Anatomy of a rejection letter: Why the Ugly Duckling turned down Prince Charming

This letter is not from the job I think (and am hopeful) that I am going to get, so I wasn't all that sad when the rejection notice hit my inbox Wednesday afternoon. Before I re-print the letter, let me tell you the hilarity of the situation: This is a monthly newspaper. This is a monthly newspaper that published its first edition in '05. Not 1905. I'm talking 2005. And, this is a monthly newspaper that published its first edition in 2005 and was trying to add two or three reporters.

So, what we have here is a 4-year-old monthly publication that decided a man with 18 years of experience working at daily newspapers was not good enough. That's like M.I.T. saying 'No' to Einstein.

Dear Kevin,

Thank you for your interest in a career with Community Impact
Newspaper. While your background and experience are strong, we have
identified other candidates whose experience more closely matches our
needs at this time.

Your resume will be kept on file and you will be contacted in the
event our employment needs should change.

Again, we thank you for your interest in Community Impact Newspaper
and wish you all the best in your job search.

Sincerely,

A few points...

1) Seriously. You mean there are unemployed writers living in Austin who have more writing/editing experience than I do? That can't be the case. But if you read between the lines of the rejection letter, you may get your answer. Take this sentence:  "...we have
identified other candidates whose experience more closely matches our needs at this time."


That is code for, "You are too experienced and much better than anyone we have on staff right now - managers included - and if we hired you, you'd quickly realize this and want their jobs, or make it hard for them to manage you. So, we need to hire somebody who is only worth the 30k/year salary we are offering."

Obviously, they think I am overqualified. I get it. And of course, their hiring managers have every right to employ people who will want to work there and won't make waves. I had no plans on making waves and would have worked my tail off for that publication, which is not as Mom-and-Pop as you think. Community Impact Newspaper has 55 employees and six different editions.

The editors there, however, will never know my intentions because they sent a human resources employee to interview me. She read questions from a piece of paper and never asked follow-up questions. And perhaps the editors knew all along they were not going to hire me, so why waste their time by asking me questions.

The tough thing is, What do you do with that? You know? My money is low and I'm trying to work. I'm not robbing banks. I'm not sitting on my ass trying to see how long I can make my unemployment benefits last. I'm trying to work, and Community Impact Newspaper - a place where I could probably do the job of two or three people with my hands tied behind my back - does me like Kanye West did Taylor Swift.

But this newspaper isn't the first and won't be the last would-be employer who, "dumbs it down," during the hiring stage. Unemployment levels are at their highest in years, and when it gets this tight, the MoFo who knows everyone is more likely to get a job than the MoFo who knows everything.

And right now, I know nobody.

By the way, I sent a nicely worded thank you letter to the newspaper. Here it is:

Thanks for the interview last week. I was certainly surprised that my resume, which featured 18 years of journalism experience working at some of the biggest daily newspapers in the country, was not enough for me to land employment at your publication.

I can only presume that your management team believed that I wouldn't want to do the work at Community Impact Newspaper, or wouldn't work for the money you guys were offering. My only regret is that I didn't get to interview with any of your editors, for perhaps I could have convinced them otherwise.

Nevertheless, I wish you and Community Impact Newspaper good luck. I think yours is a gutsy publication. I commend your publisher and executive editor for expanding this newspaper, especially in these economic times which have been particularly harsh on the business. As an old ink-stained newspaper man myself, I'll be rooting for you guys.

Sincerely,

Kevin Lyons