How we handle applicants

"We will respond only if you are shortlisted" has become (almost?) the industry standard for handling applicants.  I understand why.

 

And I suspect I am close to expressing a universal feeling that I am never happy about it.

 

The reason is this.  Applying for anything requires one to put a really "best effort" into the application.  To do less than that is a tacit private admission that "I am not serious about this opportunity".  For many sincere professionals, this process of really investing oneself in that application produces a form of commitment (shall we call it "the commitment seed"?), even before the potential employer can say yes or no. Frankly, as one who has tried to offer the best of myself in my career, I see creating this seed as an important individual risk to take - always!!.   And as an experienced manager of people, I also know that this seed although invisible, is important evidence of the ability to grow commitment, making the motivated applicant a great potential asset to the Team.  I water it whenever I can.

 

You can see where this is going already.  :-)

 

As an acknowledgement of the effort taken to apply and to go beyond the industry standard method of treating applicants and the seed of commitment, I respectfully recommend to all firms and managers that they generate individual responses once they have run their selection processes.  With modern software, this can be done with a minimal set up cost and requires only a trigger to the system by a very junior staff person to send the several letters required.  Almost every marketing company generates a letter with my name in it, offering to sell me something.  International development consulting firms have that model available.

 

Nurture the seed.  Nurture the Team.  Nurture the effort.