Thoughts And Prayers

Day 220 of writing every day.

I previously wrote about how I felt like I got ghosted by a company that I interviewed with over two weeks ago and my reaction to what I was told versus the silent treatment I got was that it felt rude. However, I unexpectedly got a call from them this morning before noon asking how my job hunt was going, which I assume was their way of asking if I was still interested in the position well past when they said they were going to get back to me.

The job posting they made had offered easier standard operating hours than the company I’m planning on joining. However that’s only if not assigned to some other company as a dispatch engineer. But they also a higher starting pay. What ended up being the most appealing to me about them was the training they said they’d provide, so even someone who didn’t learn to program or code at all can be considered for hiring. The interviewer seemed like a nice guy who actually looked at my resume as well.

They seemed like a good opportunity to explore until they decided that their word couldn’t be kept and neglected to follow-up a week after the first interview, as I had been told they would at the end of the interview. There are two rounds of interviews according to their posting, so even if there were a considerable number of applicants, I’m pretty sure they could’ve gotten back to me by the end of two weeks afterwards, if they had me higher up on the list of candidates for the job.

Missed Opportunity

Unfortunately, they either didn’t get their shit together and hold themselves to their word, or they just decided to hold me in reserve until someone they liked better had decided to decline the job offer. I had given up on them and assumed, contrary to the impression I had, that they were actually indifferent about letting applicants know what the hell is going on after breaking their word about the expected schedule.

It’s acceptable for a job applicant to reach out to a company if the reply regarding the outcome of their interview has been unbelievably slow. Yet there’s always the risk that you’re coming on as being pushy and demanding to an employer who’s still only considering if they want to hire you. They could care less how badly you want the job when they have a pool of candidates to draw from that are all looking to get the same job— especially if it’s entry level and there’s not too big of a starting skill difference that can’t be potentially made up with training.

Despite all I’ve mentioned so far, I do feel like kicking myself for deciding to just accept the job offer I got last week instead of waiting until Friday to give my reply. That way I would have asked the company rep who had called this morning to check if they were looking to move me to the next round of consideration.

Reassuring Myself And Having Conviction In The Choice I Made

I told myself I made up my mind to join the company I said I was going to join when I replied to them the other day ahead of the soft deadline they agreed to set for me. So I told the slowpoke company that I had received a job offer from elsewhere, and was planning on taking it.

My response was interpreted as me withdrawing myself as a candidate for their position. But that’s to be expected since I didn’t ask if they were thinking of inviting me to a second interview, which if they were planning, they should have just said at the start of the call instead of saying sorry for the late ass call and basically asking if I’ve found a job yet.

What kind of idiot would expect a job applicant to wait over two weeks for a reply when they, the company, told them it’d take one week? There are many businesses in need of talent, so why make people wait for you to fully complete the first round of screening instead of moving some early applicants you liked to the second round but intentionally setting the interview at a later date?

It’s arrogant if anything and lazy at best to leave people in the dark, but I guess this practice reflects the attitude that employers continue to have, like they’re entitled to decide the success and failure of jobseekers. We or most of us have all been educated to depend on someone hiring us and paying us a wage to survive. With the way people continue to be exploited, I can understand why a minority of people who’ve gotten fed up with it all would just throw everything away to go off grid and “live off the land,” if it seems viable.

If they really wanted me to work with them, I think they might’ve asked me to reconsider, but given how they just took it without any attempt to dissuade me from my announced intentions, they have enough people lined up for them to conveniently offer the job, I think. Their job posting goes until the end of August anyways, so I don’t even see what they’re trying to accomplish.

If you’re open to taking someone with no work experience in the industry, why act like you’re searching for the perfect candidate and take so much time to try and whittle down the list of candidates with a drawn out process? If people are leaving the company and not staying long-term, what you should be afraid of is not if the candidate seems like the hard-working type of if the type to quit, but whether your company is actually operating in a way where driven people feel valued and have a reason to believe staying on for life would be great.

Changing Practices

While it has been the standard to wish people success in their job hunt elsewhere when an employer decides to reject an applicant, the profuse usage of the same types of message just comes across as insincere when it can easily be copied and pasted from a standard rejection template letter. I mean, what’s the point of these false niceties when you could just be upfront and say you’re not the candidate we want, thanks for your time. People are fed up with the insincerity as a company simply looking to fill a position could care less if you dropped dead for whatever after you got rejected and they crossed your name off of the list of applicants.

The practice of sending well wishes is so empty that when I looked up info on job hunting in Japan, the internet seems to have started calling it お祈りメール oinori meeru (lit. “prayer mails”) that I would equate to the “thoughts and prayers” so many people use in America that it’s lost all value in expressing genuine concern, especially in the context of mass shooting gun violence when it comes to the US.

Some companies have decided to start a race to the bottom though. Instead of sending the rejection notice wishing success elsewhere, they adopted the practice of just not responding to a job applicant. The internet calls this サイレントお祈り sairent oinori (lit. “silent prayer”), which is when a significant amount of time has passed after a job application was sent in or after an interview but no response comes.

The message wishing success elsewhere that is the official rejection notice gets skipped, so you don’t even get told you’re rejected. This sparked the mocking idea of being given “silent” well wishes that never reaches you. This practice is believed to be gaining traction with employers. It’s a rude way to tell a candidate off but it’s unlikely for an employer to consider hiring someone they rejected before in the future, so they’ll just take the hit to reputation in the eyes of job applicants to save the company time and effort.

When I looked around online, it’s said that it typically takes up to two weeks at most for a company to get back to an applicant regarding the result of their application/interview. Some job postings even state how many days such as within 7 or 10 when I looked at Hello Work. The fact that it took them a full two and a half weeks to get back to me meant they were way slower than the standard, and they gave no reason to explain the delay, nor would I expect any employer to come clean about explaining their delay.

Many might believe the company had ghosted you with a silent prayer if they keep you waiting for over two weeks, but there are exceptions that might explain the delay. It could be the decision-makers being on vacation or the company being very busy, and the possibility of there being simply a large number of applicants to screen. The company that finally got back to me was already past the normally accepted deadline to reply. So I was right to feel like they were a lost cause.

In the end, I looked up reviews left by disgruntled employees and they all seemed to point to the underwhelming perks the company offered, such as employee trips together that were paid for out of pocket and resort discounts no one could use, but the most disappointing of all was that there was a lack of growth and a low skill level overall.

Fundamentally I decided what made my choice right was that one company was willing to wait for me while the other company was willing to make me wait. That speaks volumes about the company culture and I think one that shows me more courtesy is going to be one that I might feel more valued at as well.

Thanks for reading!