When I or my managers select a candidate, the non-selected candidates get a standard “thank you for applying, we received many qualified applicants, while you weren’t the best fit at this time, we’ll keep your application on file for one year and encourage you to apply for other positions”, which is our standard CYA.

We don’t tell them why they weren’t selected. We do keep interview notes and questionnaires for each candidate that have a rating sheet attached, and the candidate we select is always one of the highest rated. In the seven years I’ve worked here, we’ve only had a couple complaints that were easily dealt with “we hired the best qualified candidate”.

The one time someone tried to play the race card, “You didn’t hire me because I’m black!” it didn’t go very far because the person who was selected was also black, which made it very easy to prove we didn’t discriminate in our hiring! The complainer rescheduled her interview 3 times, and then was late because she ‘got lost’. She also didn’t interview well and had a lot of short terms at various employers.

It was a standard interview question to ask people if they had reliable transportation to work (there was no public transportation to this location) and then go on to explain why we ask the question.

You’d be surprised at how honest people are in an interview about their skepticism about being able to make it to work regularly if they don’t have their own transportation. Those people would be screened out on the basis that they stated that they were unsure if they could make it to work regularly.

Unfortunatley, your person did not state that he couldn’t make it to work, so you will have to make sure that you re-iterate in your interview that there is no public transport in your area and go from there. I have actually interviewed people in the process of purchasing a car because they knew that if they got this particular job, they would need it. That was always impressive!