I think there’s some selection bias: your experience is of being a normal person where you think ‘I and the people like me are not like that’ but in the set of people that a company rejects, a higher percentage will be eg people who apply to and get rejected from a lot of jobs (and are therefore still applying to more) and so they may behave differently. I don’t really believe the thing about opening a can of worms though. My guess is more that there isn’t much upside to doing this, and companies maybe want to ‘leave doors open’ sometimes by eg not responding in case the person they’re hoping to hire turns them down and they need to interview more candidates again.
> in the set of people that a company rejects, a higher percentage will be eg people who apply to and get rejected from a lot of jobs (and are therefore still applying to more) and so they may behave differently.
We send rejections. I haven't heard of any complaints or arguments ever
I also once offered someone to privately help them make the career switch they were trying to make but were clearly not ready for (I didn't word it like that to them). The applicant reminded me of someone in school who wasn't the technical best performer but always kept high spirits while working hard (within reason, nothing extreme, but it set a good example for... you know how most kids in group work usually perform) and they just needed a little bit of help to be a great teammate. Never heard back from that applicant :(
This is all for an IT position in Germany (though remote work in adjacent timezones is fine and more than half our employees aren't German currently; we basically hire anyone qualified who applies), perhaps it's different if you hire for different types of jobs or in other cultures
