[leowidrich]

Hey there,

Great point on this. We've recently had a meeting discussing this in detail, I think you're absolutely right, it doesn't make people feel great to get a standard response like the one you've received. We've been trying to come up with a better way to personally respond to people, which has proven quite difficult. There were 2,000+ applicants last month and I think we're still trying to figure out the best work-flow to make each response tailored.

I wanted to assure though that we've read your email (and we do read each and every email, always), even though we sent a standard response (which I totally agree with isn't a great method). Hope that might help and I hope we can come up with a better solution to respond to you and everyone individually in the future. If anyone has had experience on this, would love your thoughts!

[bertil]

If I can be honest — and maybe that’s me not being used to American-grade fertilizer, but… 

That response sounds exactly like the problem. I believe that anything else than:

“Indeed. We f*cked up. I’ve e-mailed you with short answers. Detailed coming soon.

Anyone with a similar issue, please let us know how we can recognize your e-mail.”

would be inappropriate. No one not invited cares about a meeting. Starting by “Great point … absolutely right … doesn’t make people feel great … trying to come up with a better way” and other unnecessary precautions around completely obvious points makes you sound like a politician on SNL. There is no ‘trying to come up with better ways’ to a personal e-mail: there is starting to do it, realising you don’t have the man-power to do it, confessing that you are late on the task. It’s either more important than what you are working on or not, but that shouldn’t take ten lines to figure out.

I love you -- that’s why I tell you how you can be a better version of yourself.

[deevus]

What does it matter if you read my email but didn't give me an actual response?

What do you expect me to do with this information?

On a solution: if every email was read, they should be categorised to ascertain whether they require a tailored reply (ie they had questions that aren't answered with a stock response).

Unless the majority of emails had questions not covered in the response that was sent (I can't imagine they did) you would have a much smaller set of emails to tailor replies.

[needtoreply]

Hi Leo,

I applied and received a form rejection (which I am actually OK with and totally understand) but when I sent two followup emails I heard no response back. If you really read every email, do you also ignore the questions?

I also asked for just a few sentences of feedback. I expect this from the average company, but not from yours. You have strong values, but don't live up to them.