It was, I thought, a simple rule: When you are interviewed for a job and not selected, you should receive a letter acknowledging your interest and informing you of the bad news.
Whenever I've led search committees or hired staff members, I've followed that rule, sending letters not only to the interviewees but to everyone who applied. I've always thought that candidates, no matter what stage of the process they reach, deserve to know their status.
But my experience in searching for an administrative job in development over the past year has disabused me of that quaint notion.
During my search, I applied for many positions, was selected for a number of interviews, and eventually landed an ideal job. But in the process, I spent countless hours drafting and polishing application materials, traveling, and interviewing, and even more countless hours waiting for responses that never came.
Early on in my search I landed an interview for a job I coveted -- alumni director at a private college in the Northeast. The institution was looking to expand its alumni program, and I was ready to take on the challenge. I scheduled a day off from work, drove nearly three hours to the campus, and spent half a day with the vice president and the search committee before making the long trek home. Later, I interviewed with the alumni-association president over the telephone in what amounted to a delightful conversation.
I came away from the visit and the phone call even more excited about the job. I sent all the appropriate thank-you notes and began the dreaded wait. Two days later I received a phone call inviting me back to the campus for a second interview, this time with the college president.
Again I took a day off from work, traveled the nearly three hours to the campus, met with the president, and drove home. One of two finalists at this stage, I was told a decision would be made by the end of the week. I sent the president a thank-you note and waited.
The end of the week came and went, as did the next. Many things could be holding up the decision, I theorized, counseling myself to be patient. After a month had passed I visited the college's Web site, where I saw a news release announcing the appointment of a new alumni director.
Disappointed, I continued to wait for official notice from the department or the human-resources office, figuring they were busy getting a new hire situated and would eventually send a letter. More than a year later I'm still waiting.
Look, I'm grateful for the opportunity to interview and flattered to have been a finalist. But for the college not to bother to send even a form letter notifying me of its decision, after I had made a significant commitment to be a candidate, was disheartening.
If that had been an isolated incident, I would have written it off as the peculiarities of one institution. But a couple of months later I had a telephone interview with a major research university in the mid-Atlantic region. I was delighted when the members of the hiring committee asked me to send some samples of my work so they could decide whether to bring me to the campus for a second interview.
I hurriedly sent the samples, eager for a reply. And then I waited. After a couple of months had passed I sent an e-mail message to the head of the search committee and received no response -- not even a one-line "we've hired someone else" reply.
OK, so the committee lost interest in my application, but it was, to me, unacceptable that its members could not take the time to respond to my e-mail, let alone send a form letter.
This happened yet again with a prestigious mid-Atlantic liberal-arts college, where I had a telephone interview with a gentleman who was running for a local office. We had a nice conversation, but it was rather short as he told me he needed to get out and campaign, which was perfectly understandable. He promised me an answer on a campus interview in two days. So I sent off my thank-you note once again and waited.
After a couple of weeks I searched the Internet for election results and found that he had indeed been elected. I sent him an e-mail of congratulations and told him I was looking forward to the opportunity to speak with him further about the position and my qualifications. I received a nice reply and was told a decision was imminent on who would be invited to the campus.
I continued to wait patiently for several weeks until, on a whim, I decided to visit the college Web site. Sure enough, on the departmental staff listing, a new name had shown up above the title of the job for which I had applied.
I was more livid at the lack of common courtesy than I was at losing out on the job. What hiring supervisors need to keep in mind is that job seekers are people, not just application packets.
Coordinating a serious job search is practically a part-time job in and of itself. During the year I was on the market, I spent many hours searching for ads and postings, scanning a multitude of Web sites and discussion groups, and even bookmarking the job-listings Web pages of virtually every college and university in the states where I was willing to move.
My evenings and weekends were largely spent drafting, editing, rewriting, and tweaking cover letters, finding just the right words to express how ideal a match I was for the position. My very understanding wife, who had career concerns of her own, patiently read draft after draft of the same letters, helping me dissect my word choice and sentence construction to the point of exhaustion. Finally, when we could find nothing else to change, the letter was sent.
More often than not, as we drifted off to sleep at night, our conversation gravitated toward the job search; it permeated every facet of our lives. In exchange for that commitment of time and energy, I wanted a job, of course, but at the very least I wanted some acknowledgement if I was no longer a candidate.
It may seem unnecessary to the hiring supervisor who is juggling a search along with other job responsibilities, but a status report makes a difference to the job seeker, who anxiously awaits the results of an interview like a child awaits Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
The incidents of discourtesy stand in sharp contrast to what I experienced at an elite private college in New England where I had an on-campus interview for a position that I can fully acknowledge I was not ideally qualified for. However, I decided to apply anyway, out of a strong desire to work on that campus.
After visiting the college for a series of interviews, I received a standard form letter signed by the hiring supervisor informing me that another more suitably qualified candidate had been selected. On the back was a handwritten note, in which the supervisor thanked me for my time and offered himself as a source of career advice.
It probably took him less than five minutes to write that note, but it had a tremendous impact on me, and I look back on it as one of the best experiences I had on the job market. His letter also strengthened the affinity I already felt for that particular institution. It was the mark of a thoughtful, considerate supervisor, the type of boss I aspire to work for.
Because my job search took place within the development field, there is an amusing irony to this whole experience. In development, we obsess over correspondence. Our conference agendas are chock-full of sessions on writing, where the very latest approaches to drafting appeal letters or alumni-event invitations are taught.
We spend considerable time finding just the right words to use when soliciting different segments of our donor base. We spend days, weeks, even months editing text, involving departments from public relations to the president's office. We become wordsmiths, always trying to find new ways to make an impression on our audience.
Yet while many development professionals are perfectly willing to spend weeks crafting that sort of office correspondence, my experience has shown me that few in our field are willing to spend even a couple of minutes writing a letter of acknowledgment to applicants.
My advice, as a former candidate, is to remember the golden rule in managing a search process: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As satisfied as you may be with your current job, odds are you will be on the market again in the future, if only to advance to the next level of your field. When that happens, I am confident you will want prospective employers to notify you when your candidacy has ended.
There is no time like the present to begin treating candidates like people and not just like résumés that you can toss into the circular file once the ideal candidate is found.
