
Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback - praveenscience
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/12/02/the-real-reasons-why-job-seekers-are-not-given-feedback/#303e3aaeadf1
======
wgerard
We interviewed a lot of hiring managers/etc. while we were working on a
previous business in the hiring space. As part of that, we asked them this
very question.

The fear of litigation was by far the biggest reason we heard, but there were
some other popular reasons (mostly relating around conflict avoidance):

* Notably, giving feedback feels like an opening for the candidate to submit a rebuttal instead of ending the conversation (e.g. "You didn't do well on X" "Well here's a list of reasons why I didn't do well, and here's me demonstrating I actually understand X").

* It was just a personality conflict that few people would admit to in writing (e.g. "You're kind of an asshole, I don't want to work with you" isn't something you tell a candidate).

* There just isn't much actionable feedback to give. "Nobody felt excited to potentially work with you" isn't really actionable feedback, and sharing that just feels kinda mean for no reason.

* Someone better came along to fill the role and nobody wants to tell a candidate "We found someone better than you".

~~~
kilroy123
While that's all very understandable, at the very least give some kind of
generic rejection.

This was many years ago, but one time I did an all-day onsite interview (~6
hours long) and I was ghosted and never heard from the company again.

That infuriates me even to this day. At least give me some kind of news that
it was a no.

~~~
wgerard
Not too many places will straight up ghost candidates that have done on-sites,
that's pretty unusual.

Sometimes they'll dangle candidates if they're waiting to hear whether their
first choice accepts, but even then it's rare not to communicate at all once
you've done an on-site.

~~~
kstenerud
It happens a lot. Even Google ghosted me after an all-day onsite interview in
Mountain View in 2015.

~~~
throw_7893456
Microsoft did the same to me, the same year. Product owner/manager position.

~~~
zcw100
Bloomberg did it to me. Even blocked my phone number. I figured that out when
I changed my caller id. It was back in the day when VoIP was new and they
didn't expect that someone could do that. It was worth hearing the panic on
the voice when they realized who it was.

The only reason I called was because they stiffed my the reimbursement for
travel expenses which they had agreed to pay for. The HR turnover was so high
that everyone I had talked to before the interview was gone by the time I put
in for the reimbursement.

~~~
boring_twenties
Interesting, when I worked at Bloomberg we had a standard form letter for
rejections that was sent every time. (Email)

Funny story about that, I'd set up a macro to fire off said email with one
keypress. Finishing up a phone screen that went horribly, I thanked him for
his time and all the other niceties, and pressed the key right as I was about
to hang up.

"But wait! I have some questions for you, too!"

Cue the longest 5 minutes of my life.

~~~
NullPrefix
Couldn't you just say the same thing over the phone? Or do you need to keep
the mask on during the call? As if the rejection is only possible in the next
turn.

~~~
boring_twenties
24-year-old me didn't create the process, I just followed it. Well except for
the part about waiting until the call is really over ;)

After reading some of the comments here about candidates who want to debate
the interviewer's decision, it seems to make sense.

------
gwbas1c
As a candidate, I've always preferred polite "thanks, but no thanks" responses
in a timely manner. The other kind of feedback that I like is things like, "we
need people with a different background / experience than you have."

IMO, judgement feedback (you screwed up how you handle your yak shaving, or I
don't think we'll get along with each other) is too subjective to be
constructive.

And, I get it. As someone who's interviewed a lot of candidates, my biggest
fear is hiring someone who is either incompetent or difficult to get along
with. Evaluating a candidate is so subjective that feedback beyond "your
experience doesn't match our needs" is just flame bait, or worse.

To paraphrase Joel Spolsky: It's safer to pass on a good candidate than hire a
bad employee.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
> “It's safer to pass on a good candidate than hire a bad employee.”

After a decade of building teams in machine learning, I regard this as one of
those hallowed mythical pieces of wisdom that is just totally wrong.

It dramatically over-estimates both the chances and costs of hiring a bad
employee, while discounting the huge, huge opportunity cost of not hiring
rare, exceptional candidates.

I’d much rather spend a year or two managing someone out as a result of
actually trying to hire exceptional people than living with mediocre hires who
memorized the right fizzbuzz HackerRank crap and said all the right Team
Player catch phrases to get hired.

~~~
mc32
A large company can afford bad hires. You can shuffle them around or find
something they can do.

A small company can not afford that luxury so they have to be more careful in
their hiring. A bad hire completely distracts a small team.

~~~
mewpmewp2
Google for example does not hire when they think it is not beyond reasonable
doubt that the hire is a good one. They rather let a good candidate pass.

This should prove that numbers speak towards the idea that bad hires are very
costly. Google's policy is also not to give feedback. 50 percent of their
hires had to apply more than once.

