Hmmmmm.
4 pages back - unless it's 4 pages of lawyerese boilerplate that is just copied
and pasted - is unusual.
There is a term in business for that type of response - we call it a "F U Go
Away" letter" Sometimes known in the vernacular as a F.O.A.D. letter. ("and
die" are the last 2 words)
Most of the time, FUGA letters are a waste of time. Why? Because the business
had to pay someone at the business for their time to compose 4 pages of FUGA.
One of the cardinal rules of business is - you don't expend effort severing
contacts with any business associate, unless there is a cost to maintaining
that contact that is greater than the cost to severing it.
If I get a call from a salesperson selling something that I buy - but don't
need at that moment - I tell them "I buy those but sorry I not interested at
the moment" but I don't block them or expend any effort at all to block them.
If I get a call from a salesperson selling something that there's not a
snowball's chance in hell I'll ever buy for my employer - I tell them "sorry
but we simply never buy that stuff" but once more, I don't expend any effort to
block them.
I assume if they are a successful entity that if they are the first type, I'll
end up in a tickler file if they are the second type, they value their time and
will not want to waste further time on me and thus cross me off the list. If
the first type maybe I'll get another call every 6 months or so. Maybe one day
in the future I WILL be buying and then they can send me a quote or something.
Recruiters are salespeople in case you didn't know - they sell access to talent.
Anyway, it's only if they start wasting their own time - such as with
excessive, repeated contacts if the first type or contacts at all with the
second type, that I would spend my time attempting to block them or telling
them never to call me again and so on. Because, at that time, I know they are
not successful, they have no value, their own time is worthless - which is why
they are willing to waste it on me. Because my time is valuable I now have to
weigh whether it's worth spending my time on effort to make them quit wasting
my time, or whether I can just continue saying "no" and hanging up on them. In
other words, which option is going to cost more of my time.
For the 10 minutes I might spend yelling FUGA at them to never call me again or
threatening to report them if they call again, I could probably answer the
phone say "no" and hang up around 20 times. If I discern they are normal, I
will assume they will give up after about 6-7 calls, if I assume they have
heads of solid bone then I'll have to spend the 10 minutes screaming FUGA at
them in hopes that this will get them to quit wasting my time.
Understand that screaming at them isn't an emotional reaction - it's a logical
choice. It's just business. And in business, time is money and successful
businesspeople understand this.
This is a lesson that I had to learn, myself. The reality is, that an
emotional response to anything in business costs money - so you better make
sure that it's something worth spending money on. Screaming with joy "we got
the contract" and running around the office like a chicken with it's head cut
off is emotional but very worth the money and there's certainly no risk.
Politely giving a salesperson 5 minutes to pitch you for something you don't
need now but might need in the future - that's probably worth the money
although it's also a risk. FUGA on the other hand is almost never worth the
money or risk.
Now, as for your question:
I don't know how much time the recruitment firm has spent on this employer but
if the recruitment firm is following good business practices then they haven't
spent much time after getting a "no"
Sending a 1 page letter to a "no" response doesn't take much time. It's likely
mostly a form letter anyway. And you can include the usual thank you for your
time deciding to say no, which some of the more antique fossils in business
seem to hold in high regard. (that is, they are the my s don't stink types and
you must slavishly thank me for spending my 5 seconds telling you to get lost -
sort of like the "thank you sir may I have another" scene in Animal House)
So doing that is in general good business. Even with the fossils who you may
end up having to deal with in the future some time.
But a 4 page FUGA response is an indication that the employer - who has already
said no, apparently, is to use the expression - a piss-poor businessperson.
That is because they are willing to spend the $$$ on 30 minutes or more of
their time writing a FUGA when their option was to spend 1 minute responding
with "sorry we can't help you"
This is completely setting aside that the content of 4 pages that boils down to
one word - no - is almost certainly emotionally driven, and therefore a rich
goldmine for an employment lawyer to dig into. That's where the risk part
comes in. The second cardinal rule of business is you never take risks where
the reward isn't worth the effort to take the risk. The reward for creating a
usable electric light bulb was phenomenal so Edison was willing to take a giant
risk by throwing millions of todays dollars at it with zero guarantee it would
ever be anything other than a laboratory curiosity. The reward for making a
recruiter go away and stay away with high risk FUGA letter - pretty low. Thus,
a very very poor business decision.
The only reason any decent businessperson would possibly write a FUGA letter is
if the recruiter had already wasted a lot of their time continuing to pester
them and the employer felt spending that time writing a FUGA letter was going
to take less of their time than being continually pestered.
