[dan-robertson]

If all jobs are equal and you just want a job then sure, I guess you have a point. There isn’t an introduction in the template but presumably it would be described over the phone as something like ‘I’m going to send you an email with some links to talks and blog posts about the company so that you can learn more about us’. Maybe enthusiastic candidates would read a bunch right away. Maybe they would wait until they had offers and we’re choosing where they wanted to work.

Roughly, I think many candidates are not in some desperate must-find-job-ASAP mode and therefore will be more interested in finding the job that is best for them. Giving them information so that they can better understand the company/team seems good to me.

I don’t understand what the alternative to this is for you – just accept the first job offered? Or ask lots of questions to try to work out what the company is like? Or rely on network/back-channel communication to only apply to the right jobs?