This woman’s one golden rule for hiring people got exactly the responses it deserved

Here’s someone called Jessica Liebman who’s been hiring people for 10 years and was very keen to share her insight. In particular, her one golden rule for hiring people.

Here goes …

Hey, I wrote something! … I’ve been hiring people for 10 years, and I still swear by a simple rule: If someone doesn’t send a thank you email, don’t hire them. https://t.co/NWXB1ozNgr

— Jessica Liebman (@jessicaliebman) April 5, 2019

Here’s what she had to say (well, a bit of it).

‘As a hiring manager, you should always expect a thank-you email, and you should never make an offer to someone who neglected to send one. (To be clear, I am not speaking about handwritten, snail-mail thank-you notes. As I wrote back then, you should never send a handwritten thank-you note. That still stands.)

‘The thank-you email reflects two important things: It signals that the person wants the job — or rather, no thank-you email signals the person probably doesn’t want the job … While sending a thank-you note doesn’t necessarily guarantee the person will be a good hire, it gives you the tiniest bit more data: The candidate is eager, organized, and well mannered enough to send the note.’

And she got entirely the responses she deserved, of which these are our favourites.

1.

Sorry but I don’t “like” articles unless the author thanks me for reading them at the end of the piece. If they don’t do that, they probably don’t want me to read them anyway, and they might not be a “good egg”.

— Simon Rippon (@SmnRppn) April 5, 2019

2.

Seriously though, this sounds problematic. Insofar as it’s a recognized social norm to send a thank you note, it’ll be a meaningless formality, hopeless for distinguishing good candidates. Insofar as it’s not, you should infer *nothing* from the fact that someone didn’t send one!

— Simon Rippon (@SmnRppn) April 5, 2019

3.

I’ve been hiring people for 10 years, and I still swear by a simple rule: If someone doesn’t burst into tears before crawling to you on their hands and knees, begging you to do them the honor of letting them make you money, don’t hire them

— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) April 8, 2019

4.

As well as the wonderful message it sends to anyone struggling with communication in any way. Isolation, depression, anxiety, autism, … There are millions of affected people who might do their best in all aspects, but who don’t have the natural habit to send a thank you note.

— Sébastien Vercammen (@sebvercammen) April 5, 2019

5.

As someone who’s been hiring for 18 years, this is utter bollocks. I could point to the tens of exceptional people I’ve hired who never sent a thank you note. But that isn’t the point. The point is that this is about establishing power structures and making you feel grateful https://t.co/PWU6K2nA6O

— Terri White (@Terri_White) April 8, 2019

6.

My one simple rule is never trust anyone who thinks complex life decisions can be reduced to one simple rule

— Oli Franklin-Wallis (@olifranklin) April 8, 2019

7.

A good example of how institutions create litmus tests that have nothing to job with the job being applied for, but nevertheless disqualify those who don't have a very specific type of cultural job training https://t.co/sy5nWwUrJE

— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) April 7, 2019

8.

I’ve had managers who are annoyed by any extra email in their inbox from candidates, so a thank you email might knock someone off their list just for the perceived inconvenience. If a thank you is a requirement then they need to tell candidates to follow up.

— DirigibleBiblio (@DirigibleBiblio) April 6, 2019

9.

I have been hired for more than 10 years, and I have this simple rule. Don't work for a company who has unwritten hiring rules that don't correlate to job performance — especially if they are arbitrarily filtering people and bragging about it.https://t.co/8OcqushGYu

— Jaana B. Dogan (@rakyll) April 6, 2019