Do faculty hiring committees inform the candidates of the results? Context: I've applied for several tenure-track positions. I have one or two favorites, but I'd gladly embrace any of them, basically because I only applied to good universities, with good programs, in good cities.

Question: Usually, they will just ignore the 'discarded' candidates or inform us of the decision?

In my previous experience, I was informed, after I asked via e-mail, several months later. I understand that it would be a significant amount of work, most places have more than 250 applicants per process, but no information at all is kind of rude, isn't? 

I also know that the candidates that are selected for the interview are contacted, some universities give a tentative timeline, so you can infer if you were selected or not, but that's not the general case...
My own experience was that whether and when a response came appeared to be exceedingly arbitrary.  Some places gave a rapid "no", others gave a "no" after many months (one after more than a year), and some never said anything at all.  I have heard of similar experiences from other people.

I have not been able to discern a pattern of which organizations are likely to fall into which category, and also know that different people seem to have different experiences with the same organization, presumably based on who is running the committee in a given year.