I Applied to 34 Companies. 5 Gave Me Feedback.

I applied to 34 companies between April and May years ago across Australia and the United States. The list included small startups, defense contractors, fintechs, and a couple of large payments companies. I won't post their names here for obvious reasons.

Most of them rejected me, which is normal. I like to say when you apply cold expect 100 applications for one offer if you're lucky. What surprised me was what happened when I asked for a reason for the rejection.

I asked for feedback.

Of the 34 rejections, 29 of them arrived as template emails, all built from the same phrases: “Thank you for your interest,” then “We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates,” then “We wish you the best.”

Some came from no-reply addresses. A few included links to the company’s LinkedIn page, as if following their social media was a consolation prize.

A payments company in Sydney rejected me twice for two different roles, and both emails were identical, word for word.

An AI company in San Francisco sent a longer version that explained the team was small and hiring for a narrow skill set. It said little about my own application.

One company ran the entire first interview through an automated chatbot. It asked me to rate my skills from 0 to 5 across a list that included “Node.js,” “NodeJS,” and “Node” as separate entries. Then it asked me to summarize REST in a text box.

The worst came from a code collaboration platform. They sent an automated rejection weeks after I applied. The email came from a no-reply address that left me no way to ask a question.

I started replying to every rejection that came from a real email address.

My question was the same each time: “Can you share any feedback on why I wasn’t shortlisted?”

Most of them stayed silent. A staffing agency in Sydney went quiet, a data visualization company didn’t reply, and a recruiting consultant let the thread die.

But here's where things start to become interesting: 5 companies gave me a real answer. 1.5% of the companies seemed to care.

The Hardware Startup

A hardware startup in Melbourne stood out from the first email, written by a real person from a real address. The note laid out a clear timeline: screening through April, with a response to follow.

They invited me to a 30-minute video call with their co-founder and principal engineer. When they rejected me, the email named two reasons: the role needed IoT experience I didn’t have, and they preferred candidates in Melbourne.

I wrote back to thank them. The whole exchange took three weeks and felt like talking to a person, not a system.

The Melbourne Fintech

A fintech in Melbourne (Australia), told me they were after someone at the mid-to-senior level with a strong finance background. They pointed out that I was in a different city and that they didn’t offer remote work.

The Defense Contractor

A defense contractor in Australia offered general feedback in the rejection and invited me to ask for more detail. A government consulting firm replied the same day I asked: the role required a security clearance that takes two years to obtain.

The Utah Travel Tech

A travel technology company in Utah was blunt about it. The role was in-person, and they didn’t sponsor visas.

The companies that gave real feedback had one thing in common. They knew what they were looking for.

The Friend's Referral

Then there was the company I applied to through a friend’s referral. The recruiter told my friend they’d found someone better. My friend pushed for specifics, and the recruiter gave the same line again. My friend went back a third time, and that was when the real answer came out.

The company had been acquired, and the team was favoring internal moves. There was no plan to hire externally for that role. Three rounds of pressure through a backchannel surfaced the real reason. Through the official channel, all I had was a polite line about a stronger candidate.

Without that friend, the rejection looked like a verdict on my skills. The truth was that the role was closed to outside candidates from the start and I never had any chance.

The backchannel is worth a closer look, not as advice but as evidence. It showed me what feedback looks like when a company has no choice but to be specific. That specificity made the situation clear. The team had already chosen to promote from within, so my application was a formality before anyone opened it. The polite template that came first had told me none of this.

I kept a record of every rejection and read back through them later, and a pattern came through. Companies that sent template rejections weren’t only being impersonal. They often had no clear picture of what the role required, or what disqualified a candidate before anyone reviewed a single CV. Some listings buried location requirements deep in the page, others left out visa restrictions entirely, and one had advertised a role that no outside candidate was realistically in line for.

The rejection itself was the least useful part. The reason behind it showed me how the company actually operated.

The 5 companies that gave me real feedback told me something about themselves. They had defined what they needed and put it in a sentence or two when I asked. They treated the process as a two-way exchange rather than a one-way filter. They'll probably be on my list in case a recruiter calls back saying they're looking for someone.

The other 29 taught me something too. A company that can’t tell you why it said "no" often doesn’t know what it wants, and that is worth learning too, better before you spend months or years working there.

If you liked this, you might like Readplace, built for exactly this kind of reading.

Thanks for reading. If you have some feedback, reach out to me on LinkedIn, Reddit or by replying to this post.