Hiring manager rejects Stanford graduate because she got a B in a high school class: 'This candidate has a fairly impressive career even as a new college graduate and ticks every single other box'

It isn't easy to know precisely why a hiring manager or recruiter might not pass you along in the interviewing process. Most people don't receive direct feedback on job rejections, so they can only assume that there was someone else who was more qualified than they were, or that they didn't have a particularly notable interpersonal connection with the hiring manager. I wouldn't want a hiring manager to email me and say, "We didn't hire you because I find your personality annoying," but I'd like to know if there was something glaringly wrong that I did in the interview that could help me in my career going forward.

If a resume has obvious misspellings and poor formatting, that's an acceptable reason to reject a candidate, especially if they don't seem exceptionally qualified in the first place. But if their LinkedIn description of their first job in high school scooping ice cream out of a shack doesn't have enough descriptive bullet points, you might just be grasping at straws. It's totally pedantic to reject someone solely because they posted a picture of themselves drinking an adult beverage on Facebook in 2011. If you're interviewing to be in the CIA, that's one thing, but a marketing and communications representative shouldn't be held to Pentagon standards. 

Author image for Emmy Pratt Emmy Pratt
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