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Roast My Rejection Email

Paste the rejection email you send candidates, get it roasted. Ghost templates, no-reply walls, empty promises and legal landmines, scored out of 100 and quoted straight back at you. The email never leaves your browser.

Your rejection email

0 words · Runs entirely in your browser. The email is never uploaded.
The verdict
 
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The charge sheet

Every charge quotes your own email back at you. The roast is the diagnosis; the fix underneath is the part worth forwarding to whoever owns the template.

What makes a bad rejection email?

The failures are consistent: a template greeting with no name, a no-reply address so nothing can come back, no reason for the decision, a stack of corporate padding ("after careful consideration", "future endeavours"), and a promise to keep the CV on file that both sides know is empty. Each one tells the candidate they were processed rather than considered, and they repeat that verdict to friends, colleagues and review sites. This tool checks for all of them at once and shows you where your email stands.

Where Compono fits

A bad rejection email is rarely a writing problem. It is what an indefensible hiring decision looks like from the outside: when nobody can say why a candidate missed out, the email has nothing to say, so it hides behind "careful consideration" and a no-reply address. Compono Hire makes the decision itself defensible, matching candidates on work personality and culture fit against a definition of what the role actually needs, so there is a real reason to give and the feedback almost writes itself. Lyre's used Compono Hire to scale from 4 to 70 people across five continents in two years without losing fit.

See how it works

How it's calculated

The roast runs eight checks in your browser: template ghosting (generic greetings and leaked merge fields), the no-reply wall ("do not reply", unmonitored inboxes), the feedback vacuum (no reason offered, judged more harshly when the candidate interviewed), corporate padding ("after careful consideration" and its relatives), empty promises ("we'll keep your CV on file"), delivery (burying the verdict under paragraphs of throat-clearing, brush-off length, exclamation-mark cheeriness), legal landmines (stated reasons like "overqualified" or unmeasured "culture fit" that read badly in a claim), and the cold shoulder (whether the email thanks the candidate or only talks about the company). Each check deducts from a starting score of 100, weighted by how much damage it does to how the rejection lands, and the total maps to a roast grade from Rare to Burnt to a Crisp. Everything runs client-side. The email is never uploaded, stored or seen by us.

New to the term? Read the plain-English definition of structured interviews in the HR Glossary.

Common questions

What should a good rejection email say?

Use the candidate's name, deliver the decision in the first two sentences, thank them for something specific (the application, the take-home task, two rounds of interviews), give one honest job-related reason, offer feedback if they interviewed, and sign it from a person at an address that accepts replies. None of that takes longer than the padding it replaces. A five-sentence email that does those things beats every elegant template that does not.

Is it safe to paste a real rejection email in here?

Yes. The analysis runs entirely in your browser using word lists and pattern matching. Nothing you paste is uploaded, stored or sent to Compono or anyone else. Close the tab and it is gone. You can swap the candidate's name for any placeholder first if you prefer; the checks still work.

Should I give candidates feedback when I reject them?

Candidates have already answered this one: LinkedIn's research found 94% of candidates want interview feedback, and talent is four times more likely to consider a company for a future opportunity after receiving constructive feedback. Feedback needs a defensible reason behind it, which is a process question rather than a writing one. If the interview was scored against agreed criteria, the sentence you need already exists.

Does a bad rejection email actually cost anything?

Virgin Media put a number on it. The company found rejected candidates who had a poor experience were cancelling their subscriptions, and costed the damage at roughly £4.4 million a year in lost revenue. Most businesses never connect those two systems, so the cost never shows up with a label on it. Every rejected candidate is still a customer, a referrer, a reviewer and a possible future applicant, and the rejection email is the moment that decides which of those they stay.

How is the roast score worked out?

Every email starts at 100. Each of the eight checks deducts points based on severity, with the heaviest weights on template ghosting, no-reply walls and missing feedback because they do the most damage to how the rejection lands. 85 or above grades Rare, 65 to 84 Medium, 40 to 64 Well-Done, and below 40 is Burnt to a Crisp. The score is a guide for improving the email, not a scientific instrument, and the fixes matter more than the number.

This page is general information, not legal advice. We check figures annually and update them on a best-efforts basis, but employment rules change and we cannot promise everything here is current or complete. Before you act on it, confirm the detail with the relevant authority in your country or your own adviser. Last reviewed July 2026.