I applied online on the 29th of August, and received a rejection email on the 28th of September. It stated that my experience was carefully reviewed, and the decision made to discontinue my application. I was thanked for my interest and invited to continue it through following their activities. Lastly, I was asked to provide feedback through this site. As such, my detailed feedback follows.
I will not be making any effort to follow SMRS activities, as they provided no useful information about the specific nature of their lack of interest. There is little use in claiming a determination to treat candidates with care and attention while offering only generic justifications. Did they like my work? Did they feel that I lack skill in a particular area? What experience, exactly, would they have me pursue? I know none of these things. Furthermore, citing a nebulous issue with "experience" is one of the emptiest rejection moves, right alongside stating that someone "didn't seem like the right fit".
Ultimately, sending such an email under the guise of providing support comes across as rather self-serving. They don't want me to hire me now, and won’t give me a detailed reason, but still, it seems, want me to eye them from afar and, presumably, plot a course to eventually winning their approval, even as they abstain from providing any notion of what that would involve.
Though it is something of an aside, I feel it's relevant to touch on the oddly-dominant position 'experience' holds in the pantheon of desired candidate strengths. There are myriad professionals around with plenty of experience but no significant competence, after all, yet it's cherished like a rare and precious jewel by many, and cynically used as a bland excuse by many others. It’s always served as something of a Catch-22, but the problem has greatly worsened in recent years, with even entry-level positions now demanding varied experience.
In rating the overall experience as negative, I don't mean to single out SMRS in any major way. It's more the case that the average application experience is quite negative, and this one hasn't been particularly exceptional. Certainly, if someone at SMRS did indeed genuinely review my work, then I would like them to know that I appreciate the effort. Getting even that much consideration is frustratingly rare.
In conclusion, I would like to be clear that my intention with these comments was to offer constructive criticism, not to be petty or insulting. I agree that feedback is extremely important, and felt that I needed to be entirely honest about how it came across from my perspective. I only hope that it helps, even if just in a very minor way!
