{"id":14459,"date":"2026-07-19T11:39:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elementapp.ai\/blog\/?p=14459"},"modified":"2026-07-19T11:39:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:39:28","slug":"how-to-reject-a-candidate-glen-cathey-playbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elementapp.ai\/blog\/how-to-reject-a-candidate-glen-cathey-playbook\/","title":{"rendered":"How to reject a candidate without ghosting: Glen Cathey’s playbook"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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How to reject a candidate without ghosting: Glen Cathey's playbook<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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How do you reject a candidate without burning the bridge? Deliver the decision in the first two sentences, name the real reason for the rejection, promise only what your company actually does, and sign the email with a human name. That is the short version of “The Respectful Rejection Email Playbook”<\/a>, a ten-page guide published on LinkedIn by Glen Cathey<\/a>, one of the best-known sourcing and recruiting experts out there. I found the playbook in Recruiting Brainfood<\/a>, Hung Lee’s newsletter, which half the recruiting world seems to read. I read the whole thing and below I walk through what I think matters most: the six rules, three of the templates, and a way to run all of it in your ATS<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ghosting is not a volume problem<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Cathey closes his playbook with the line that sets the tone for everything else: “Ghosting applicants isn’t a volume problem. It’s a values and priority problem.”<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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From what I see on the Polish market, where I run an ATS company, that sentence lands painfully well. Silence after an application is still the default in many companies, and feedback after an interview gets treated as a courtesy rather than a step of the process. Candidates rarely resent the rejection itself; they resent that nobody bothered to send it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Cathey does not stop at the diagnosis. He gives you six rules for writing rejections and seven templates bucketed by rejection reason, ready to load into your recruitment system. He is also open about his inspirations: Kyle Byrd’s “The Way of Kindness” and Josh Bourke’s approach at Ashby.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Six rules for a decent rejection<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Before you copy any template, Cathey wants you to internalize six rules:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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  1. The decision comes in the first two sentences, because ambiguity is what prolongs the pain, not honesty.<\/li>\n
  2. Numbers absolve, they don’t excuse. “1,617 applications, 4 interviews” placed after the decision tells someone it genuinely wasn’t about them.<\/li>\n
  3. Never narrate the candidate’s feelings. Cut lines like “we understand this is frustrating” and show respect through honesty and specificity instead.<\/li>\n
  4. Every promise needs a truth condition. Write “your application was reviewed” or “you may be matched to future roles” only if that actually happens at your company.<\/li>\n
  5. A human name changes everything. Even a template lands differently when a real person signs it.<\/li>\n
  6. If AI helped draft the email, say so. Transparency preserves trust, and AI-assisted closure beats human silence.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    Rule two is the one I keep coming back to. Recruiters often open with statistics to soften the blow, and Cathey shows that the order does the work: the same numbers before the decision sound like the company excusing itself, while after the decision they absolve the candidate.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Rule six also rings familiar, because I argued a similar case in my piece on whether getting an email from AI instead of a human is a problem<\/a>. Cathey frames it the same way: candidates mind the silence far more than they mind the tooling.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Seven templates, one rejection reason per email<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    The core of the playbook is seven templates mapped to typical rejection reasons:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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