So, my advice to this hypothetical situation - hypothetical since you have not
supplied names of either the employer or recruiter - is that you have 1 of 2
things going on here.
Either the recruiter is being an idiot and has pushed the employer to write a
FUGA letter - or the employer is a terrible businessperson who is likely to go
bankrupt because they are spending all their time writing FUGA letters than
actually, ya know, making money?
Your choice. I would advise looking at the entire transaction to suss out what
actually happened. It might just be that the employer is fabulously successful
in which case I'd have to wonder about the recruiter - or the employer is
swinging from opportunity from opportunity like a monkey in a tree barely
staying above the crocodiles, in which case the candidate certainly dodged a
bullet.
Ted
-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG <plug-boun...@lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of James Tobin
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2025 8:08 AM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <plug@lists.pdxlinux.org>
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Ghosted?
How do you mean backwards Oregon? ;-)
The recruitment firm has written a one-page letter to the employer but the
employer has sent a 4 page reply back. The employer's letter also states that
they have no obligation or reason to provide feedback, engage in further
communication, or follow up on the candidate(s) introduced. They have gone so
far as to write a four page letter defending their position in response to the
recruitment firms-one page letter. Does the employer's stance not sound fishy
to people? The recruitment firm did attempt to speak with the HR person that
cancelled the contract too. They refused to comment on the suitability of the
individuals introduced. Instead, they remarked on the recruitment consultants'
presumed skin color and gender, and made a remark about the recruitment firm
being a 'one-man band'. . .
On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 at 15:53, Ted Mittelstaedt <t...@portlandia-it.com> wrote:
>
> The main thing on the list is the potential liability. This is why rejection
> letters are extremely short and they never call on a rejection. You never
> know if your talking to a lawyer who is trying to build a case against you by
> developing a pattern on your rejections. This is why certain topics even
> inside of companies concerning hiring are completely taboo. The few times
> I've heard any manager even utter any of the "protected class" words EOO
> words, (race sex religion etc. etc.) they have been reprimanded and the
> thought of putting anything like that in an internal email is unbelievable.
> A manager who did that would certainly be close to being fired.
>
> The rest of the stuff isn't that important - there's plenty of managers and
> HR people out there who don't mind spending calories on rejects. If someone
> asked me point blank how they came off in the interview I'd tell them - and
> in fact, if you are in an interview and you sense that it's gone sideways or
> that it's not a fit, I encourage you to ask what do you think of me? I did
> that once and they told me point blank that my last paycheck stub (which I
> had bought, as insurance) was higher than what they were planning on
> offering. That was one of those positions advertised without a pay scale
> back in "the olden days". I think they got "schooled" that day. But that's
> what you get when you advertise a position without a pay range.
>
> And I'm also very skilled at answering the phone and giving the caller 5
> seconds no more to explain what they are calling about and if I decide it's
> not worth my time to listen to their pitch I politely say "not interested"
> and hang up. Even when they are in the middle of their "I appreciate it but
> there's one more thing you should consider" foot-in-the-door spiel. That's
> an executive skill any good manager has to develop. They aren't being
> abrupt, they just recognize there's no more value to the call so they end it
> to quit wasting their time and yours.
>
> As for tuning an LLM, they can turn the most glowing Resume/application in
> that's as tuned as possible to get it past all the filters if they want. I'd
> actually consider that a plus in a candidate that they figured out the rat's
> maze to defeat the robot overlord. (Although I personally would never use
> LLM to filter and I've explained why already that a good manager would not)
> But securing the interview is just the first step you still got to prove
> yourself in the interview. And there's no point in putting a huge amount of
> effort into securing interviews and none into the actual interview process.
> Unless your goal is to sort of collect interviews like medals.
>
> The automated tools make rejecting candidates take very little effort. The
> candidate applies online, puts their contact info in online, if they aren't
> greenflagged and forwarded for a screening interview (ie: a phone call from
> HR asking "are you a real person or not") the rejection comes back
> automatically - with no activity on a prospect after a few weeks the software
> just closes the file and issues the rejection automatically.
>
> "There is whole industry of asking job candidates to generate resumes for
> training or for sale - essentially for free, just by advertising a job
> opportunity."
>
> I assure you, nobody does this anymore.
>
> The number 1 reason is as follows:
>
> https://www.hrdive.com/news/pay-transparency-law-tracker-states-that-r
> equire-employers-to-post-pay-range-or-wage-range/622542/
>
> Notice that backwards Oregon is NOT on the list. I encourage you to write
> your representative on this issue.
