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Companies this size have serious issues with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or worse, not knowing if the right hand even exists.

You had a somewhat successful interview. There are 3 jobs and 50 candidates. Some are clear "no"s, a few are clear "take him to the next level"... but there are also ones stuck in the middle. Good enough that they could go to the next level, but only if the eight people in front of them wash out. That's you.

In addition HR may not be sure if there really are 3 jobs (there can be more or less), and they are also recruiting at other events and are hoping that someone stronger than you turns up.

And then weeks pass and odds of them needing you get much smaller, but never quite fall to zero. Then months have passed and it's not worth their time to review the dozens or hundreds of people they've kept in the pipeline waiting.

In addition, this is a big process and "they" is more than one person. It's unlikely that the person who told you that you did well even knows whether or not you've made it to the next level.

Edit to add more info: Small companies typically one HR person in charge of the entire process with a well defined number of jobs and candidates. My HR person is matching thousands (yes, really) of candidates to scores of jobs.

Surely it is not professional, but unfortunately a rejection letter is not a standard. (Almost same situation happened for me earlier :/)

Coming from a background in dealing with Enterprise-level companies, I have to say my experience has been entirely different from other answers. In every interview in which I participated (in 5+ organizations), either as the interviewee or interviewer, it was always considered proper etiquette to give a phone call or email to the candidate to let them know where they stood. Formal letters of rejection are unheard of in my locale (midwest US) but some sort of communication is absolutely expected.

Two items worth noting:

1. Communicating an acceptance or rejection is typically the responsibility of the hiring manager or the placement company (not HR in my experience). If you have received absolute silence then you may be a victim of either an insecure/overly-busy manager or someone on the contracting side dropping the ball. Either way, I would take the breach of etiquette as an indication of individual failure as opposed to some company wide policy.




2. In a large Enterprise things move extremely slowly. There are approval processes, budget justifications, bureaucratic steps you wouldn't expect. What should take days will take weeks and things that should take weeks can even take months. Believe it or not, for a massive organization, 22 days is not a coffin nail. To offer a glimmer of hope... if you happened to interview early in the interview window (and they have many other candidates to review), it is not outside of the realm of possibility that you could still receive a callback. Certainly, as others stated, the longer it goes the slimmer your chances but I have actually heard of candidates receiving callbacks as late as 3 months after an interview! That said, in cases where the decision process is moving painfully slow, it is usually in the hiring managers best interest to reach out to top-level candidates to "keep them on the line". So if you are not hearing a single thing, it is best to move on. My Enterprise moves very slowly and we've lost good candidates due to a slow hiring approval process (as we should).

Regardless of the situation, though, it is important not to stake all of your hopes on this one company. Just like they are interviewing many candidates, you should be interviewing with many different organizations. If you throw out many lines you are more likely to catch a fish. Good luck to you in your job hunt!

While I agree with the feedback; They should, but do not expect it. I wanted to add a note about negotiation, project management, sales.. or whatever that is applicable in this case.

At the end of the discussion it is vital to summarize the key things you learned ( verbally) and then ask about the next steps and timeline for these things to happen.

In this case you would have been well served to leave asking and knowing:

1) When will the decision be made?

2) Who should I contact to follow up and when should I do this.

3) Do you need or want any additional info from me?

--- Close with some statement of mutual success, like " I can see my objectives / skills / research etc really being a good match here."

Also read an essay from Suzie Welch - do not be afraid to say, " I really do want this job."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/21/suzy-welch-3-things-you-should-always-do-in-a-job-interview.html

No. Don't expect any. Most companies suck at giving such feedback. In 30 years, probably I've heard two companies had the courtesy to do so.

Unless you are applying for a company that's well known for taking their time - say, Google - give them 4 weeks and assume a "no" is in order if you don't hear back.

In the meantime, keep interviewing and grab the first thing you see that's good for you. If that company finally replies with a "yes", but you are employed, well... ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It's (arguably) unprofessional, but unfortunately not uncommon. (I say "arguably" because, as I'll explain in a second, it's often not deliberate).

The staffing process at the majority of companies - even large ones with lots of H.R. resources available - tends to be somewhat disorganized. Also, even in a tight job market, some jobs may receive a large number of applicants.

I'm aware of companies that actually run reports on stagnated candidates and other candidates who should've been rejected and weren't. Many recruiters have to be routinely reminded to reject candidates that they don't intend to hire promptly; this is an important part of a good candidate experience.

Also, as others have indicated, it's not unheard of not to hear anything for awhile and then to be asked fro an interview.

So, to answer your question: it should be standard practice, but it's often not consistently followed (especially if a particular job has a lot of applicants).

Sounds like you've been Ghosted

This has become common in hiring, and indeed some are now turning the tables by ghosting employers when they leave a job.

Here is some advice on what to do to avoid it happening:

Ghosted by Interviewers, what to do now

In your next interview, there are some things you can do to try to protect yourself from ghosting, or at least reduce the chances of being ghosted.

I agree with everyone else that your chances at this point are infinitesimally small, even if you have not formally heard so. It's still possible that their first choice won't pan out and they might get back to you in weeks or months. But Aristotelian possible, not probable, in fact highly unlikely.

What I really wanted to say was that you should never stop your job search just because you have an interview. In fact you shouldn't even stop it if you have an offer, as negotiations can fail quite late in the process. You might not even want to stop entirely till you've been at your new job a few weeks. It's possible to have a horrible surprise, one that did not come up earlier, that makes you reconsider the whole thing. And it's much better to quit within a month, something which will not show up anywhere in your history, than to have to suffer say a year so your resume doesn't look bad later.

The company specifically told you that they would let you know in a week if you would proceed further in their hiring process. They were implicitly telling you that if you didn't hear back from them in that timeframe that you were not going to move forward with them.

One issue that large companies get lots of candidates. It's often not worth their time to write rejection letters to all of them, even the ones who get to a phone screening stage.