I would say large companies do not need that exceptional candidate since they
have so many great ones already. Exceptional won't make a difference unless it
is executive role or something like that.

~~~
gwbas1c
> 50 percent of their hires had to apply more than once.

That's one of the reasons why I pass when a Google recruiter comes why way.

(The other is that I don't want to move. I'm no longer a bachelor who can move
on the drop of a hat, moving is way to disruptive to my family.)

------
jnwatson
I'm a software developer turned temporary recruiter for a startup (just hired
last position yay!). The number one reason why I don't give feedback anymore
is the candidate's response. It is almost universally negative. Candidates
want to get into an argument about their skills or performance.

Now, everyone gets a form letter, and I don't deviate from that.

~~~
djhalon
Thank you for sending out a form letter.

A form letter, email, whatever would be better than what I experienced in my
last job hunt. It was silence after silence. Was the rec closed/filled? Am I
even in the running or was I rejected early on and now I am just waiting for
no reason?

A lot of the companies used automated submission systems, which confirmed they
received the resume, but they never sent out a notification that the position
was filled/closed/rejected. Just a one line email would have been better than
nothing. I feel even that common (and super automatable) courtesy has been
lost.

~~~
wgerard
Just explaining not defending: That's partially due to the volume seen with
online applications.

Even 2-5 person companies will sometimes receive ~20-30 resumes a day for an
open job, and 90% of them will be obviously inappropriate for the job even
just from glancing at their resume.

It's a positive feedback loop: People have learned to "shotgun" their resume
everywhere, and as a result even small companies have learned to process
resumes as "efficiently" as possible (which often includes not sending
responses to rejected candidates at that stage). This leads to more
shotgunning, etc. etc.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
While a wonderful comment, it doesn't not address OPs concerns. If they are
processing things as efficiently as possible by automating, when they decide a
candidate isn't a fit and click a button to not consider them for the
position, why not have it automatically send out a one line email so they are
aware?

Or at bare minimum, automatically mail them when the position is set to
closed?

None of that can be claimed due to efficiency.

~~~
wgerard
Two main reasons:

1\. You're assuming they're using an ATS with that feature, which isn't as
common as you'd think. You'd be surprised how many companies track incoming
candidates using spreadsheets and email.

2\. Part of that "efficiency" is not actually taking the 5 extra seconds to
reject candidates, but instead just ignoring rejected candidates.

Think of it as leaving something read in your email inbox vs. choosing to
archive it. Imagine you're getting 100 emails a day. Now imagine how many
people you know (not necessarily you) who would leave those emails as unread
in their inbox and quickly scan for important ones vs. choosing to go through
each one and archive them as necessary.

> Or at bare minimum, automatically mail them when the position is set to
> closed?

Many places will leave positions open for opportunistic hires, e.g. see how
many places are constantly hiring for "software engineer". Many job positions
never actually close.

~~~
wool_gather
> Many places will leave positions open for opportunistic hires, e.g. see how
> many places are constantly hiring for "software engineer". Many job
> positions never actually close.

This is a good point, and while it's weird and a little frustrating from the
outside, it's _awesome_ from the inside:

The right time to hire is not when you're ramping something up or strapped for
time and really need someone immediately. The right time to hire is when
you've got someone awesome who is really interested in the job.

Keeping the req open gives you a better chance of grabbing that awesome
person: whenever _they_ are ready, the position is waiting. If you have to
align the stars so that you're looking at the same time they are, you're going
to miss some opportunities.

------
b0rsuk
> Too Much Data > It becomes virtually impossible for the company to get back
> to everyone who submits their résumé.

This one seems like "blaming it on the victim" to me. You get too many
candidates, you're unable to give each of us an in-depth review, you may as
well say a single sentence like "You resume was quickly filtered out based on
this one requirement." It's like they're ashamed to admit they pre-filter
people based on hasty criteria to deal with the deluge of candidates.

> Stalling For Time > There is a belief by corporate executives that there is
> an abundance of qualified candidates. They erroneously believe that if the
> HR department waits longer, they will eventually find the perfect person
> suited for the role for a cheaper price.

This explains why we don't _initially_ get feedback, but not why we often
don't get it at all.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> You get too many candidates, you're unable to give each of us an in-depth
> review, you may as well say a single sentence like "You resume was quickly
> filtered out based on this one requirement."

So, the obvious _application_ of feedback would be that you try to rectify the
problem and then reapply.

I suspect companies don't want you to reapply, regardless of whether you've
improved. They already said no.

But in that case, what's the feedback for?

Your idea here hits a similar problem: if the company starts giving out the
information "we threw away your resume because you have it in Times New Roman,
and we prefer to hire Courier people", they just gave away their valuable
resume-filtering trade secret. Once they've done that, all of the resumes they
get will use Courier, and they'll _have to come up with a new filtering
system_. So they just imposed a cost on themselves without benefiting anyone,
themselves, you, or third parties.

~~~
boring_twenties
> I suspect companies don't want you to reapply, regardless of whether you've
> improved. They already said no.

One small anecdotal counterpoint: I interviewed at Google many years back and
didn't get an offer. They were nice enough to call and let me know, which I
very much appreciated. Since then I've been getting hit up by their recruiters
on a regular schedule, every 6-12 months.

At some point I was short on patience and straight up said "you guys know I
already interviewed with you back in 20XX, right?"

Their response was "Well yeah, but so what? That was a while ago."

