[fecak]

No argument with that, but I think most senior engineers would think twice if they felt they were getting the treatment they got as an intern. I think everyone should expect some level of respect, but it's naive to think the CTO is getting the same treatment in an interview as an intern.

[yeukhon]

I am sure most senior engineers would think twice if they felt they were getting the same shitty, non-important treatment internship applicants are getting.

I will agree that in reality senior folks are generally more valuable than interns are. Experience for one is something most interns usually don't have.

But let me clarify one thing: interns are not all undergraduates fresh out of high school. A lot of interns are in master or PhD program and some have a fair amount of technical experience before returning back to school. We keep hearing how awesome some interns are from time to time, so there are superstar interns. It's unfair to say interns are less important. In what sense is a senior person more important or useful than an intern?

Technically? Maybe. You can have a stubborn 15 years coder who believes in some obsolete way of coding and writing protocol and there is a great intern who can deliver the project on time and build a viral, interesting side project during internship. Who is more capable? Who is more useful in the long run? You can spend 10 years at a local firm writing the most horrible Java code and pass interviews at RedHat and becomes a senior engineer. That's possible. Now comes a 20 years old college junior with a pretty resume and he or she passes the same interview.

I suppose no company out there makes a big distinction between senior hire and junior hire unless the position is special or the applicant is an internal referral. For big companies like redhat, the fact above means most applicants, regardless of their years of experience, applications will sit in the queue for few weeks or few months.

Go to glassdoor and read how many 10+ years people complain about sitting in a job queue for weeks. So in general, senior people isn't all that special from a recruiter point of views.

Also, from a company's point of view, an intern could in fact work on a secret project (think Google glass?) and they will work with senior people with super high security clearance. So they are equally important. You can be short of one intern and delay delivery by two weeks.

The thought of "I have 10 years knowledge in this domain so I am more important" will fail because tomorrow another senior hire will have 20 years in your domain and you are now a rookie to him. Your idea will be crushed and thrown away even though they are useful and actually really useful and profitable. If seniority overruns a team, that's a red flag. It is a sign of a plague. It is a sign of destruction.

In some way we have to appreciate interns. They are there only for 12 weeks but most of them are self-motivated and they will get work done in their free time. If you think about interns, they are probably the most passionate people you will find around your office for 12 weeks or so. Your senior folks come and go. Interns leave because they have to leave. So interns could be seen a contractor hired for 12 weeks or so. They are full time during those twelves weeks, carrying same mission as you senior folks do. They are just as important as you. Most of them can deliver the product as a team with you, and you don't have to solve every problem. They deserve the same respect as you senior folks do too.

[fecak]

Let's take a step back. This article is about notifying rejected candidates. You made some sort of claim that you felt unimportant, and you were an 'applicant' - not even an intern, but someone who wanted an internship and didn't get it.

Are interns important? Sure, they can contribute. Are intern 'applicants' important to Red Hat as a company?

I'm not condoning the sending of generic rejections. But again, if you expect your rejection as an internship applicant to be the same as the person who interviewed for the CTO position, it's a naive thought. I'm not saying it's correct or just, but it is naive.

There would be hundreds or thousands of applicants for internships, and in a perfect world the HR of a company will spend 1 hour reading each résumé, speaking to every candidate, and then writing a very personalized and sympathetic letter to each rejected candidate.

You are comparing the importance of interns with employees. The discussion, as it started, was about rejected intern applicants. We got way off track here.

[OmleteDuFromage]

I totally agree that you'd want to hire some people way more than others, but the process for hiring your interns/entry levelers should be in a sense the lowest common denominator. As in, the more you want to hire someone, the more "features" you add to the process (eg. Paid flights, airport pickup, respond to emails withing 24 hours, whatever), instead of just treating lesser value candidates worse, if that makes sense.

[fecak]

That does make sense. The thing is, that 'minimal acceptable treatment' for all applicants for an internship, which could be in the thousands, is much more costly than for the 20-50 applicants for a more senior position.

When I post jobs, I try to reply to all moderately qualified applicants. And sometimes I'll get an applicant with no industry experience or education who applies to a senior dev spot. Should I spend the time to write a detailed reply to someone who is entirely unqualified and clearly just sent their résumé indiscriminately to my ads (sometimes more than once)? I don't feel obliged to respond to people that are clearly wasting everyone's time.

This is not the case here, and in a perfect world every applicant is flown in, wined and dined, and given a full battery of interviews - but that isn't realistic. Somewhere between an automated response and the wine and dine is the appropriate response. A respectful rejection for two candidates is a small investment, but for thousands it may be unfair to expect.

If you want an example of this, send a wedding invitation to the president. You'll get a reply saying he can't attend and wishes you the best, and it's signed (not by his hand). I'm sure he'd love to give every American the decency of a handwritten and personalized response ("Sorry, in London that day"), but for an American citizen to expect that reply is not realistic.