I’ve been rejected from some great jobs. In high school, I failed to win a summer job as a cabana boy at a luxury resort. After college, I was rejected by investment banks and from a plum teaching position in China.
Terms like “many qualified candidates,” “extremely competitive process” and “other applicants who more closely meet our needs at this time” became part of my lexicon. The LinkedIn profile of my rejected jobs would be impressive indeed. (How do I hire that guy?)
Terms like “many qualified candidates,” “extremely competitive process” and “other applicants who more closely meet our needs at this time” became part of my lexicon. The LinkedIn profile of my rejected jobs would be impressive indeed (How do I hire that guy?).
Still, it seems clear that job rejections are headed for the nostalgia pile, alongside Pop Rocks, big hair, Fanta and hockey fights. Before too long, we’ll look back on the era of rejection letters as “the good old days.”
Long ago, television and movie production companies stopped allowing just anyone to submit ideas. The reason? Studios that accepted and reviewed ideas found themselves on the wrong end of copyright lawsuits when new shows and films bore any similarity to submissions.
Likewise, the U. S. Department of Labor is providing employers with a similar disincentive for accepting unsolicited applications for employment. In September, the DOL sued Palantir for biased hiring processes because Asians were underrepresented in new hires relative to applications.
But the primary engine of change in hiring is more technology than regulatory. If you haven’t met Mya in your job search, you will soon. Mya is a bot from the company FirstJob that allows employers to recruit, engage and screen candidates before moving forward with an application for employment. Screening questions are contextual based on an analysis of candidates’ declared competencies vs. the job description. To get to a hiring manager, you’ve got to get by Mya first.
Many companies won’t even want you to meet Mya or her sister bots until you complete a challenge or two. HackerRank and CodeFights require candidates to demonstrate coding competencies in challenges before inviting them to apply for a job. Squore and Knack partner with employers in a range of industries to create custom challenges to serve as gates at the top of the hiring funnel.
In some markets, employers don’t allow candidates to enter the funnel unless they’ve taken a longer assessment demonstrating not only technical skills but cognitive skills — like critical thinking and problem-solving.
In India, the emergence of thousands of new private universities over the past several decades has yielded millions of college graduates with questionable skills. Surveys show that up to 80% of engineering graduates aren’t qualified to work in the technology sector and 47% of graduates fail to qualify for entry-level positions in any profession.
As a result, hundreds of large and mid-size employers only allow students to apply for a position once they have taken a new standardized assessment: the AMCAT , an employment assessment from global credentialing leader Aspiring Minds .
Paired with emerging people analytics technologies, which allow employers to track the performance of employees, profile indicators of future success, and feed those back into job descriptions, intelligent applicant tracking systems not only identify candidates for open positions today, but prospective candidates based on relevant demonstrated competencies who may be a few years away in terms of their development.
It’s not that every employer will follow the professional sports model, engaging in a labor intensive search for talent and working to develop that talent at great expense. But employers will use technology to identify and develop talent in a hands-off, low-cost manner.
Your firm has to hire 100 entry-level salespeople every year? No problem. Your intelligent applicant tracking system has already identified 250 college freshmen and sophomores whose demonstrated curricular and co-curricular competencies correlate to sales success, and either advised them to take a course in business statistics or invited them to participate in a short online course, the result of which will be an invitation to interview for a summer job.
As employers adopt intelligent bots, challenges, and rethink what applicant tracking systems can do to improve hiring processes, candidate pools will start with far fewer false positives and false negatives. This will mean fewer bad hires, better employee retention and – perhaps due in part to less lost sleep from being rejected due to an “extremely competitive process” – higher overall productivity.

