Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Thanks Twitter, but maybe no response would've been better?

Over a month ago, I applied for a position with Twitter as a "Business Product Manager". Well, I just got a response back saying the usual rejection stuff - we found another applicant, we'll keep your resume on file for 6 months, thanks for your interest, etc etc etc blah blah blah...

How nice to get a response, right? Usually blindly sending a resume for a job posted on a company's website falls upon deaf ears. How nice indeed, but it needs to be done correctly!

The poor HR gal from Twitter copied all 186 applicants in the CC: line of the nicely crafted rejection email, for all of the other would-be applicants to see! Oops!!! I think you meant to use BCC!?!?

A nice save-face response from Evan Williams though (below). Evan, don't fire the poor girl. She made a mistake and I'm sure she'll never make this mistake again. In fact, I appreciated the effort of a response!

----------------

It has just been brought to my attention that we just sent this note about this job with everyone's address exposed in the cc line.

This is obviously a big mistake, and I sincerely apologize on behalf of Krissy, myself, and Twitter, Inc. We really appreciate you expressing interest in Twitter, and I can only imagine that this type of move adds insult to injury.

To be clear: Not everyone on this list even applied for this job. Some were recommended to us and entered into our applicant tracking system by employees here.

Whatever the case, I regret this mistake. Please help us reduce the impact of this error by respecting each other's privacy.

If there's anything I can do for you, please let me know.

Evan

--- Update:
Thanks TechCrunch for the shout-out. Lesson learned: Working for a communication website that caters to highly connected people means making sure you don't make mistakes in your communications - or everyone finds out about it (case in point - especially when these people are unemployed with nothing better to do). Now, everyone move on...
---
ValleyWag posts a story about it now too.
---

5 comments:

  1. I dub thee Craig 'Not' Given 'Job'. But you should have been. I really hope you get a job out of this cos you so deserve to!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congratulations on TechCrunch nod, Craig. I mean, we'd all rather be recognized for something more prestigious, but you have 185 new buddies in the same position. I'm one of them. I'm keeping track of updates on the incident here: http://tr.im/gqio

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks R3R, I agree - we'd all rather be recognized for something else more important, but not a bad day of networking (especially since I am looking for work).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ask him for a job...

    ReplyDelete
  5. hey craig,
    i'm a career writer at MSNBC.com. i wanted to talk to you about your Twitter job experience. do you have time to talk today?
    my contact info: careerdiva@verizon.net.
    cheers,
    eve tahmincioglu

    ReplyDelete