------
allthecybers
As a Support Engineer for a well known tech company, I took on the
extracurricular role of sourcing, screening and interviewing candidates for
our team. We often had better results identifying candidates as an engineer
making a direct contact.

You do walk a fine line and create a lot of overhead to give feedback to all
candidates. Generic feedback like "you weren't the right candidate" or "we
were looking for someone who is a better fit" isn't any more helpful than a
simple "no".

More detailed feedback can be tainted with personal bias and potentially
skewed personal perspective based on how well you got along with an
interviewer.

If I was in charge of HR/recruiting/etc I would advocate for not giving
feedback, but build more robust communication mechanisms that give candidates
a notification or view into the process. For example: 1\. I submitted my
resume and can see that a recruiter has reviewed it and moved me on to phone
screen or its pending recruiter review. > I wasn't selected, but I am a good
candidate for other jobs so my resume has been recycled.

Honestly, I don't want feedback from some of the places I've interviewed but I
sure hate being ghosted and feeling like I sent me resume into the abyss for
no reason.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_More detailed feedback can be tainted with personal bias and potentially
skewed personal perspective based on how well you got along with an
interviewer_

Absolutely. Two weeks ago, interview at a certain top-10 liberal arts college.
Meetings with 4 or 5 faculty members, the usual.

Chitchat throughout, nothing substantial is being said, certainly nothing
pertaining to the role. There is a tour of the facilities, the research labs
are empty, even though the semester is still ongoing. You marvel at the
unstructuredness of it all and ask: is this Potemkin's Village? The general
impression is that the institution is living on past glories.

The rejection arrives in less than a week, and just for grunts, you ask if
there is any feedback to be had. There is feedback: the interviewers could not
assess your competence.

Guys, it was your job to convey expectations and bring the conversation back
on track, if necessary. You just managed to turn a disappointed candidate into
a completely enraged one. What a waste of time. People talk to each other, if
anyone asks about the institution I would strongly recommend not to have
anything to do with it, not as student, not as faculty, not as staff.

------
shadow-banned
Experienced this at a local tech company that will remain nameless. They're in
the logistics space. They enable fast shipping for merchants.

Did 10+ hours of a challenge project - something I would have charged $5,000+
for, including a channel-specific attribution model (with defense of my
choice), a complete onboarding campaign flow with timing, and sample email
creative, lead scoring model, and a bunch of pedantic questions about my
background and history. 15+ pages, presentations, etc.

Did three virtual conference calls. Met the head of engineering and CEO. Went
over; great, energetic conversations.

Received a call from the recruiter, poor thing, and she could barely get the
words out to me.

Them: "I'm so sorry... uh, but... but it was a no."

Me: "I completely understand! Not everything is a fit. Do you have any
actionable feedback for me?"

Them: "Uh, they... I mean, we... just... are looking for, more? I think."

Me: "Um, okay. Thanks for the opportunity."

They still have not filled their head of marketing role. Two months later.

(I suspect their young founder didn't like me - not a problem, but not
something you can tell a candidate.)

This article resonates.

~~~
davidw
> Did 10+ hours of a challenge project

Those things are a hard "no" for me.

10 hours of interviews... I might not like it, but at least it's symmetric.
People at the company are putting their time in to the process as much as I
am.

But with a job, kids, hobbies, volunteer work and so on, I just pass on
companies that have day+ long 'coding challenges'.

~~~
ghaff
For the most part I agree. Let me offer one counterexample though.

I've never been primarily a developer but I have worked in areas where one of
my primary outputs is writing. When I've hired for a similar role, if someone
doesn't (for whatever reason) have writing sample(s), they're not going to get
hired unless they produce one. It doesn't have to be an assignment; choose a
relevant topic. But I'm not going to trust you that you've done tons of great
writing if I can't see it.

And that may take a day or two.

~~~
cookie_monsta
I'm curious about what the situation would be where a person had done tons of
great writing but could not come up with one sample. Confidentiality?

~~~
ghaff
I agree it would be a bit odd--and something of a red flag TBH.

>confidentially

But yes. One can imagine someone writing non-public reports and analyses for
internal or client use only and just doesn't really do that kind of thing in
their spare time. Myself, I have tons of public material but I've also written
many things I couldn't share.

------
sokoloff
Sometimes there isn't much in the way of actionable feedback. The most recent
position I was on the interview loop for, after a long filtering process (pre-
me), we interviewed 5 candidates and chose one. In the final debrief, there
were 3 very much viable candidates and significant discussion to winnow down
to the one we ultimately hired. A few butterfly wing flaps could have led to a
different candidate being offered the role.

What can we tell #2 and #3 that is helpful? ("You are a very strong candidate
and the cosmic die roll came up a 1-2, where your number was 3-4 or 5-6.")

What can we tell #4 and #5 that is helpful? ("Sorry, three other candidates
seemed more intelligent, had a stronger demonstrated tech background, and
though you made the cut to on-site, you were the one of the two weakest
links.")

