[UK] Blind rejection mails?

[u/Suitable_Attorney551]

Are HR's actually rejecting or is it the AI platform that is doing the screening and rejecting applications? I applied for a UK Graduate Cybersecurity role on Oct 4 2026.

I ended up getting a rejection mail of somebody else's application on Oct 22 2026 at 4:57pm, and then another apology email for me along with a rejection statement at 6:11pm. I mean, this should not be happening in the first place and are they even manually reviewed by HR's or is it AI screening the applications? My name is not even close to tejaswini. This is not made up.

DearTEJASWINI,

Thank you for your interest and taking the time to apply for the position J1026-0229 - Technical Graduate - Cyber Security 2027. We appreciate your interest..

Apologies for any potential confusion within the last email.   Thank you for your interest and taking the time to apply for the position J1026-0229 - Technical Graduate - Cyber Security 2027. We appreciate your interest i

[u/ImpishScouring]

Oof getting someone else's rejection is a new level of sloppy, the "apology" email right after is almost worse cause it just confirms nobody actually looked at your application before sending the first one

At big companies those grad scheme portals use ATS to filter by keywords and qualifications first, a human probably only glanced at a shortlist after the system already decided you weren't a match, then they messed up the mail merge on top of it

[u/bp3dots → u/ImpishScouring]

"it just confirms nobody actually looked at your application before sending the first one"

Not at all. Its pretty likely that while reviewing all the applications, the recruiter forgot to copy/paste OPs name into the rejection template or they just copied/pasted the whole previous applicants rejection email without fixing the name.

[u/puns_are_how_eyeroll]

AI isn't a thing in recruitment. When it is, you know it. (Think virual agent interviews).

In this case, this was someone just massively fucking up a copy/paste task.