Some companies offer short, polite rejection letters to let eager applicants know they weren’t what the company had in mind. This website’s hiring manager, however, decided to go into much greater detail.

Over 900 hopeful applicants to a “clean tech news site” received a 3,000 word rejection letter (technically an email)  from the site’s creator Shea Gunther, which listed exactly why they didn’t make the cut. The first two or three paragraphs explained what the company was looking for. Problem was, a number of applicants weren’t sure if the letter was an explanation of why they were chosen — or a justification of why they weren’t.

Said one applicant, “At first I thought I’d made it to the second round, but then I realized I’d been Bcc’d, along with 900 others, on my own rejection letter.”

But that’s not all.

Gunther was also kind enough to offer a list of 42 writing job application dos and don’ts to help the rejects with their future endeavors. Here are a few of the best practices on the list:

• Do be a badass
• Do read the ad and do exactly what it asks
• Don’t describe yourself as zany, crazy, or wild, and
• Don’t tell me how great this job would be for you.

You can view the letter by clicking here. In addition, the author of the viral rejection letter has posted his own rebuttal to the criticism the letter received, which can be found here.

Tags: Application dos and don'ts, Clean tech news, Rejection letter, Shea Gunther