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British online fashion retailer boohoo.com is a step closer to acquiring the brand and customer database of US fashion retailer Nasty Gal, which filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection back in November .
In an update for investors Nasty Gal writes that it entered an asset purchase agreement with boohoo on December 28, which was subsequently approved by the US Bankruptcy Court. Boohoo is bidding $20 million for the Nasty Gal brand name and customer database.
What follows now is a court approved bidding process, with the closing date for additional bids set at February 2. “The Group’s bid may not result in a transaction if higher or more favourable offers are obtained by Nasty Gal during the auction process,” writes Nasty Gal.
Should no other more favorable bids be obtained the proposed acquisition by boohoo will be subject to final approval by the US courts — expected on or around February 8.
“The Board believes the proposed transaction has the potential to accelerate the Group’s international growth, particularly in the US, building on boohoo’s existing customer reach and product range across the globe,” it adds.
Since being founded in LA back in 2006, Nasty Gal has raised around $65 million, according to CrunchBase , with investors including Index Ventures and retail executive Ron Johnson.
Commenting on the bid last month, boohoo, which was also founded in 2006 and has focused on selling own brand, affordable fast fashion to millennials, said it sees the Nasty Gal brand as “ an ideal next step in inspiring an ever-growing range of young customers internationally”.
Last month the retailer acquired a majority stake in another online fashion retailer, Pretty Little Thing, for £3.3M .

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Nokia fans hankering to get their hands on a new smartphone with their beloved brand name — and without Microsoft’s unloved mobile OS — will need to go to China if they want to buy the first Android-powered from the Finnish phone maker that’s now licensing Nokia’s IP for phones.
The new device maker, HMD , was founded last year by a group of senior ex-Nokians, with the explicit aim of (exclusively) licensing Nokia’s brand name for new mobile hardware — having acquired the relevant rights from former owner, Microsoft back in May .
HMD’s first two mobiles, outted last month , were both features phones. But it’s now announced its debut smartphone: a “premium” handset it’s calling the Nokia 6, which is billed to launch in China in “early 2017”. The device will be distributed exclusively via local electronics ecommerce giant, JD.com, with a price-tag of 1699 CNY ($245).
So what kind of Nokia-branded Android smartphone will $245 buy you? A highly polished aluminum unibody handset, packing a 5.5 inch Gorilla Glass HD screen, which, at a quick glance, could pass for an iPhone.
Inside there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage and the latest flavor of Google’s Android OS (Nougat). Also on board: dual speakers, Dolby Atmos audio, a 16MP rear camera and 8MP front facing lens (both f/2.0).
Commenting in a statement, CEO Arto Nummela, flagged factors such as the Nokia 6’s design, durability, entertainment and display features. “The Nokia 6 is a result of listening to our consumers who desire a beautifully crafted handset with exceptional durability, entertainment and display features,” he said.
Why is HMD focusing on China? It points to the size of the smartphone market — 552M+ users last year, with projected growth to 593M+ in 2017 — calling it “strategically important”. So this is absolutely about seeking to drive volume sales in a market that still has some growth potential, which, given what can even be size zero Android OEM margins these days, is as you’d expect.
Nummela goes on to suggest HMD will be expanding its portfolio quickly with additional handsets in the coming months — so again, it looks to be gearing up to push for volume sales.
“Our ambition is to deliver a premium product, which meets consumer needs at every price point, in every market,” he said. “We start today, with our premium, high quality Nokia 6; built to deliver a fantastic core user experience for Chinese consumers. We look forward to unveiling further products in the first half of this year.”
The fiercely competitive phone making space has not been kind to many a seasoned hardware firm in recent years. So it remains to be seen whether a Finnish Nokia IP licensing vehicle will find fairer business fortunes here or be forced to watch a veteran brand being drowned out amid all the noise.
According to Strategy Analytics’ 2016 Q3 smartphone market report , three of the top five device makers hailed from China — with fast-growing local challenger OEMs such as OPPO, Vivo and LeEco taking share from larger firm Huawei, for example.
The analyst dubbed competition in the Chinese market as “intense”, noting that Huawei’s growth more than halved in the quarter owing to this clutch of domestic rivals. HMD will clearly be hoping to add its name to the list of rising challenges in future years.

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