What happened to the "human" in human resources?

A frustrated candidate asked me this yesterday. He had been interviewing with a few companies and he was surprised at how many of them did not come back to him and give him feedback, even when he had had a personal interview with them.

I know that the clients I work with are very good, I or they get back to people when they have been interviewed. Okay, we are not perfection so some unfortunately fall through the net, but not many. What my  candidate said got me thinking; what is going on and is this getting worse?

It could be that he was very unlucky, that most of the human resources departments did get back to him but the one or two that did not stood out. It's like the customer who has a bad experience, they will always tell people about it, but the customer who is happy rarely speaks out.

However, there are other reasons:

• Society is more litigious than ever before. As a recruiting department  if you are not careful you can end up on the front end of a court case.
• Relationships have become more distant. I have noticed that the email is ever increasingly becoming the mode of  communication, and it is so easy to engender misunderstandings using this method.
• It is really difficult to give people bad news, it's certainly not the best part of my job and sometimes people cannot face it. Honestly, HR are human!
• Perhaps they do not get back to people because they do not want to continue the relationship. I can understand this, sometimes people take bad news, badly. They might not react immediately, sometimes you will get irate emails and calls from people after the bad news call. I have even heard of rejected interviewees waiting for the interviewer outside their offices to continue the debate. It can be horrid.
• Many HR departments are facing cuts like everybody else and it could be that they are just too busy to get back to everyone.
• Maybe you as an interviewer did not behave appropriately at interview.
• Did you follow up on the interview so they feel comfortable giving you feedback? It is a two way thing you know.

My conclusion is that things are not getting worse, but the world is changing, more people are looking for work than before, HR departments have a harder job shifting through applications and it is not easy communicating bad news.

If you find that companies are not getting back to you, please just give the relevant person a call (always call first), if you can't get hold of them on a call then send an email. Be polite, be reasonable and tell them that you would really appreciate feedback and their advice would be appreciated.

What do you think, is the non communication getting worse?