The job market is shifting. People are leaving their jobs everywhere and in great numbers. Employers are scrambling to hire people. More unions are forming. And yet, so many organizations and companies still continue to engage in inequitable hiring practices as if it were still the 1960s and everyone could smoke and drink whiskey during a team meeting.

On Twitter, someone wrote “So apparently job candidates’ sending a thank you note isn’t a thing anymore? Candidates, pro tip: send a thank you note.” It got several thousand comments and quote tweets saying this is an archaic, ridiculous practice. A colleague (@chanthropology) called it “Victorian performances of white middle class professionalism.” And I agree. It is an unwritten rule steeped in power asymmetry, and it sucks. If employers don’t send job candidates thank-you notes, why should job candidates be expected to do so?

No more post-interview thank-you notes. Employers, stop expecting it, stop favoring job candidates who do it and punishing those who don’t.

While we put the final nail in the post-interview-thank-you-note coffin, here are some other practices we need to stop doing, and a few we need to adopt:

  1. Stop asking for work outside candidates’ portfolios
  2. Stop requiring formal education for every position
  3. Stop asking “creative” interview questions
  4. Stop ghosting people after they spent hours or months on your process
  5. Disclose salary range in every single job posting
  6. Spell out your ENTIRE hiring process and timeline in your job posting
  7. Send interview questions in advance
  8. Reserve plenty of time for candidates to ask questions
  9. Pay job candidates who make it to your interview process
  10. Pay candidates what is fair, not what you can get away with

Read the full article about improving hiring practices by Vu Le at Nonprofit AF.