It's Not That Hard

With all the people I know who are out of work, I hear about this happening all the time.
It's happened to me plenty of times lately too.

What is it?

People who do not respond to emails.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard the excuses that people are so busy that they can't. But I just don't buy that.

At the last agency I worked at I got emails from people outside the agency inquiring about jobs, freelance, internships and I managed to answer most everyone.

All you need to do is have a stock reply that you can copy and paste into a response, if you really don't have time. By not replying at all you give a bad impression of your workplace, and with how small the market is here in St. Louis, word will spread. Not to mention of the talent you may miss out on by not taking a few minutes of your day.

The craziest is when a place is looking to hire and they don't respond. Or you have the places that are too chicken shit to tell you a flat out no. They would rather stick their head in the sand and ignore people till you go away. Not long ago I was in talks with an agency. Interview went really well, traded some interesting emails post interview. Was told, "we are going to make a decision very quick. We'll let you know either way." I never heard from them again. If you liked someone else more, and thought they were more what you were looking for I am fine with that. That is not as big a deal as just never getting any sort of response.

This same topic was covered at adsaint.com not long ago.

I don't know when common decent manners were tossed out.

I answer my emails. You should too.