I have applied to a few places in the Valley, as have many of my friends. And I hear nothing but horror stories in terms of how rude recruiters and hiring managers are.

I'm not talking about simply not hiring me or my friends. I'm happy with not getting a job I interviewed for, no one owes anyone a job. And I'm not talking about getting template rejection letters, or "Thanks for contacting us, we'll keep your resume on file." Those are great.

I'm talking about emailing candidates about scheduling phone interviews and then not responding back to emails. Not calling them when they have a scheduled phone interview. Bringing people to onsite interviews, and then not contacting people back to give them the results, or responding to emails asking about the results of the onsite interview.

I assume that no contact means a rejection, but what happened to common decency and not leaving people hanging?

I've found that the hiring process has gotten ruder and ruder over the course of time, where hiring managers feel no need to tell interviewees that they were rejected. It's appalling.

I expect it from headhunters, but internal recruiters for the company are doing themselves no service. And this pertains not just to startups, but big companies as well. Startlingly, Google has improved drastically in this department, but all the other companies are simply terrible.

Have other people experienced this as well?