>
> Back in the bad old days, when nobody advertised pay scales, the only way a
> company HR department could do research on market rate was by offering fake
> job opportunities. Then during the screening interview they would say "this
> job is offering a range of X-Y" and see if the candidate said OK. If they
> did, that was too high. The next candidate they screened they would lower
> the offer. And they would keep doing this until they started getting
> candidates saying "that's too low"
>
> But today, there's a whole list of states that require disclosed pay scales
> by law. And trust me, ANY employer in any of those states who lists a job
> and does NOT do that - they WILL get reported - by hundreds of job seekers.
> And the state employment divisions just LOVE fining employers for this kind
> of stuff.
>
> So, to do a market pay study nowadays is really easy you just look at the
> listings in those states and toss the border markers and you have your scale.
> And for the Fortune 500 they often are drawing upper staff who they WILL pay
> relocation for and they don't know where their candidates might be coming
> from and they simply don't want the hassle. A company like Walmart for
> example is in all 50 states if they advertise a manager position in Oregon
> for sure candidates in Washington State are going to see it and even if they
> could squeak by the law by not putting a pay scale in and claiming it was an
> Oregon advertisement - they will incur the ire of State of Washington's labor
> department who can easily make trouble for their Washington operations (hmm,
> it's been a while since we've inspected your Vancouver operations) So once
> enough states started passing these disclosure laws, the large corps caved in
> and started putting pay scales on ALL their positions - which of course put
> tremendous pressure on the small Mom and Pop operations to disclose THEIR pay
> scales since if your going to pay Indeed to list a job your wasting your
> money if nobody applies - and nobody will apply if you are the only employer
> in the list that isn't listing a pay range in your job posting.
>
> Your still going to see the occasional posting lacking a pay scale but only
> someone looking for their first job should be applying for those.
>
> This is one of the areas that young folks have a huge advantage over what us
> old codgers had to deal with.
>
> Ted
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PLUG <plug-boun...@lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of
> ken...@tuta.com
> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2025 6:40 AM
> To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <plug@lists.pdxlinux.org>
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Ghosted?
>
> I think Tomas summed it up perfectly, while also addressing a few things
> about job searching that I was aware of(It's been a while since I had to
> hire).
> Thanks | おおきに / ありがとう | Kiitos | Merci | Gracias | Obrigada | Grazie |
> 谢谢 | Danke | Wado | спасибо,
> 賢進ジェンナ「Kenshin, Jenna」
>
> "You should be as alive as you can until you're totally dead!" - Dylan
> Moran
>
>
>
> 2025年7月27日 13:22 差出人: tomas.kuchta.li...@gmail.com:
>
> > I can think of a few reasons:
> > * There is no value in spending any calories on rejected candidates
> > * Potential liability
> > * Potential for extra arguments, hassle and follow up
> > * It is proprietary knowledge, many applications are generated and
> > almost all are screened by a LLM - so giving feedback would let the
> > generating LLM/human to tune for success.
> > * Work load - they maybe rejecting many candidates for a few
> > positions. Not necessarily because of a particular reason
> > * There is whole industry of asking job candidates to generate
> > resumes for training or for sale - essentially for free, just by
> > advertising a job opportunity.
> >
> > Applying/searching for a job is no fun, especially on saturated
> > labor market, that is for sure.
> >
> > -T
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 17:59 James Tobin <jamesbto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Why do you think that is?
> >>
> >> On Fri, 25 Jul 2025 at 21:55, <ken...@tuta.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Yes, but I also know that employers in the U.S. generally don't
> >> > want to
> >> admit why an applicant was refused or passed on.
> >> > Thanks | おおきに / ありがとう | Kiitos | Merci | Gracias | Obrigada |
> >> > Grazie |
> >> 谢谢 | Danke | Wado | спасибо,
> >> > 賢進ジェンナ「Kenshin, Jenna」
> >> >
> >> > "You should be as alive as you can until you're totally dead!" -
> >> > Dylan
> >> Moran
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > 2025年7月25日 11:57 差出人: jamesbto...@gmail.com:
> >> >
> >> > > Hi, if you were represented by a recruiter (headhunter,
> >> > > recruitment consultant, agent, or whatever they prefer to call
> >> > > themselves) for a potential job with an employer, would you
> >> > > expect them to do everything possible to get feedback on your
> >> > > resume, skills, experience, overall application, and
> >> > > suitability directly from the employer after you'd been presented?
> >> > >
> >> >
> >>
>
>
