JLT (Jardine Lloyd Thompson)

In September 2015 I applied for a job with this dinky company via LinkedIn where it received a whopping 117 applicants, and was contacted by the HR rep who scheduled me for a telephone screening with the hiring manager. The morning before the call, she contacted me saying the hiring manager had to reschedule the call. I said no problem, and she said “great, we’ll be in touch.” THREE WEEKS LATER, I was still waiting, so I emailed her asking “should I assume this call is never going to happen?” I received NO response. One week later, I got fed up and emailed another HR rep shown on their website where they were still advertising the job, pointing out “according to the LinkedIn job page, you received 117 applicants for this position — did you treat them all as disrespectfully as you’ve treated me? I am also baffled as to why, after receiving a whopping 117 applicants, you continue to advertise this job. Am I to believe that out of 117 applicants (including myself), you didn’t find even one qualified applicant?” Surprise, I received NO response to that email. Then I got really angry, and emailed the guy shown as their “media” contact, blasting him with “in the age of social media, treating people this poorly – including job applicants — is not a smart business practice.” Well, I *finally* got a response here, he replied sort of apologizing and saying he’d look into it to see what happened.

A few hours later, I got the following email from HR dimwit #2: 

“Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding the Graphic Designer position with JLT Specialty Insurance Services, Inc. Our posting on LinkedIn generated a large response of qualified applicants and has been filled. We will keep your resume on file for 6 months should another position matching your experience, skills and areas of expertise becomes available. The applicant experience is important to us and we are always looking for ways to make improvements. If you would like to speak to me regarding your applicant experience, please feel free to contact me.”

Absolutely pathetic. A canned copied/pasted rejection email with the last “The applicant experience is important to us / please feel free to contact me” paragraph tagged on as a joke…?!?!? Clearly another modern-day executive idiot who received their customer service training from the University of Facebook.

I shared this incident in the comments of Nick “Ask the Headhunter” Corcodilos's blog, here’s what he had to say: “The institutionalized hypocrisy, arrogance and disdain for job seekers that’s embedded in that boilerplate should stun any company’s board of directors. If I were you, I’d send your comments and that quote to the chairman of the board at that company and ask, 'Do you know where your company’s failure is being birthed right now?'” I probably should have taken his advice and written to the board of directors, but all letters I've sent to "companies behaving badly" so far have gone ignored, hence, why bother. “The customer is always right” has become “Prove to us that we did anything wrong."