Is OTHER wrong in the post ? POST : This came up yesterday during dinner with my SO. I am head of production in a medium sized company. When I am hiring I’ll get applications from HR and check them. At that point applicants have received a short standardized mail that we thank them for their interest and we Willens time to check the application. I usually check my inbox (it’s a separate one for applications) daily and, as hard as it sounds, Filter out the bad ones in probably less then 2min per application. Almost always I don’t check these a second time since I heave a few good ones to continue working with. Now comes the AITA part: since I check daily I could give applicants a direct feedback that they won’t get the job, sometimes maybe very few hours after the standardized mail. But I don’t. I wait a few days to tell them (or actually let them be told, as long as I did not have personal contact to applicants HR tells them. Only when I have mail or phone contact myself I tell them personally via the channel I used to communicate with them). My SO says I am an asshole for letting them hope for a few days even though I’m sure they won’t get the job. I think it’s very hard to get a negative feedback within hours, it’s like „yeah I didn’t need much time to consider it’s clear  your no it“ which is actually true (now that I am typing it I realize I may actually be an asshole). Other reason why I think I am in the right: you can’t expect an application to be answered in a few hours, I doesn’t take longer than normal my way. I could maybe think of more but I guess you have enough to judge.