Telling someone "You weren't hired"

[neoflex]

When I used to be in the position to hire/fire people a lot of time I would keep it short and sweet and tell them " I just wanted to call and update you on our hiring process. Unfortunately, we decided to go with another candidate but should something else open up and your I would like to contact you to see if you would still be interested in a position with us. I usually use some kind of dialog like this because it ends on a positive note and is not a total let down for the candidates. It's never an easy position to be in to make be the one to either let people down or let people go.

[pnoon]

Originally Posted by neoflex

When I used to be in the position to hire/fire people a lot of time I would keep it short and sweet and tell them " I just wanted to call and update you on our hiring process. Unfortunately, we decided to go with another candidate but should something else open up and your I would like to contact you to see if you would still be interested in a position with us. I usually use some kind of dialog like this because it ends on a positive note and is not a total let down for the candidates. It's never an easy position to be in to make be the one to either let people down or let people go.

I like this response best. However, I would use caution in committing to contacting the candidate if another opening materializes. If you truly would like to bring this guy on, I would recommend asking the candidate if you could contact them if another opportunity presents itself. (Some may say it's just semantics but I think choice of words is extremely important here.)