{
  "registry_version": "2026.08.2",
  "data": {
    "title": "Rejection after the application sat pending for months",
    "status": "active",
    "evidence_ids": [],
    "content": "# Rejection after the application sat pending for months\n\nA rejection arrives six weeks or more after submission, with no contact in the interval and no stage ever entered.\n\n### Diagnostic Non-Inferences\n- Does not mean the application was read at any point during the interval.\n- Does not mean a decision on the merits was taken at the end of it.",
    "id": "A-015",
    "type": "artifact",
    "summary": "A rejection arrives six weeks or more after submission, with no contact in the interval and no stage ever entered.",
    "stages": [
      "ingestion",
      "screening"
    ],
    "evidence_level": "hypothesis",
    "probes": [
      {
        "id": "PROBE-A-015-1",
        "action": "Compare the date the posting came down with the date the rejection arrived, using the portal's own listing history or a saved copy of the posting.",
        "expected_signal": "Establishes whether the message followed the close of the search or an interval counted from submission.",
        "cost": "low",
        "outcomes": [
          {
            "id": "message-follows-posting-close",
            "label": "The posting came down first, and the message followed within days of it.",
            "excludes": [],
            "because": ""
          },
          {
            "id": "message-on-a-round-interval",
            "label": "The message arrived a round number of days after submission — thirty, forty-five, sixty — and the posting's state did not change around it.",
            "excludes": [],
            "because": ""
          },
          {
            "id": "posting-still-live",
            "label": "The posting was still accepting applications when the rejection arrived.",
            "excludes": [],
            "because": ""
          },
          {
            "id": "history-unavailable",
            "label": "The posting's history cannot be recovered and no copy was kept.",
            "excludes": [],
            "because": ""
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "specimens": [
      {
        "kind": "ats",
        "label": "Application timeline",
        "lines": [
          {
            "at": "02 Mar",
            "text": "Application submitted",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "at": "02 Mar",
            "text": "Status: Under review",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "at": "01 May",
            "text": "Status: Not selected",
            "tell": true
          },
          {
            "at": "01 May",
            "text": "Notification email queued",
            "tell": false
          }
        ],
        "reading": "Sixty days between the two status lines, and nothing recorded in between. The record's history shows one transition, not a review."
      },
      {
        "kind": "email",
        "label": "Rejection email",
        "subject": "Update on your application",
        "context": "received sixty days after submission",
        "lines": [
          {
            "text": "Thank you for your interest. We have decided not to move forward with your application at this time.",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "text": "We encourage you to apply for future openings that match your background.",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "text": "No stage is named, and none was entered.",
            "tell": true
          }
        ],
        "reading": "The message is written to close a record, not to report a decision about one. Nothing in it distinguishes the sixtieth day from the first."
      }
    ],
    "perspectives": [
      {
        "actor": "candidate",
        "sees": "A submission in one month and a rejection in another, with nothing between them: no acknowledgement beyond the automatic one, no question, no stage.",
        "reads": "The interval bounds nothing on its own. A long wait is equally consistent with a queue that never reached the record and with a threshold that closed it on a date.",
        "does": "Checks whether the posting stayed live through the interval and whether the portal shows a status that changed before the message arrived, because those are the two things the interval can be compared against."
      },
      {
        "actor": "recruiter",
        "sees": "A requisition that has been closed for weeks and a disposition list that still has to be cleared before the quarter's reporting.",
        "reads": "Records that never entered the queue are not decisions deferred; they are decisions the queue never had capacity to reach.",
        "does": "Clears the outstanding dispositions in one operation, because the alternative is leaving them open against a requisition that no longer exists."
      },
      {
        "actor": "ats-vendor",
        "sees": "A retention rule firing against every record still in a pending state past the configured interval, and one notification queued per record.",
        "reads": "The configuration ran on schedule. Whether any of those records was ever opened is not a condition the rule tests.",
        "does": "Transitions the records, queues the notifications, and reports the cleared backlog as pipeline hygiene."
      }
    ],
    "non_inferences": [
      "Does not mean the application was read at any point during the interval.",
      "Does not mean a decision on the merits was taken at the end of it."
    ]
  }
}