Japanese company is so kind it mails out condolence gifts if it can’t give applicants a job

In Japan, as in many other countries, no news is bad news when you’re job hunting. Most companies’ human resource departments operate under a policy of only responding to applicants they’re moving forward with, and if you’re not being offered an interview, odds are you won’t hear anything back from the recruiter after submitting your application.

Impersonal as it may feel, most people just accept this as part of modern business culture. Most Japanese companies are already stretched pretty thin staffing-wise (hence the country’s infamous amounts of overtime work), and when you factor in how many resumes hiring managers receive in the digital age, many companies’ simply don’t have the time to correspond with applicants they’re not going to interview.

A heartwarming exception, though, is Japanese food and beverage company Kagome, which specializes in tomato-based products such as ketchup and tomato juice (and also sometimes partners with Pikachu and the "Evangelion" anime franchise). Japanese Twitter user @tutuanna888 recently applied for a position with the company, and though she didn’t make it to the interview stage, she received a written response from Kagome, and not an email either; the company sent her a box with a printed note inside, plus a consolation gift package.

The note reads:

We would like to offer our sincere thanks to you for applying to Kagome.

We deeply appreciate your interest in us as an employer, and for taking the time to fill out the application form and prepare a resume. As a modest token of our gratitude, we have enclosed a selection of our products.

We hope that you will continue to think favorably towards Kagome in the future."

Bundled with the thank-you letter were a package of tomato chicken seasoning and a bottle of 100-percent tomato juice, both Kagome-brand items. An additional message, printed on the box’s cardboard itself, says:

“They’re nothing so special, but please enjoy these with your family friends, or loved ones.”

Even before receiving the package, @tutuanna888 says that she’d heard rumors that Kagome did this sort of thing. So while it’s unclear whether or not Kagome mails out these condolence package to each and every applicant, at the very least this doesn’t seem to be a one-time thing for the company.

It’s not at all unusual for people to develop a bit of a grudge against a company for turning them down for a job, but Kagome’s simple yet compassionate gesture struck a chord with Twitter, where @tutuanna888’s tweet quickly racked up tens of thousands of likes and retweets. @tutuanna888 doesn’t mention whether or not she’s lined up employment elsewhere since, but if nothing else, Kagome is rooting for her, even if they’re not able to offer her a position themselves.

Source: Twitter/@tutuanna888 via Jin

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