I'm not sure what the candidates would do to "fix" anything about that; the
high order bit (that they didn't get an offer) is the information that I'd
_need_ as a candidate. Sure, I _want_ more, but there might not be anything
more there.

In other cases in the past, I _have_ given feedback to candidates about why we
didn't select them or what I saw as gaps that they could close, but if I don't
think there's any reasonable action the candidate could do to change the
outcome in a similar interview situation 2 years from now, I'm probably not
going to give them any detailed feedback.

~~~
D-Coder
Almost any feedback is useful. "The other candidates were a better match" —
okay, perhaps I'm applying to the wrong jobs. "You failed roll of the dice" —
so I did everything right and should keep doing that.

~~~
codeisawesome
> "You failed roll of the dice" — so I did everything right and should keep
> doing that.

I think a _lot_ of job offer/no-offer situations come down to this, because
most of us are well meaning, hard working people. The default response to
rejection should basically be this (alongside _some_ non-punitive self-
reflection to micro-optimise some parameter or the other).

------
muststopmyths
Years ago I interviewed at a startup in SF. It went well except for one ex-
FAANG asshole who spent the entire whiteboard interview thumbing his phone
while I went down the wrong rabbit hole on the problem he gave me. No attempt
to guide me back, critique my approach or anything of the sort.

I didn't get the job, as expected. But the memorable thing about the process
was that the recruiter made a point of calling me to tell me I was getting
rejected.

The reasons given were fairly generic as far as I recall, but I appreciated
him having the class to actually speak with me.

If I ran a tech company, I'd make that guy head of recruiting.

~~~
BurningFrog
The one time I got some feedback on why I was rejected it was also over the
phone.

I assumed the California ban on recording phone conversations without consent
made the conversation legally non existent.

~~~
thaumasiotes
When I followed up an email rejection from Google asking if they had feedback,
I got email back saying "yes", and setting up a phone appointment specifically
to provide it.

So... I'd say they have something like that in mind.

------
deedubaya
I think most job seekers would simply appreciate a "no thank you" response and
not get ghosted.

Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common to just go silent on
candidates. What a cowardly thing to do.

~~~
dimgl
Yeah I've had two companies just blatantly ghost me rather than reject me
outright. I already had a bad feeling talking to them, I'm glad they proved me
right and didn't waste my time.

------
ggambetta
_They are especially scared to give negative feedback to candidates out of
fear that it might be misinterpreted as discrimination._

And this is why we can't have nice things.

~~~
freshbagels
That bit made no sense to me.

I think the opposite is true; when given no concrete feedback, one begins to
hypothesize why they were rejected, and their mind will often point them to
discrimination as the reason.

If one is given clear, concrete feedback ("We rejected you because you didn't
come up with a simpler algorithm, and you lack experience with framework x"),
there is little room for them to think they were discriminated against in any
way but their skills/experience.

~~~
watwut
From the point of view of a company that employ many people who do hiring,
someone is guaranteed to write something stupid. When people write code, they
do bugs. When they write feedback, they do stupid.

Or even more likely, someone will inadvertly show his bias that could have
stayed under cover. People are not that great in hiding their biases over many
interactions.

~~~
learnstats2
We're dancing around a reason that the article misses: a lot of hiring
decisions _are_ discriminatory.

If they were confident about having processes with no discrimination, it would
likely be advantageous to the company to show their cards and give the
feedback.

------
shortandsweet
I had an interview with Facebook and was eventually turned down. I asked for
feedback at least twice, and even from a person on the inside that I know
personally if they could get any from the recruiter. Nothing.

Then a few days later they sent me an email asking for my feedback! I n/a'd
everything and made sure to list all of my interviewers names.

~~~
dominotw
> I n/a'd everything and made sure to list all of my interviewers names.

prbly inconsequential .

fact is that you cannot do _anything_ but move on after a rejection.

~~~
shortandsweet
Not entirely true. I can attempt to shape the world how I want and then give
up after being satisfied with my efforts. I left it at what I already posted
and moved on. I believe feedback is important but if people aren't listening
then that's OK too.

------
jcims
Working for a large company at this time. We actually rarely even get contact
information for the people we are interviewing, probably intentionally because
the feedback cycle for applicants that don't make it seems to be locked down
(probably due to potential liabilities). I've asked the team to send follow-up
on an occasion or two but it's not clear that it's actually happening.

Knowing this, I'll frequently pivot to feedback mode during the interview
itself if they clearly aren't going to make the cut. Not sure if that's
allowed or exposing us to liabilities, but it does feel better (unless the
person is an asshole or seems like they are very likely to use the feedback as
leverage against the decision).

------
inertiatic
I'm absolutely fine with getting no feedback now. I just want to know that I'm
out of the running, through an email, and I'm entirely happy.

I used to ask for feedback, but it turns out it's absolutely pointless to do
so, since bad interviewers give bad feedback, which ends up only, even
subconsciously, costing you. Absolutely 100% of the feedback I've got back has
been of this kind.

It's very hard to actually think of any actionable feedback someone who's not
clueless about how hiring works could get anyway. Sure, if you were to tell me
"study basic algorithms" or "take a bath" it would be helpful but provided I
know I need to tick those boxes, then what?

