I agree wholeheartedly with
dr dre, Jimnhorace, and psycho joe and have little to add to their comments.
There is another possibility for the response
Coopmeup got, and it's along the lines of:
Or you could just be unlucky and got rejected on a technicality because they have 1000's of applicants for less than 10 positions and not enough HR staff to look through them all indepth.
As has been said previously: HR has limited time and resources. A hypothetical cadetship is advertised: There are only 10 positions, and thousands of applications. Since HR's time is valuable to the company, if they get 100 (say) applicants who meet all the criteria they MIGHT say:
"Enough. We've got 100 people we can shortlist for sims. interviews, etc. Disregard any further applications."
So any further applicants, regardless of qualifications, won't even have their applications read by the company, even if those applications are submitted before the cut-off date.
This is reasonably common in other industries, and I've done this myself when I was in I.T. and we had over 200 applications for 2 graduate entry positions.
The take-away from this is: Have your C.V. references, etc, ready. When a position opens, get your submission in ASAP. If you wait for the 'day before the deadline' you may well be too late.
DIVOSH!