Dear HR Team Members: Do you send out rejection emails? If not, why not?
It’s common courtesy. Seriously. And it was not only commonplace, but de rigeur until the late 1990’s to early 2000’s. The age of online job boards seems to be the main cause, as HR can mostly only do so much. But as I mention below, it is possible to at least send -something- out.
Please have someone write up a basic email template for polite rejections. (Below, I’ll even give you a basic paragraph you can freely use. When you have chosen who goes to the next round, take ALL the email addresses of the rejected applicants, use THAT template in an email with all of them BCC’d (and emailing it to yourself). Then hit send. While it would be nice to personalize it with names, and I’m sure there’s a way, as long as you STOP ghosting applicants, it will go a long way to improving the job market.
The smaller the list gets, THEN you can personalize the emails. Even a line or two mentioning something we said in the interview.
I get told right and left that sending a thank you card or email is a really good idea. But if you ghost us, how do we know we’ve been turned down?
Below are two recent rejection emails I have received in the last month. Both are fairly stripped down from what one might get in a later stage of the process. While I’ve removed the names of the companies, I’ve left everything else up. The one on the right: Applied 8/13/26, rejection email 8/18/26. The one on the left: Applied 8/12/26, rejection 8/14/26.
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Over to the right is an example email you can borrow freely. You can add to it, make it more aligned with the company, etc. This is about as bare bones as it gets.
Make sure there are at least two people (assuming you have more than one HR person) who know how to use your chosen mail software to send out the email.
Again, this is not some massive complicated process. You should have the main portion of it saved so all you have to do is provide a list of emails and the first names to plug in it.
Dear _______,
Thank you for your application for the ___________ position.
We have reviewed your skills and experience and have identified candidates who are more closely aligned with the job requirements and our core values.
Thank you,
Human Resources
I may further expand on this topic down the road, but until next time.
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