Every rejection drafted within days, at the right length

What is the exact prompt?

Run it twice a week, not in a monthly guilt-batch:

• "In Greenhouse, list every candidate moved to rejected in the last 3 days who has not yet received a rejection email. Group by stage reached: APPLIED (never interviewed), SCREENED (one conversation), INTERVIEWED (onsite or multiple rounds)."
• "Draft one email per candidate. APPLIED: three sentences (thanks, a clear no for this role, and a genuine wish). No pretense that we reviewed deeply if we did not. SCREENED: four to five sentences, referencing the actual conversation topic from the interview notes, a clear no, and whether we would genuinely welcome a future application (check the 'reapply' field; do not say it if it is false). INTERVIEWED: a longer note referencing something specific and true the panel valued from the scorecards, the clear no, and an offer to answer a follow-up email."
• "Hard rules: never state or imply a reason tied to any personal characteristic; never invent feedback not present in the notes; never say 'we'll keep your CV on file' unless the field says we will; no 'unfortunately' as the opening word; write the no in the first three sentences, and do not bury it under compliments."
• "Leave all as drafts, grouped by stage, INTERVIEWED first for my review."

Stage-aware beats one good template

A rejection stings in proportion to what the candidate put in.

A warm four-paragraph letter to someone who spent ninety seconds on a form reads as fake; three efficient sentences to someone who did five interviews reads as contempt.

Matching depth to investment is most of what "kind" means here. The clear-no-early rule is the other half: deliver the no fast and spend the warmth after it, where it can be believed.

Where is the legal line?

A stated reason can be quoted back in a discrimination claim, and an invented one is indefensible. Hence the two hard rules: nothing tied to personal characteristics, nothing absent from the panel's own notes. "The panel valued your systems-design walkthrough" is safe because it is true and complimentary.

Your review is where that gets enforced. You are checking that the specifics pulled from the scorecards are things you will stand behind with your name on the send button, which is literally how it works: the security model puts an approval card in front of every Gmail send.

The employer-brand math

Rejected candidates outnumber hires fifty to one, they talk, and review sites exist.

The latency fix alone, three days instead of three weeks, moves the experience more than any wording change, because silence is what candidates report as the injury.

Pair it with the rest of the pipeline: screening notes upstream mean the scorecards contain something true worth referencing, an ATS kept current means the rejected list is complete, and recruiting automation covers the broader patterns. The people you rejected at INTERVIEWED stage are next year's warm pipeline.

Frequently asked questions