Nothing humbles you like getting rejected from a job you were clearly qualified for. The candidate could feel the fit in the room; the role was a match on paper and in conversation. Then the interview ended, and the quiet began.
Two days later, the recruiter's message arrived. "Unfortunately, we've decided not to proceed..." — the ellipsis doing what the process never could, trailing off before any reason.
The sting is in the interval. An immediate no is at least honest, a rejection delivered while the interview is still warm. Two days suggests the candidate was a near-miss, then a maybe, then a name on a spreadsheet someone finally got around to crossing out. The generic script is the last indignity: a process that could not see an obvious fit in the room could not find a sentence to explain why not.
It is the small, specific cruelty of modern hiring. Qualified is not the bar, and no one will tell you what is.