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After my interview with a very large company, I received a call telling me that I was being offered employment, followed by a written offer ... followed two days later by a letter thanking me for interviewing and wishing me success elsewhere.
How do I know which is correct?
Likely, the rejection letter was something auto-sent and there was a miscommunication in the process. However, this is a case where you have a clear path forward to find out what happened. Simply call up the hiring manager, explain the situation, and ask.
Offer letters are not usually accidentally sent, but rejection letters can be set up to send to everyone in a list. If your name was accidentally still in that list, you get the letter. So it's likely that is what happened. Likely isn't an answer, however, which is why calling the hiring manager is the appropriate next step.
It helps to understand how this part of the hiring process typically works. In some companies, including IBM at that time, your interviews start a time-out running in the HR office. If they haven't heard any of the managers say they want to hire you within some number of days, they automatically send the "sorry" note rather than rudely leave you hanging.
However, this means that when someone does want to hire you, there's a risk that they don't inform HR of this soon enough to stop that letter, with the result that both letters may be sent.
So if you get a rejection letter after bring told to expect an offer, and it doesn't apologise for withdrawing that offer, it may be worth making a phone call to check that the rejection is real. It may just be a communications problem inside the company.
Hope this might help someone, eventually...
(If my offer letter had been further delayed relative to the default rejection letter, my first job might have been with CDC instead. As it is, I framed both letters side by side as a cautionary tale.)
This can happen if you apply for a specific job requisition but get an offer for another. The system sees you as not having been offered the one you applied for - even though you have an offer elsewhere.
If you apply for a "bucket category" (maybe college grads, etc) this happens when that req is removed/cancelled/etc. Because you were rejected for that req as no offer was made on it. No offer was made on that job, technically.
You might have an old application floating in the system that gets purged too, I've received automated rejection emails years later from companies I don't even remember applying for.
Also, remember job application software is pretty universally bad. When in doubt, talk with a real person - they will know what happened much better than automated systems.
