A recruiter accidentally pasted the AI prompt 'Make the candidate feel like they were strongly considered even if they weren’t' in a rejection email. Ouch.
We've all been there. Sitting by the inbox, praying to the binary gods for a job offer, only to receive that polite, generic rejection email: "We were so impressed with your skills, BUT..." It sounds nice, professional even. Well, turns out, it might just be a load of automated nonsense.
A recent post on Reddit has exposed the dark (and hilariously lazy) side of modern recruitment. One unlucky candidate received a rejection email that didn't just hurt their feelings—it insulted their intelligence.
Instead of a standard "Dear John" letter, the recruiter accidentally copy-pasted their instruction to the AI. The email literally started with:
"Make the candidate feel like they were strongly considered even if they weren’t"
Wow. Just... wow. Caught in 4K.
To make matters worse, the email was riddled with liquid-style placeholders like {{rejection_message}}. It’s the digital equivalent of a recruiter showing up to a meeting in their underwear. It confirms what we cynics have always suspected: all that "we carefully reviewed your application" fluff is just a lie generated by a bot instructed to fake empathy.
The r/recruitinghell community had a field day with this one. As devs, we love seeing a system fail, especially when it's the system that gatekeeps our jobs.
The 'Gigachad' Response: User mitchricker suggested the ultimate power move. Reply to the recruiter with a "helpful" bug report: "Hi there, just wanted to let you know your rejection email included some raw template placeholders and AI instructions. Thought you might want to fix that system issue." It’s passive-aggressive perfection. It says, "I saw what you did, you lazy amateur," without using a single curse word.
The Reality Check: While some users like Lion-Resident asked why companies can't just give genuine feedback, others were quick to point out the harsh reality. Bagafeet noted: "Bro, they're drooling while copy-pasting AI slop without reading. What do you expect?" Fair point. If they can't be bothered to delete the prompt, they certainly aren't bothered to read your code.
The Mob: Naturally, the "Name and Shame" crew arrived in full force. While the company remains anonymous for now, they’ve already earned a spot in the Hall of Shame for sheer incompetence.
Look, this is funny, but there are lessons here for us devs too:
GPT-4 doing its job.Stay sharp, keep coding, and maybe double-check your own email templates today.
Based on a true facepalm moment from: Reddit r/recruitinghell