Twitter: Mastering the Art of Mass Rejection

: Image via CrunchBase

Hey, Twitter: Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

Apparently the HR gang over at Twitter HQ is getting a little too accustomed to sharing things. At about 11am yesterday morning, they sent out a rejection notice to several candidates who had applied for their Product Manager opening.

Here’s the smooth part, though. Instead of using “BCC” to hide the identities of the rejected applicants from each other, Twitter sent the message using a standard “CC”, allowing everyone on the list to see who the other 185 applicants were.

Here’s the message each person got:

Hi,

Thank you so much for taking the time to apply for the Business
Product Manager position at Twitter, Inc. During the course of our
recruiting efforts, we come across many fine candidates such as you,
and we carefully evaluate each candidate’s background and interests
against our projected workloads and staffing needs. Although we are
impressed with your background, the hiring committee has decided to
move forward with a different candidate.

We will keep your information on file for six months in case future
opportunities arise.

Of course, each recipient also got to see who else had applied for the job – well, probably. Once Twitter caught on to their blunder, CEO Evan Williams sent this update:

It has just been brought to my attention that we just sent this note about this job with everyone’s address exposed in the cc line.

This is obviously a big mistake, and I sincerely apologize on behalf of Krissy, myself, and Twitter, Inc. We really appreciate you expressing interest in Twitter, and I can only imagine that this type of move adds insult to injury.

To be clear: Not everyone on this list even applied for this job. Some were recommended to us and entered into our applicant tracking system by employees here.