Laid Off and Now Unable to Even Apply To Same Company

[Mister Selatcia]

Greetings,

I worked a few years as a member of management for a big box retail store. A few months back however our store was liquidated and I became a dislocated worker. I did receive a severance and am now able to collect unemployment benefits. Very recently I saw a position for the same company at their corporate office that matched well with my skill set and education, so I thought I would at least apply for it. When applying online there was a section that asked why I stopped working for them if previously employed by them. I selected laid off and in the text field below asking specifically why, I indicated our store was liquidated. After finishing and submitting the application I received an auto email from the company. In it, it stated that their records had shown I previously worked from one of its subsidiary companies and that due to the reason of my termination I would not be considered for the job. I'm sure there is some rationale behind this, but I'm curious to know why a company wouldn't even consider a candidate that may possibly be valuable to the company. While employed with them I had built a good reputation and had always had above average performance reviews. Any info on why companies do this sort of thing would be great.

Thanks,

Mr. S
(Minnesota)

 

[justalayman]

You're asking people top read the minds of those making the decision. The only people that have an answer for you are those people that made that decision. I can speculate all day long as to why they may not hire former employees but that doesn't mean any of them are why the company involved made their decision.


Of course, their reason may not even be the real reason for them rebuffing you. It may be their way of being somewhat vague, intentionally with some underlying reason, again, being something only they would know.

 

[Zigner]

Yours is not a legal question. There is no way we can guess why your application was denied, but it sounds like it was a computer generated denial. Perhaps you should try to talk to somebody at the corporate level to find out if there is some sort of mistake or "glitch" in the system.

 

[cbg]

Good, bad, or indifferent, there are any number of reasons why an employer might not want to rehire past employees. I worked for one company that had a policy of never rehiring employees, no matter how good they might have been or what the reason they left, because of a complicated process of non-disclosure agreements. Not likely to be the case in your situation, I grant you, but for whatever reason, such policies are, with limited exceptions, legal.