------
mdturnerphys
A couple years ago I took a full day off work to interview with a midsized
startup that had been after me for months. Halfway through the interviews it
started to become clear that they'd expect me to work 60-hour weeks, with
regular weekend travel, for less pay than I was making at my 9-5. In the final
interview with one of the founders I told him I wasn't willing to do that, so
I wasn't surprised when the head of HR emailed me a couple days later to say
they wouldn't be making an offer. I responded that I understood this was
likely due to my need for better work-life balance and asked if they could
provide any feedback. She responded that they could not, as it was against the
company's policy. This excuse would have made sense coming from a recruiter,
but she was the head of HR--she set the policy. This and the work-life balance
thing were enough for me to tell others to stay away from that place.

~~~
rconti
So you expect the person setting the policy to feel free to break it at will?
That would be a terrible example, even if the head of HR set it unilaterally,
which, as someone else mentioned, is unlikely.

Furthermore, if it WAS unilateral, wouldn't that mean that the head of HR who
set the policy was the biggest believer in said policy?

~~~
ben509
When the question is asked "why are you doing this" and the answer is,
"because it's our policy," what that means is, "we are doing this thing
because it's the thing we do."

I think people who give that answer honestly believe it's a valid answer
possibly because they're thinking of the rationale behind the policy rather
than the literal meaning of what they're saying. But when I've heard it, it's
felt like an insult to my intelligence, like it's some stupid word game to
dodge my question.

------
SubuSS
FWIW I do try to tell folks what went wrong and what were the perceived gaps
through the recruiters. I in fact ask my recruiters to give them known ways to
prepare for our loop. You'd be surprised how many don't even after all this. I
am assuming this is because many are just trying to see what's out there,
don't have time to prepare etc. But the flip side is we do want candidates who
are obviously good AND are excited about the opportunity. All the other
concerns here around conflict avoidance / litigation risks are all valid too -
That's why I put my feedback through the HR filter.

Having said all that, The other angle that always nags me is the fact that our
(in all the three companies I've been part of) interview process isn't a
perfect measure. In theory, you may be able to crack it if you prepare for it
and are well versed in full-stack engineering. In practice, this is just 5
hours of 5 different people trying to look for good signs and feelings and
converge after. There just isn't enough information, so most of the time we
work towards avoiding a false positive (which have been disastrous in the
past). We have tried other mechanics around building a test project etc., but
nothing stuck. Those just added a not more non-determinism compared to this
model where we know what to expect. I've done more than a 1000 of these, so
there are patterns I can fallback on.

If I were to start a company, I know how I'd want to hire: It will be just
like finding co-founders. But that doesn't scale and probably becomes illegal
when it goes beyond the founding members. I do like the doctor group models
where everyone joining graduates to a full partner eventually and take a share
of yearly profits until they work there: But our current world of software
development that's highly leveraged on future performance (stocks), doesn't
seem amenable to the same :(. But yes - It would be awesome to see if somehow
we can replicate that model.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
>If I were to start a company, I know how I'd want to hire: It will be just
like finding co-founders. But that doesn't scale.

This rings true to me (both parts), and it makes me wonder if it's a viable
path to attack it from the other side, where you restrain yourself to
markets/projects of a size that it doesn't _have_ to scale.

------
exabrial
I would love to be able tell applicants why we didn't choose them to help them
along in their job search or clear up any misconceptions. There problem is it
is a risk to a business with 0 chance of making it more profitable. Chalk this
up as overregulation at it's finest having predictable secondary affects.

~~~
Iv
But you are not your business. There are more things to life than making
profits, like helping fellow humans. If the risk is very low and the cost
basically null, doing nice things is a positive externality.

~~~
icelancer
But the risk is not very low when you adjust for magnitude of secondary
effects.

~~~
Iv
What risks are we talking about? Frivolous lawsuits by random loons? I am not
certain that this risk goes down by being unfriendly to interviewees.

------
optimiz3
Another reason not covered - some people don't act like adults and cannot
handle critical feedback. No matter what they are always the victim.

These types of people take rejection as an affront to all they hold dear and
make it their mission to slam your company on any platform that will give them
a voice.

You don't know who these people are ahead of time. Due to the
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle)
you will spend way more time defending claims from people like this.

------
timhickle
The feedback mantra I follow as a manager is simple: "Feedback isn't about the
past, it's about the future."

A lot of managers I know conflate feedback with critiques or praise, which are
very different tools used for very different purposes.

Feedback in the interview process is invaluable, whereas critiques are
unvaluable.

For example, here might be a piece of feedback that would help someone perform
better in a future interview:

"During the debugging brainstorming work scenario, we liked that you brought
ideas in many different parts of the architecture, but some of the best
solutions we saw for this scenario indicated which options were most likely
and grouped them by system or issue type."

That feedback is about performance and provides suggestions for improvement.
In my experience, that's the type of feedback that's really well received and
rarely debated.

------
schrijver
> It wasn’t always like this. In the past, it was standard protocol to provide
> feedback and constructive criticism to candidates. The hiring manager or
> human resources professional would diplomatically let the applicants know
> what they did well and the areas in which they need to improve upon.

As far as I can tell, this is still the case in Belgium and the Netherlands
for everyone who makes it to the interview stage. It would be considered very
rude to have someone go through the associated stress and logistical hassle
otherwise. Is this a U.S. trend for now?

