Apparently the folks at Twitter are a little too used to sharing. At around 11 AM this morning the company sent out a rejection notice to many of the candidates who had applied for its open Product Manager position. But instead of using BCC to hide the identities of the applicants from each other, Twitter HR goofed and sent them all the message using a standard Carbon Copy, allowing everyone else to see who the other 185 applicants were.
Here’s the message each person got, along with the list of other recipients:
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.
Twitter isn’t the first company to mix up the BCC and CC fields. RockYou has made similar mistakes in the past, repeatedly CCing a full list of its advertisers and developers for all to see (much to their chagrin). But Twitter’s blunder could potentially have a negative impact on some of these applicants who may already be employed elsewhere.
Craig Given, who was one of the applicants, has blogged about the message, and also includes a response that CEO Evan Williams has sent to all the affected applicants. Note that Williams says that not everyone on the list even applied for the job:
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.
Whatever the case, I regret this mistake. Please help us reduce the impact of this error by respecting each other’s privacy.
If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.
Evan