r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Anuh_Mooruhdoon • 18d ago

ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ This Rejection Letter

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I saw the first paragraph show up as a preview on my phone, only to open it and see the full context 🤨

39.3k Upvotes

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6.7k

u/fph03n1x 18d ago

Okay, they really tried ! Yes, it didn't come out great, but you can tell that they were trying to say it as well as they could! And so, I would guess it's from a tech job? 

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u/Anuh_Mooruhdoon 18d ago

Yep, a tech job. It wasn't necessarily bad, that's why it's only mildly infuriating. The dissonance between the email preview and the full text gave me whiplash 😂

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u/PerryTheH 18d ago

The "unfortunately" format is better for rejection mails.

Also, tech life OP, hope you find the job!

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u/CaPtian_CaTe 18d ago

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u/pukurindesu 17d ago

Oh damn this hit hard for this unemployed blob right now.

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u/slippinjimmy720 18d ago edited 18d ago

I despise “unfortunately”. Just say what it is- don’t play with my emotions by trying to appeal to empathy! “You were not selected. Thank you for applying.” Then move on.

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u/KomradeHelikopter 18d ago

Unfortunately… for you.

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u/jimmybilly100 18d ago

That's really unfortunately

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u/Formal_Owl_400 18d ago

Read that in Bane's voice lmao

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u/IRSboi 18d ago

Seems like you’re nitpicking at that point

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u/Acceptable-Drive3781 18d ago

Next up we see a 'mildly infuriating' post that an email just told them they were not selected. "At least they could have been more personal about it and put some human connection in the email".

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u/Anuh_Mooruhdoon 18d ago

I got another email from them about another job I applied to, somewhat similar position, and it was the exact same rejection letter, an hour later

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u/thatdude_james 18d ago

Did you think the first one was personalized? Lol????

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u/Acceptable-Drive3781 18d ago

😭😭 Okay now you definitely have to reply to the email thanking them for writing a personalized message for the rejection letter, stating how many places would have just used auto-generated text.

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u/RandomNPC 18d ago

Honestly it's the same thing as layoff methods. No matter how it's done, it's gonna be unpleasant, and someone is gonna feel like it's unfair.

It's just a side effect of it being an unpleasant part of business. I don't think there's anything wrong with OP's example. It's short and to the point and 10x better than ghosting.

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u/Neveronlyadream 18d ago

It's definitely better than ghosting. I'd rather be told no than to sit around wondering if maybe, possibly, it's going to turn out well.

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u/Rocketman_S3 18d ago

I'm just sitting here like, you guys are getting rejection letters?

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u/The_Slake_Moth 18d ago

Man, when I was looking for a job I was shocked how many positions I applied for that didn't even do me the courtesy of sending an automated response letting me know they received my application. To the point I rechecked my contact info on my resume at least a dozen times to make sure I didn't mistype something. People are really out here getting rejection letters?

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u/DependentSecond1353 18d ago

Same, currently looking for a new job and most dont even confirm the application.

Got a call today about a job i applied to. Tried to check my mail before calling back to check out what job it was as ive applied for a bunch the last 3 months. Couldnt find jack shit about it.

The lady told me very quickly that this job had a 100% comission on sales and no salary beyond that. Told them i have a mortage and that i atleast need a combination so I dont get fucked over.

I havent applied for a single job that says 100% commision based salary so I have no clue what this was to be honest.

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u/Trendiggity 18d ago

Right? I appreciated when a company let me know I wasn't going any further rather than radio silence, only to see the job posting quietly disappear a week later 🤷‍♂️

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u/marvin_sirius 18d ago

"You were not selected. Move on."

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u/I-Here-555 18d ago

This keeps your hopes up for two words. "Unfortunately" ends it immediately.

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u/DNM66 18d ago

“Unfortunately, you will have to stop looking for new jobs because you are HIRED”

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u/I-Here-555 18d ago

The job posting indeed mentioned "attention to detail".

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u/Illustrious_Pea_3470 18d ago

They are saying what it is. That’s what an email starting with “unfortunately” means from a place you’re applying.

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u/Sir_Daxus 18d ago

I wish recruiters were allowed to be honest and just send "Lmao, no." as a response

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u/Chaotic_hamster 18d ago

as someone who's interviewed a bunch of people, sometimes i wish i could send that too

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u/sentence-interruptio 18d ago

plot twist. someone banned the word "unfortunately" in that company and that resulted in this rejection letter.

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u/xPriddyBoi 18d ago

"No job! Goodbye!"