~~~
mtnGoat
yes its very much the normal. Some companies will even ask you to write an
entire app, send it in and never reply whatsoever, even when prompted(Uber did
this to me). I have heard some other pretty disheartening stories... hiring in
tech is kinda wack.

------
woutr_be
How do people here feel about feedback for technical tests that take at least
a couple of hours?

Personally I don't care if I'm not given feedback after a phone interview, or
even an on-site interview.

But when it comes to technical tests, I would really appreciate feedback,
since it could actually help me improve my coding skills, or at least know
where I need to improve. If I'm not given feedback on these, it's just another
red flag to me, the company doesn't value my time, and seems to treat the
interview process as a one way street.

I recently was asked to do a coding test, the HR person told me to do it over
the weekend, as most candidates needed all the time they can get. I told HR I
was only willing to spend around 4 hours on it, they could judge me on
whatever I could do in that time. And even working for free for 4 hours was as
stretch, after all, I'm not getting paid, there are other things I could've
been doing. And to this day they haven't even acknowledged my test, I did get
through to the next round, but no mention of my test whatsoever.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting, they missed a couple from my experience.

The big one is starting a debate. Because I'm a helpful person when someone
asked for feedback why they weren't getting the job I would offer them my
thoughts. Way too often this turned into a discussion by them to me about how
I was wrong about them and my thoughts didn't apply. Sometimes it might be due
to a phenomenal lack of self awareness and sometimes it might be a negotiation
tactic, but it always was awkward and uncomfortable.

At Google, the 'sourcers' really didn't want to put 'not a fit' into the
application tracking system (ATS) because if they did so they would not be
able to call that person back if another position opened up. Inevitably
applicants would say they had other people who were talking to them and would
probably provide offers (I think some people think that is a useful tactic for
pushing things along) and the sourcers would just cross their fingers and
hoped they would take that other job, or another candidate that was a better
fit would get accepted. Either way they preserve a 'possible' in their list of
candidates for the future.

In my discussion with Google's recruiting folks at the time I argued that the
ATS system was hurting Google because while someone might be a poor fit in one
role, there may be another role where they were a superstar. I've seen it in
my career many times where a change of roles completely changed the evaluation
of the person doing the job. I never got very far in that discussion but did
learn of the 'trick' of just not talking to them as a way of leaving them in a
viable 'possible candidate' state for the next role that might come up.

One alternative is to be really clear in what you want out of someone in a
role and if they don't meet the standard move them out. But that is very risky
for "protected" people such as older engineers, or other races or religions.
You can combat that risk by managing to a very diverse workforce but it feels
to me that way too many people hire people like themselves.

At the end of the day these can be opportunities for startups to get some
great talent.

------
BuddyKallipygos
I just went through this process looking for a job in a VP of Engineering role
after spending the last 15 years running my own startups and doing my own
hiring. And man it really made me rethink how I will do hiring going forward.
Feedback as a candidate would be great, but based on my own experience hiring
it’s difficult to have that conversation go well. Maybe 1 in 10 people would
say “hey thanks, I appreciate the feedback” and the rest wanted to debate
their worthiness. So there is no ROI for this effort. But having just been
looking for a job I can confirm that almost all of the companies I talked to
sucked at communication. They were just awful.

~~~
ben509
Here's a thought: maybe do most of the feedback _during_ the interview
process.

Train interviewers to explain their reasoning for the questions they're asking
and what they're trying to evaluate.

And then, at the close, identify all the positive things the candidate
demonstrated and what bullet points they're going to bring to the debrief.

I've been doing the former quite routinely, and in the last interview I did,
the candidate just asked me why I asked those questions so I went ahead and
explained it.

I think it helps make an interview less nerve wracking, and it helps me to
think aloud about the case I'm going to present in the debrief.

And, frankly, some interviewers are asking stupid questions and it may help if
they have to explain themselves.

------
Thorentis
> They are especially scared to give negative feedback to candidates out of
> fear that it might be misinterpreted as discrimination.

>There is also the concern over a social media backlash because of something
an employee said to a candidate.

This right here, is 90% of it. Sure, the other stuff like too few resources,
or too many applicants is partly true, but the crux of it is that people are
far too sensitive right now. And if you say "we didn't think you were a good
fit for our company culture" to somebody that is even the slightest bit
insecure about some part of themselves, you can guarantee you'll be hearing
about it.

~~~
eropple
It's that people are too sensitive, is it? Or is it that "culture fit"
excuses...uh...suck?

