Job applicant miffed at impersonal responses

Dear Miss Manners:

Over the past couple of years, I’ve received many of what I term impersonal thanks-but-no-thanks emails from recruiters and hiring managers. Worse, sometimes I receive no response at all.

At best, I’m receiving a mass email after

I’ve invested significant time into researching the company and the job, and have even developed ideas and presentations.

I’m not alone in either the limbo (waiting by the phone) or the receipt of an impersonal email follow-up. In some cases, I’ve called the recruiter or hiring manager directly and asked, “What could I have done better? What were you looking for that you didn’t hear from me?” etc.

Sometimes the managers are responsive. In other situations, they have promised to call back and haven’t. In a time when we seem to want more communication, rather than less, and when email seems like such an impersonal cop-out response to someone who’s truly spent time preparing for an interview, what is your suggestion?

Gentle reader: Hiring managers and recruiters should, out of courtesy, acknowledge applicants and tell them when the search concludes with hiring another candidate.

As Miss Manners suspects that etiquette is not a sufficient incentive, however, she will give them a sound business reason for doing so: The rejected candidates know who you are and where you work.

When they tell people you made a huge mistake in not hiring them, even their close friends will wonder if maybe you had a good reason. But if the candidate can say that you were rude, their anger at you and your company is more likely to stick.

How the recruiter should break the bad news will depend on circumstance. A form email is acceptable for an online posting that garnered hundreds or thousands of responses and when the candidate was not advanced beyond the opening round. The further along in the process the candidate gets, the more personal the delivery should be of the subsequent bad news.

Miss Manners hopes that hiring managers will take note, as she discourages you from trying to enforce this rule yourself.

Dear Miss Manners: My daughter’s boyfriend is proposing next week, and we are planning on going to dinner with his parents afterward. How do we handle the bill? Which parents pay?

Gentle reader: Whichever set of parents invited everyone are the hosts, and therefore responsible for the bill. But Miss Manners is hoping to hear that neither couple did and that it was the young gentleman himself who issued the dinner invitations.

That would be charming of him, indicating a desire to mark the new relationship that will affect both families. As he has confided his plans to you, such is presumably the case.

However, it would be less charming if either set of parents had told him that he should report in after such an intimate occasion. Nor should they usurp the symbolism of his being an adult who is establishing his own household. There will be plenty of occasions on which parents can entertain the new couple, but this is one in which the person who issued the crucial proposal should take charge of related events.

Dear Miss Manners: On a grandchild’s birthday, would it be inappropriate for a grandparent to post a message that talks of their late spouse and how they “wanted you to know they are watching over you”?

I personally feel that a child’s birthday celebration is not the time to grieve the loss of your husband. Your thoughts?

Gentle reader: That you are less than thrilled about Nana’s post on Jaden’s 5th birthday announcement.

However, there is a difference between grieving and acknowledging. If Nana was diverting attention from Jaden by posting a pagelong eulogy in lieu of a birthday message, that would be one thing. But Miss Manners sees nothing wrong with acknowledging that Pop Pop might be thinking of him as a way of reminding him of his grandfather — as long as that acknowledgement is kept brief and doesn’t scare the celebrant, as in “Happy birthday, Jaden. Miss Manners is watching you.”

To send a question to the Miss Manners team of Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin, go to missmanners.com or write them c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.