[Foundation-l] New list admin: Ral315

Sun Aug 17 16:53:28 UTC 2008

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Michael Bimmler wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Jon <scream at datascreamer.com> wrote:
> 
>> In the future, I highly encourage the list owners to strive for
>> transparency.  That is to say, that right before an appointment, it
>> should be stated "We are considering appointing so and so, please send
>> comments privately to listowners at whatever.org".
>>
> 
> Well, yes, I'll try to do this next time.
> 
>> Also, I highly encourage the list owners as a courtesy to let those who
>> applied know that they were considered, but not chosen.
>>
>>
>> I'm not asking for a boilerplate email, I'm asking for a personal one
>> with a couple of sentences.  This is professional courtesy in any
>> corporate or volunteer organization.  It is impolite not to do so.
> 
> With this, though, I have a bit more problems. It's not that I strive
> to be impolite, but rather, I'm doubting about its practicalities:
> 
> 1) Even with the comparatively small amount of applications that I
> myself have already written to corporations, I can tell you that it is
> by no means standard practice to reply to every application - many
> companies only reply to those whom they want to do an interview with
> etc.
> Now, of course, this alone wouldn't prevent us from "doing better".
> 
> 2) However, what kind of mail would you have liked? You said that you
> didn't want a boilerplate email, okay. But how do you write "personal
> emails" to the ca. 10 applicants who we did not choose? Either you
> keep it very short and simple ("Hi, this is to inform you that you
> were considered but that we found Ral315 to be the most qualified
> candidate after all"), which would be a form of a boilerplate again.
> Otherwise, you'll have to outline for every candidate the exact
> reasons why the successful candidate was "better" (read: more
> qualified) than him and it's a) difficult to formulate this without
> being impolite and b) it takes a lot of time.  In fact, I know until
> now absolutely *no* company that will write you a personal letter
> explaining why you, in particular, were not chosen. I don't know
> whether in the US, corporations have that large HR departments that
> they can make this effort, but it doesn't strike me as SOP.
> 
> This said, if you find a medium way between boilerplates and
> tailor-made emails for every individual candidate, I'm glad to
> consider it.
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 

Actually, your correct, most HR send boilerplates only.  I Think in this
way, a boilerplate would be better than nothing.  I only knew of two
other volunteers, but I'm not you, you may have received 10 or more.  I
don't know of any good solution.  I'm only suggesting not leaving
volunteers hanging.  I hope you understand the thought of "Hmm, they
choose someone, did they forget about my offer?????".  Best to eliminate
that.

- --
Best,
Jon

[User:NonvocalScream]
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