The hand-wringing sorts who are simultaneously so protective of a company's
"culture" but are so unable to substantiate how someone might not fit in in a
way that isn't telling on themselves _should_ be worried, but not because
somebody might get mad at them on Twitter. It's because they're at best losing
out on good candidates and at worst perpetuating dark and shitty behaviors
onto people who don't deserve it.

~~~
Thorentis
Yes, that feedback isn't very useful. It was just an example. But people would
be offended at almost anything these days. Not educated enough. Not skilled
enough. Not personable enough. Whatever. People can't look at themselves
honestly and take on board criticism, and it is making us worse people.

~~~
eropple
This is, to put it--well, honestly--is nonsense. It is the okeydoke of a
regressive casting of a history that never existed in comparison to a present
that differs only in the breadth of unwilling to take _quite as much_ shit as
prior generations because they know that maybe they don't, on all axes, have
to do so. (Just on so many others.)

The galaxy-brained _fear_ that makes people act as you are acting right now is
a worse thing for all of us than some mythical inability to take criticism.

------
hailwren
> Many job seekers take the not-recommended approach of submitting their
> résumés for dozens of jobs

I wish I only had to apply for dozens of jobs.

~~~
rconti
What's your field and geo area? I don't think I've ever applied for more than
6 jobs in a round of looking. And more often than not I haven't even had to
look. ~20 years, bay area.

~~~
hailwren
It's sort of complicated. I did a boot camp, 100 applications 3 interviews 0
offers, went back to school (Harvard, the real one not the extension school)
and am currently doing the summer internship grind (30 applications 3
interviews 0 offers). But I'm CS.

~~~
rconti
Ugh. I hear that first step can be rough. I took a non-traditional path so it
wasn't an issue for me. I didn't realize internships were so hard to get,
though.

~~~
VPN_SIDEHUSTLE
What was your non traditional path?

~~~
rconti
Worked in tech (ISPs, support, then unix sysadmin) in my teens and after
graduating high school, quit my job to go back to college at 21. Worked part
time in IT dept during college and summers, remote part time work for a web
hosting company during summers as well. Business major, not CS.

It seems like dev jobs in particular are interview meat grinders.

------
m3kw9
The need for a feed back is mostly psychological need. You go in, you think
you did well, but you didn’t get the job. The company of course found someone
better than you, some one did even better. Most likely the feed back won’t
help you on your next interview, and second you just need to read most of the
writing which is already on the wall.

If you failed a white board, you’d know it. If you aced the white board
someone can ace it better.

~~~
lnanek2
I've been in hiring loops where the candidate aced all the technical stuff,
but wasn't hired because he wasn't enthusiastic about the new company, just
sounded like he wanted to leave his old company. With a no feedback system, he
may go study harder on the technicals for no reason. So I think feedback would
have definitely helped his next interview.

~~~
clarry
"Learn to feign enthusiasm better next time."

It sounds useful and depressing at the same time.

~~~
AllegedAlec
[https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3454](https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3454)

~~~
clarry
Yep. My (brief) time in the metal industry was quite different.

Nobody talked about passion and enthusiasm. Companies look for somebody to
perform a job, and people with the relevant skills offer their hand. A simple,
professional exchange, no cults, no kool-aid.

No "you need to be keen about learning new tech like a kid that just got out
of high school, oh and you gotta be super competent with all this stuff we use
because we don't have time for people to be learning things on the job, oh and
you gotta be social and charming and customer focused, oh and you gotta be
very enthusiastic about our company and product (actually we don't know which
product or team we'll assign you to yet, but you still gotta be super
enthusiastic about it), oh and you'll probably end up maintaining some
terrible legacy stack that nobody else wants to touch. So, why are you
applying to this job? Justify your presence! It's not like we posted about an
open position, and it's not like we're constantly complaining about shortage
of talent while turning people down left and right .. oh wait"

------
bryanmgreen
Applying for jobs is probably the WORST thing nearly everyone will do in their
professional lives.

With the exception of the resume 1%ers that have some incredible
experience/knowledge/executive-connection, applying for jobs is the most
soulsucking lottery that can make you feel completely worthless.

I think, at the very least, anyone that gets past an initial screening
deserves some feedback.

------
stretchwithme
Giving people feedback is not always a good idea. Sometimes the information
just helps them to hide something from the next person they encounter.

This is true in many domains, I think. You should not explain to the conman
how you saw through his lies. That will help him fix that and con more people.

You shouldn't tell people in your dating profile what turns you off. They'll
just avoid revealing they have a third arm if that's one of your turn offs.

I think interviewers have incentive to help people they like but no incentive
to help someone they don't think they want to see in the candidate pool down
the road.

Maybe they will point you to things you can learn if it will make you a better
candidate but not if will just help you tune your pitch.

------
kosherbeefcake
This is probably me just screaming into the void, but I'll provide my
experience anyway.

I've found the entire "finding a new job" / interviewing process to be an
incredibly alienating process. It truly brings me despair.

I've been working in IT for my entire professional career. I've worked as an
analyst, project manager, and I'm currently a developer. I'll be the first to
admit, I'm not a phenomenal developer, but I think my "Jack of all Trades"
experience provides me with interesting insight. I'm more than the sum of my
parts, I have a college degree in something completely unrelated to computers,
I've started my own business, I love electronics and 3D printing. I'm
attempting to leave my current company of 5+ years, and whether it's the "We
only hire the best and brightest" mantra or something else, this experience
has been miserable.

I've been asked to do push-ups in an interview, I've been ghosted multiple
times, in a variety of places in the interview process. I've gotten berated on
the phone by interviewers.

After the last volley of rejections, I've been looking inward whether IT is
even really for me. Apparently the economy is doing great, and hiring is up,
but that has simply not been my experience.