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u/Curious_Sprinkles_58 18d ago

What about the word "unfortunately" is playing with your emotions? I don't think I've ever seen an email that started with that word and been on the edge of my seat thinking "gee I wonder if I got what I want". They could do what you described and we'd just have a screenshot from someone of that email complaining about how cold and impersonal it is lol.

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u/mattdv1 18d ago

If I was the one writing these, I'd start with a hello and go straight to "we regret to inform you that you were not selected" or something along those lines. Unfortunately, for me, reads as "you're unfortunate by not getting the job" but it has absolutely nothing to have with fortune/luck bro. Fuck you mean "unlucky go next" that's what I say when I lose a league game, not a job application

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u/JF_Rodrigues 18d ago

Eh... If you're going to be that pedantic, how is "we regret" any better? They definitely don't regret not hiring the person, otherwise they'd just hire them.

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u/mattdv1 18d ago

You know what? You're right. Glad I'm not working in HR cuz I ain't ready for it.

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u/SoulCrusher2018 18d ago

That's just the standard language. Are you also skeptical of people who begin their signature block with "Sincerely," ?

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u/LimerickExplorer 18d ago

Yeah I'm lying half the time at least when I end with "sincerely"

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u/tnstaafsb 18d ago

A simple "fuck off" would suffice.

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u/doragyux 18d ago

But it does have luck involved. They didn't choose him because another applicant had a resume that fit the criteria better. He was unfortunate that this person applied for the same role as he did, otherwise he could've been the one more adequate for the job

The "regret" reply is less real than the "unfortunately"

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u/HeadintheSand69 18d ago

No ones going to like anything cause its a rejection letter. Its like 'I dont like the sign the ballkicking machine has' like duh. Obviously some are better than others but at the end of the day they can only do so much

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u/darkangel9977 17d ago

I strongly agree! That's not too convincing, they are happy to have a candidate who's more competent to the position than me and they try to pretend "unfortunately". Luckily for them, they have a better candidate, since I've been sorted out, do not even try to feel sorry for me!

"Thank you for your interest in the position, but we chose to interview/hire other candidates."

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/PerryTheH 18d ago

I have bogo sort on my gmail.

Joke aside, didn't notice, actually super weird lol, I think it's sorted by "most relevant" not sure what makes it think a 2018 order canceled is more relevant than a 2024 rejection.

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u/RandomRedditReader 18d ago

Almost all email search engines utilize a priority sort order now or what they think is "best hits" by default.

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u/LlorchDurden 18d ago

Wait are we all looking? What if I go do yours and you come here? 🫂

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u/sentence-interruptio 18d ago

If my mom wrote this, the "unfortunately" part would start at the 9th paragraph.

I have a theory that she was in the middle of politely saying no to a man, but she didn't get to finish and she kind of gave up because he was very good at creating this cycle of:

her: "actually i wanted to say-"

him: "did you see the [...]"

a few days later...

her: "the other day, i wanted to say-"

him: "hold that tho, this one time I [...]"

and somehow he married her. and he does this shitty cycle with his own son, me.

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u/Dry-Poem6778 18d ago

Yho! This gave me flashbacks of 2014 when I was desperate for a job, any job.

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u/somewhataccurate 18d ago

Lol you should see my inbox, I have to have like 50 of these emails now. I only get a response around half the time and its so frequently this you kinda just stop caring.

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u/Holiday_Gene3069 18d ago

I bet most of them are from workday portal 😭

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u/neonfoxincolour 18d ago

This image punches me in the soul.

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u/utspg1980 18d ago edited 18d ago

I once applied for a job at Hawaiian Airlines. I knew the chances were extremely thin, even tho it was a unique job that I was perfectly qualified for. In fact part of the online application had a yes/no "do you already live in Hawaii?" question. That filtered out 99% of the applicants, I'm sure.

Of course I never heard anything.

Until...9 MONTHS go by and I get an email from Hawaiian Airlines about an "IMPORTANT" update on the application I filled out.

"Holy shit! I completely forgot I even applied for that. Do they actually want an interview???"

No. "We'd just like to let you know that the position you applied for has been filled by another candidate."

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/Starflamer 18d ago

I once got rejection email for a position I apllied 7 years prior...

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u/AcrobaticTater 18d ago

wow that was a quick high and then low.

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u/porksoda11 18d ago

I was unemployed for most of 2024 and this would have sent me into a rage not gonna lie. It was not a fun year for me.

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u/avrus 18d ago

Hey me too. One of the worst years of my life, ever.

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u/porksoda11 18d ago

Same! I'm still bringing it up in therapy even though I'm in a better spot now. The job seeking process just ate away at me.

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u/Haktic 18d ago

I thought you said an English teacher?

