How Long Does a Rejected Letter in the Mail Take to Come Back

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Simson Petrol

I have a friend who appraises antiques — assigning a dollar value to the old Chinese vase your grandmother used for storing pencils, telling you how much those silver knickknacks from Aunt Fern are worth. He says the hardest part of his job, the part he dreads the most, is telling people that their treasure is worthless.

I can empathize. I feel like I do that too, every time I tell a prospective HBR author that their ideas, research, or writing just isn't good enough to make the cut.

Rejection letters aren't easy for any of us. Whether you're telling a job candidate that he didn't make the next round, an entrepreneur that you're not going to fund her project, or a vendor that you no longer need his services, these are emails most of us dread crafting. Because it's unpleasant, too many of us put it off or don't do it at all, essentially letting our silence do the talking. That's a missed opportunity (and rude). Though painful, rejection has benefits: research by Linus Dahlander at ESMT and Henning Piezunka at INSEAD has found, for example, that when organizations take the time to explicitly reject (rather than just passively ignore) crowdsourced ideas, it both increases the quality of the ideas they're being offered and increases the engagement of the crowd.

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If there's one thing that I've learned in a decade at Harvard Business Review — during which I've rejected literally thousands of ideas, pitches, and drafts — it's that a quick no is better than a long maybe.

Writing a Basic Rejection Letter

Writing good rejections does take a bit of time — especially at first. But one of the benefits of learning to write a good, clear rejection letter is that it forces you to think clearly about what it is that you want from other people, and what it is that your organization really needs. For example, I can categorize most of my rejections for HBR into one of five categories: too broad (and thus not very useful to readers); too repetitive with stuff we've already published; too jargony; too self-promotional; not supported by enough evidence or expertise. Knowing this, we were able to distill a set of guidelines for prospective authors that encouraged them to avoid these common pitfalls.

That said, rejection letters need not be long, and the reason you give for the rejection need not be super-detailed. If you don't have much of a relationship with the person — you never met them, maybe just traded some emails — the entire letter might be just a few lines. I looked back at some rejection letters I sent, and realized that I usually follow a pretty simple format:

1. Say thanks.
2. Deliver the news.
3. Give the main reason.
4. Offer hope.

For example:

[Their name],

Thanks for your patience while I reviewed this proposal. I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass. We've published a lot on cybersecurity lately, and unfortunately the proposed piece overlaps a bit too much with other articles we've published. I hope you find a good home for it in another publication.

All the best,

[Your name]

If I were giving bad news to someone I'd interviewed for a job, I might tweak it a bit, but the basic format would stay the same:

[Their name],

Thanks for making the time to talk with me last week. While I enjoyed our conversation, I think we need someone with more hands-on project management experience for this role. I hope you find the right job for you in the near future.

[Your name]

If you can't think of any hope to offer at the end, then don't. "Do not say anything that will give the recipient the impression that the door is still open," Joceyln Glei advises in her new email writing guide, Unsubscribe, "Such clarity and finality can feel cruel, but adding additional language to 'soften the blow' only serves to create false hope. Say your piece and sign off." False hope is crueler than no hope. False hope just encourages the other person to waste more of their time, and yours.

If the idea of ending with an unsoftened rejection makes you unbearably squeamish, you can close with an extra thank you. Consider this example of a rejection letter to a vendor:

[Their name],

Thanks for your detailed proposal. Taking a look at the materials, it seems like your firm's key strengths don't quite overlap with what we need for this project. Thanks again for taking the time to put this proposal together for us.

Best wishes,

[Your name]

Writing a Detailed Rejection Letter

But what if the pitch (or person) was really close to being a good fit, and you might want to work with them in the future? Or you have more of a relationship with them? In those cases, the above messages are probably too cold and too vague. When rejecting people I want to encourage, I keep the format much the same, but am generally much more detailed in my reason for rejecting and more explicit in encouraging the person to try again. (In the study I mentioned above, Dahlander and Piezunka found that providing an explanation about why an idea was being rejected bolstered the beneficial effects of rejection — eg, motivation and idea quality.)

