Applied online and received an email a few days later asking me to submit a degree transcript and write a short article for them, which I sent off the following day. Two weeks later, I had heard nothing, so I sent a follow up. Tried once more, a week later, to ask if my resume would lie on file and if they could give me any feedback. I even copied in their customer service address, in the hope that perhaps the HR manager was away. Alas, they still maintain radio silence.
I understand that you cannot always expect a response to job applications, but this is a small company and the position is still being advertised, so it’s not as if they’ve been swamped with other candidates. Given that they had shown some initial interest in me and I had taken the time to complete an assignment for them, I think it’s fair to expect an email rejection. How can I pretend to be writer if I don’t have a massive pile of rejections as proof?
Frankly, I think they’re missing a trick here, given that the kind of people they’re trying to recruit as writers, are also likely to be working as tutors and teachers and are therefore conduits to potential customers. While I would never boycott a company just because they wouldn’t give me a job, if they are this flaky with their potential employees, what is their customer service like? I can only assume that the friendly, affable tone they promote is marketing bluster, rather than any genuine personability on their part.