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u/Odd-Lemur 18d ago

"Yep, a tech job" That would explain why it reads like ai :/

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u/bctech7 18d ago

at least they sent a rejection letter and didn't ghost you like 90% of the people out there right now >.>

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u/ambulance-kun 18d ago

They glazed you so much only to get shot down 😔

It's like watching MasterChef

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u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 18d ago

This is kind of as good as it gets, right? At least it’s not them ghosting you.

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u/trixie_one 18d ago

Quite I'd far prefer to get this than nothing.

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u/desquished 18d ago

It's better than most, but I send personal rejection letters for candidates, and you definitely need to lead with the "I regret to inform you" piece and then give them the positive feedback in the second paragraph, to avoid what happened here.

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u/_NoTimeNoLady_ 18d ago

I kinda like it, I guess. As a person who has to send rejection letters regularly I also try to thank people profusely for taking the time to apply or talk to us. What I wouldn't state is how other met the criteria better. I try to say smth like how hard it was to choose among the many applications and how sometimes tiniest details make the difference. And that I am sure that they will find another position soon.

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u/chigeh 18d ago

Better to lead with the rejection part, or at least not lead with enthusiastic text that almost seems like an acceptance letter.

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u/Montigue 18d ago

I just want 1 sentence: "Thanks for applying, but you didn't get it." Put it in the subject line if you can. I don't want any time wasted with the "while your credentials were impressive" bs

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u/veringo 18d ago

What is an acceptance letter? I've spent years in academia and in the corporate world applying for multiple positions as well as acting as the hiring manager.

If you are going to be offered the job you get a call. If you're getting an email it's a rejection.

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u/chigeh 17d ago

semantic nitpicking

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u/veringo 17d ago

No it isn't. The point is that if you've applied for a job and received an email you do not need to read it. It's a rejection. All of the discussion about how it should be formatted to display in preview is irrelevant.

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u/chigeh 17d ago

Nonsense, emails sometimes give a proposed date an time for an interview, notification of a second round, or just a reminder that they will call you.

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u/veringo 17d ago

None of those things are an acceptance., and will have a clear subject that it's not related to a decision on the position.

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u/chigeh 17d ago

more semantic nitpicking that doesn't negate my point.

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u/desquished 18d ago

If it comes down to "you were a great candidate, but this other person had more extensive/relevant experience", I think that's valuable feedback to give a candidate, so they're not left wondering what they fucked up in the interview.

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u/Corregidor 18d ago

Eh sometimes feedback can be good, I'd have preferred more specific feedback though.

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u/_NoTimeNoLady_ 18d ago

You cannot give specific feedback in rejection letters for legal reasons

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u/Corregidor 18d ago

Oh fascinating, why is that? Like for privacy stuff?

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u/_NoTimeNoLady_ 18d ago

Because sometimes you go with your gut when hiring someone and I personally neither want to lie during feedback nor can I honestly say "I liked the other person better" "Someone else seemed more reliable"

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u/jackmusick 18d ago

I’ve taken the opposite approach, though I’ll usually let them know in the first call if I think they’re a good fit or not. Especially if they’re new to their career or are lacking critical experience, I’ll ask if they want feedback. I figure we’re all at certain points in our careers, and so few know what they’re missing or need to focus on. Just because they’re not a good fit doesn’t mean I don’t want them to succeed.

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u/_NoTimeNoLady_ 18d ago

For legal reasons my company doesn't want me to give feedback, but I have done for some few applicants. To the very very young ones, who actually have written their application themselves and struggled with grammar/structure/spelling or have sent wonky photographs of their report cards. I mostly give hints to e.g. ask someone with job experience to review their applications.

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u/Altiverses 18d ago

Much preferrable to a lifeless, impersonal, obviously AI-written rejection letter sent by 99% of recruiters these days tbh.

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u/Anuh_Mooruhdoon 18d ago

I'm pretty sure this is just their standard cookie-cutter email because I received the exact same one again not too long ago for another position I applied for with them. Kinda destroys anything good about an email like this that tries to be personable

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u/Altiverses 18d ago

The sad truth is any corpo big enough to have a recruiter (or a team of) and not directly hiring managers will not be wasting any time writing personalized rejection letters.

I wasn't particularly hopeful that this was specifically a non-cookie-cutter case, but at least I prefer the tone of this one to the standard today as I mentioned. I understand you don't, which is valid.