I also often end with a question, to try to signal that I'm genuinely interested — not just making an empty, softening-the-blow promise. For example:

[Their name],

Thanks for your patience while I reviewed this proposal. I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass. We've published a lot on cybersecurity lately, and unfortunately the proposed piece overlaps a bit too much with other articles we've published. For example, take a look at the article we published on August 6 by Professor Joe Schmo, and the August 16 article by the CEO of Acme Corp. Although we won't be able to publish this particular piece, I really enjoyed your writing style and the way you supported your argument with extensive research; would you be interested in pitching us some other articles in the future?

All the best,

[Your name]

For the job interviewee, it might look like this:

[Their name],

Thanks for making the time to talk with me last week. I'm sorry to say that your candidacy did not make it to the next round; we've had a very competitive pool for this position. At this point, our organization really needs someone with more project management experience. However, I really enjoyed our conversation and think you could be a good fit here in the right role. Please do keep in touch — and is it OK with you if I let you know about roles that open up that might be a better fit?

All the best,

[Your name]

Now for the vendor:

[Their name],

We were lucky to get some strong proposals in on this and we deeply appreciate all the info from your side — and for your patience. After a lot of careful thought, we have decided to go with another firm for this project. While we certainly have no doubt about the superior quality of your team or that you could deliver on this skillfully we decided to use this project to expand our bench of development partners and, since this is part experiment for us, this was a good opportunity to do that.

We'd really like to continue talking with you about future projects we have coming up this year. I definitely look forward to collaborating in the future.

Thanks again for your help and your time,
[Your name]

The more specific you are about the way you reject something (or someone), the more information you give them. A smart rejectee will use this information to come back with a stronger pitch the next time. I've actually had a few people thank me for rejection letters I wrote to them, because it gave them the kind of concrete, specific feedback they needed in order to make a better pitch in the future. It's a good reminder that people do value receiving criticism , even though most of us dread giving it.

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Writing a Rejection Letter When You Disagree with the Decision

It's especially tough to pass along a rejection decision that you disagree with. Maybe you fought hard for a job candidate everyone else was unimpressed by, or championed the cause of a vendor that the executive committee thought was too expensive. I know I've argued for articles that other editors thought weren't ready for prime time. It's not a good feeling.

When this happens, it's tempting to hide behind passive voice or other people — eg, "It has been decided that we won't  be pursuing this" or "The bigwigs have decided to go in a different direction." Resist that temptation. It's not any easier to get rejected in that fashion, and writing that way undercuts your authority as a decisionmaker.

If you're the one issuing a rejection, own the rejection. It's fair to say something like, "After a lot of discussion and back-and-forth, we've decided X" or "It was a really hard decision, but we've ultimately decided Y." But say "we," not "they."

A rejection letter in which you're hiding behind someone else's skirt inhibits your ability to give useful feedback. It also makes your organization look fractious or contentious, which undermines other people's desire to work with you in the future.

Writing a Rejection Letter After a Ton of Back and Forth

The other kind of rejection that's really tough to deliver is the one where you've both put in a lot of time and effort to make the thing work — but it's still not working. Now, despite the sunk costs, it is time to cut your losses and move on. In some cases, a phone call is the best way to deliver this kind of news — use your judgment. But if you decide to write an email, it's OK to keep it brief. Usually, at this point, you and your counterpart will have spent so much time talking about the problems with the project or the piece that your counterpart will already know the reason behind the rejection; you just need to recap it briefly. Here's an example:

Hi [Their name],

Thanks for taking another stab at this. I really appreciate all the time and effort you've put in. Unfortunately, despite both of our best efforts, I think [problem X still applies] and we're still not hitting the mark. At this point, I'd say let's set this one aside and move ahead.

[Your name]

The other thing I try to do when delivering this kind of tough news is position myself on the same side as the person I'm rejecting:We have made a good faith effort; and despite that effort, we have fallen short. This isn't just window-dressing; if you're rejecting something after a lot of involvement, then some part of the failure is yours, too. (And maybe a sign that you should have sent a quicker rejection sooner in the process, when it would have been less painful for both of you.)

Delivering bad news is tough, and in different companies or cultures these examples may sound either overly harsh or too nice. You'll need to find your own language depending on the context and the culture. That said, remember: don't soften the blow just for the sake of blow-softening. False kindness just gives people false hope. And there's nothing kind about that.

How Long Does a Rejected Letter in the Mail Take to Come Back

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/10/writing-a-rejection-letter-with-samples

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