Yesterday, I wrote a very flattering blog about Twitter. A lot of employers have checked out my blog and in many ways it is an extension of your resume so I thought it would be good timing to give them some love in addition to my now infamous Twitter PR babe story of previous Yardbarker glory.
That being said Twitter did not hire me for the position I applied for. They didn’t even interview me which is kind of a bummer as I thought it was a good fit.
The real story lies in the now infamous email rejection letter that I received which has subsequently been picked up by ValleyWag and TechCrunch.
The story starts at 11:05 AM when I received the below email from the HR Manager over at Twitter. I will not mention her name as she has already been pummeled in the blogosphere today.
“Hi,
Thank you so much for taking the time to apply for the Business
Product Manager position at Twitter, Inc. During the course of our
recruiting efforts, we come across many fine candidates such as you,
and we carefully evaluate each candidate’s background and interests
against our projected workloads and staffing needs. Although we are
impressed with your background, the hiring committee has decided to
move forward with a different candidate.
We will keep your information on file for six months in case future
opportunities arise.
Thanks”
Knowing that I was close to finalizing employment elsewhere, I was not too distraught. However I was quick to notice that I was not the only person receiving this email. In fact I was only one of 186.
The HR manager did not put us in the proper BCC field but rather the CC field and now we could all see each other.
Obviously the implications of this is not good as applying for a job should not be a public record considering many may be currently employed elsewhere. My first thought was, I hope this does not end on on Valleywag. It didn’t take long until it was. The more well read TechCrunch shortly followed.
A flurry of reply all activity took place letting the HR manager know of her mistake and poking fun of the situation.
An hour later CEO, Evan Williams sent a damage control email.
“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 (HR MANAGER NAME), 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 is on the left. I am sure he was not overly thrilled about this.
To be honest, I appreciated the HR Managers email letting me know I did not get the job and also appreciated Evan’s apology email as well.
The community of 186 Twitter rejects has taken on a life of its own. As I write this, I count 65 reply emails including one I sent.
Most of these emails poke fun of the situation while a good amount of them are personal job search plugs and networking themed. I can see there were a lot of qualified candidates from MBA students to very experienced technology start up guys and gals.
There was also a bunch of just out of school grads swinging for the fences in addition to some folks overseas in the UK, Iceland, and Brazil.
Good to know that no matter where we come from, how much experience we have, and what type of education we have, we all still get the same boiler plate email from a web company that evidently has basic email proficiency issues.
However I do feel bad for the HR manager in question. Her information is out there and she is the butt of a lot of jokes right now. It was a pretty simple and innocent mistake, that is all too public now. The fact that she is younger and has been “outed” for being very attractive also does not help the already prevalent stereotype regarding corporate hr/staffing types.
As for my new fraternity of the 186 Twitter rejects, I can say it will be interesting to see what happens from here. Some have started a Facebook group, others want to get Linkedin, start a Ning group, and of course we need to follow each other on Twitter. I sarcastically suggested we all get tattoos that say Twitter 186 CC on the Twitter whale.
There is also some off the reservation talk that we should all start a company and its destiny that have digitally met each other.
Twitter has around 50 million in the bank and around 30 employees. 186 loosely linked Twitter rejects pitching a general interest in social media and a “it was meant to be” elevator pitch to investors is probably not going to get the job done.
Twitter is still the “it” company in Web 2.0 and this fiasco doesn’t really change any of that. The fact they got 186 applications only confirms it. I appreciated the email rejection despite that it was boiler plate and also the fact that within a hour, their CEO was apologetic (even covering up by saying some did not even really apply as if to cover any currently employed applicants). Yeah I get rejection emails from places I haven’t applied to all the time, similar to girls rejecting me pre emptively before I have shown interest 🙂
As for my new job, I’ll shed the light on that when the ink is dry on that front.
