[oldandtired]

Many years ago, I applied for a position with a local organisation. I contacted the manager in question about a week later. As he was not available, I left a message with his staff indicating that I was wanting feedback as to how successful or not my application was in relation to the position.

I called back a number of times and left messages with his staff as he was quite often at meetings elsewhere in the region.

After some time, I managed to actually speak to the manager in question and during our conversation, he stated that I should have known that I was unsuccessful due to getting no feedback or calls or letters from him.

I made it quite clear to him that I had, in the past, been in the position of interviewer and that it was considered highly unprofessional for applicants to not be notified that they were unsuccessful. If they had put in the effort to apply then it was appropriate to put in the effort to respond to those applications.

What was funny was finding a rejection letter hand delivered to my mail box a couple of hours later. As I had other contacts within the organisation, which he didn't know about, I made enquires as to his general level of competence. He was not a people person and in that regard I was happy not to have been successful. If I got the story right, the successful applicant didn't last much over a year under his gentle management style anyway.

As has been noted elsewhere in these comments, the way a company responds or doesn't respond affects how they are viewed by applicants and it does affect their reputation.