I recently got an email from a guy who had just experienced an interesting situation. He’d applied for a job before the stated deadline and when he didn’t hear back from the company he’d applied to, he contacted them to enquire about his candidacy. The hiring authority told him that his application had been received in time but they’d started to interview people earlier than that and were already well down the path with several candidates and weren’t going to consider him as as result.
In other words, even though he’d applied by the deadline – several days before the deadline according to what he told me – he was told flat out that he wasn’t going to be considered for the job because the company had decided to start interviewing people earlier than that.
His main question was whether or not the company could legally do this – state a deadline and then essentially throw the deadline out the window. I don’t need to know where this fellow lives to guess with 100% certainty that unfortunately there is probably very little that he can do in this case and although the company was certainly unprofessional to do this, he probably has absolutely no recourse.
Why a company would do this is beyond me. Why they’d admit to him that they’re doing it is even weirder since they’re admitting that they’re unprofessional. Still, it goes to show you that if you’re facing a deadline to apply for a job, unless there is a good reason to wait until the last minute you’re probably better off applying as soon as possible.
