn’t like the outcome, is unlikely to be a good outcome. However, where there are clear cases to answer then yes a complaint is necessary and should be done.
Why does it matter? Well just as being rude to a waiter is likely to make your next visit less pleasant, being rude to HR or overly pushy, is not going to warm you to the organisation the next time you apply. Just as wealthy people in restaurants may have an overweening sense of entitlement, behaviour that is unacceptable to HR as a candidate is the same, an overweening sense of entitlement. You may think at this point, “ok well I won’t apply to that organisation again, so it doesn’t matter”. But it does. At best, your pushy-ness or rudeness may well become the next leadership development case study. At worst, no matter how professional people are, they will remember you and they will talk to peers in their sector. No matter what sector you are in…it’s a small world.
Then there’s the graceful side. A candidate that calmly asks for feedback, who probes professionally, maybe politely asks (not demands) a meeting, is more likely to be considered a candidate in the future. If you do it well and you maybe ‘just’ missed out, your recruiting manager may well sponsor you to others in their organisation or beyond.
It always staggers me how unpleasant people can be to other people who fall under the label of HR. They are not faceless; they are competent individuals. Their processes and systems may be underinvested in, I grant you, but that does not excuse treating HR like dogsbodies. So, when that rejection comes, a few tips:
- take a breath, maybe take a few.
- think about how you will ask for feedback, what do you want to know.
- if the feedback doesn’t make sense, ask to meet the recruiting manager, politely, with grace.
- if none of that gives you what you want, the chalk it up to experience.
At the end of the day, you may have to accept that there was a candidate stronger than you.