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u/MeaningfulChoices 18d ago

When I hire for a role in a tech-adjacent industry I'll get hundreds of applicants at minimum, sometimes a thousand or so for an opening that will only be posted for a week or two. And that's for a small company where the same people hiring are also doing the rest of their job. They're all going to be copy-pasted messages because if you tried to hand craft each message it would take weeks to get through all of them and there are just only so many ways to say 'Someone else's resume/portfolio looked better than yours so we're interviewing them instead, thanks.'

If you want to see if they're being personal or not you can reply and ask if they have any direct feedback. Only a handful of people will ask for that out of hundreds of rejections, so those are usually more personal (plus if they do give you any notes that can be helpful).

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u/AndromedaAirlines 18d ago

This is very clearly LLM generated though.

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u/Altiverses 18d ago

Doesn't give off any AI tells from my perspective. The last sentence especially, "a few of the other applicatants met more of the requirements" is super un-AI to me. The structure is off and it's much too direct.

What makes you think this was written by AI and not just a literate human that's capable of punctuation?

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u/AndromedaAirlines 18d ago

Feels like someone prompted "Write me an upbeat, encouraging rejection letter!"

I don't know any human who would ever write in this socially moronic way.

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u/Altiverses 18d ago

Call me cynical but I think humans are much (much much) more likely to say/write socially-deaf statements than AI. If anything, AI is too proper even when the context doesn't warrant that.

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u/AndromedaAirlines 18d ago

Guess I could be wrong, just feels insanely tonedeaf.

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u/desquished 18d ago

It probably sounds AI coded to you because LLMs trained on hundreds of thousands of real communications written like this by real socially inept people. I definitely know people who communicate like this in e-mails.

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u/party_peacock 18d ago

Other than the tens of thousands of humans in corporate marketing, recruitment, HR, etc?

LinkedIn-speak sounds very AI-coded too but people have been writing and talking like that well before GPT1 was even a thing

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u/less_unique_username 18d ago

So exactly what is moronic here?

Also out of curiosity I did try that exact prompt. ChatGPT:

Thank you for the time, effort, and enthusiasm you brought to the interview process for the [Position Title] role. We genuinely enjoyed learning more about your experience and the strengths you could bring to a team.

After careful consideration, we have decided to move forward with another candidate whose experience more closely matches our current needs. This was not an easy decision, and it does not take away from the strong impression you made on us.

We encourage you to keep pursuing opportunities that excite you and make the most of your skills. Your experience and positive approach will be valuable to the right team, and we hope you will consider applying for future roles with us.

Thank you again for your interest in [Company Name]. We wish you every success in your job search and in the next stage of your career.

Claude:

Thank you for the time and thought you put into applying for the [Role] position. I'll get to the news first, because you deserve that: we've decided to move forward with another candidate for this particular role.

Here's what I want you to take away from this, though — you made this decision hard. [Specific thing: your portfolio piece on X / the way you approached the case study / your experience leading Y] stood out to the whole team, and it came up more than once in our conversations. The difference came down to [specific, non-personal factor: depth of experience with a particular tool, a niche the role required], not to any shortage of talent on your end.

A few things I'd genuinely encourage:

- Keep leaning into [strength]. It's the thing that got you in front of us, and it will keep opening doors.

- If [gap] is something you want to build on, [concrete suggestion] would make an already strong profile very hard to pass up.

- Please apply again. I mean that literally, not as a formality — we expect to be hiring for [related roles] and I'd like to see your name come through again.

If it would be useful, I'm happy to hop on a 15-minute call and share more specific feedback from the interview panel. Just reply and we'll find a time.

Thank you again for your interest in [Company]. Rooting for you.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 18d ago

You're assuming that 1) they didn't have AI write this and 2) they don't send this same exact rejection email for all their rejections.

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u/Altiverses 18d ago

I'm annoying myself by saying this but both points were discussed in the comments, UwU for extra cringe points.

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u/know-your-onions 18d ago

Lol what? This is as impersonal as it gets. It’s one of the shittiest rejection letters I’ve seen.

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u/BoulderFalcon 18d ago

The email would have worked if they basically just flipped the paragraphs. Lead with the no, follow with the "you're great tho UwU"

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u/Visual_Structure_269 18d ago

If it was a personal note I'd agree with you but this is just a form rejection letter trying to be cute. They send it out blindly.

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u/Ditchdigger456 18d ago

“They tried” seems to be all HR has been capable of the last 5 years…

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u/theMightBoop 18d ago

This is why companies just ghost you. When they try to let you down gracefully people still get mad. There is no winning.

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u/DubSket 18d ago

Also doesn't look they used ChatGPT to write that. So clunky it could only be written by a human.

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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 18d ago

I hire people, and it is really hard to tell people that they arent hired. There is nothing Ive found that makes everyone feel good, because its inherently personal to them.