~~~
noxToken
I'm interested about your entire interview experience, but I _really_ would
like more info about this bit:

> _I 've been asked to do push-ups in an interview_

What?

~~~
kosherbeefcake
It was what it sounds like; I was interviewing for a project manager role at a
IT security company. The lead PM in the middle of her interview questions said
"Drop down and give me five push-ups." I didn't think it was that strange, so
I did it, but everyone I told about that experience thought it was incredibly
strange. Her reasoning was that it showed that I was willing to follow orders,
or something.

------
zebnyc
As an interviewee, I would love companies to provide some transparency and
feedback. The feedback doesn't have to be super detailed, just areas for
improvement. This was something which I really appreciated about Facebook. I
interviewed onsite a year back and later the recruiter told me "You did well
in all the coding interviews but we felt that you did not display the level of
competency required in System design for a senior role". That was actionable
feedback IMHO and I would not hesitate to interview again.

The flip side is I hate interviewing for companies which ghost / refuse to
provide feedback, especially when they give you a take home test / assignment
where you don't even know a) Whether a human / engineer saw your submission b)
What is the criteria being used for evaulation (especially for working
solutions). The worst offender has to be Slack (though Twilio/Amazon is right
up there) where they make you create a slack bot which does something trivial
(play tic-tac-toe). Wasted a bunch of time to read the documentation and get a
basic bot working before I got to actually work on the problem (tic tac toe).
My submission was rejected and I was given no feedback / reason why

~~~
thinnerlizzy
I had a rejection from Facebook a few months ago and I got no feedback like
that. The feedback I got was that I did extremely well throughout the
interview process and demonstrated that I was qualified for that type of
position. It was just a no for some reason. Unfortunately it’s a rare position
and they haven’t called me back with other opportunities.

------
paul7986
In October I had one of my best phone interviews. I never heard back yet other
recruiters keep contacting me about the job. Today a recruiter got back to me
saying oh yes they interviewed you and they said you have too much graphic
design experience and not enough UX. Huh I've been a UX Designer and UI
Developer for ten years.

Not helpful and their reason has to be personal, so they just say nothing or
as today were forced to make stuff up.

~~~
tmm84
Sometimes companies just don't understand a role that well. Maybe the last
UI/UX person they had was initially a UX person that turned UI and so they
think you need more of one than the other. I can't count the number of times I
seen job descriptions that look like a copy and pasted resume of the previous
employee they had.

~~~
paul7986
Well it was weird cause it came directly to the recruiter via the UX Manager.
But oh well I fortunately have a job and sometimes just go and see what's out
there.

------
TurkishPoptart
Last year I was really stoked for an interview with this risk analysis company
and pretty sure I had a good chance (I have a master's in international
studies, which isn't much, but it's something).

After they reviewed my resume and gave me an initial phone screening, which
went okay, I was given an assignment to perform. I had 24 hours to write a
risk analysis on this Crimean wine company and use my Russian language skills
to research the company's ownership, history, and risks. I thought I did an
amazing job, having written about 5 pages on them, citing numerous sources
from the Russian financial times and other sites.

Then, for the second interview, I talked to a member of their senior
leadership (former US Treasury guy), and man, this guy was very much a jerk to
me. He asked me, "What is the legislation that makes sanctions work?" I didn't
know exactly, so I mentioned a recent UN Security Council resolution that
added North Korean officials to US and UN sanctions lists. He interrupted me,
saying that if I didn't know, I should just say so. I said I'm trying to tell
you what I know. He said "Why didn't you prepare for this interview?" I said I
read everything I could find on the company and did my best on the assignment,
and did he see the assignment? He paused for a second, lowered his voice, and
said "thanks, we'll be in touch" and that was the end of it. I'm still reeling
from this, and this was over a year ago. I have every reason to believe that
they used and profited from my research, because this company was recently in
the news. I suppose this is a sort of crime that is nearly impossible to
legislate against. Anyway, I am trying to improve my interview skills (and
they did not reply to my request for feedback). Do you think I should have
just said "I don't know"? I was always told _never_ to say this, but just to
stick to your guns. But I got shot down by a snotty executive here, and it
still hurts.

~~~
Terretta
It sounds vaguely as though your definition of risk analysis and their
definition might not have matched. In other words, you may have done homework
for or interviewing for a different nature of job than they expected.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
That idea makes me so annoyed I don't even know what to do. I took a graduate-
level class on the damn concept, but it doesn't translate to the private
sector? I don't get it. I'm such a putz....

~~~
TurkishPoptart
This is also what led to a sort of job interview PTSD for me. I was getting
_worse_ at interviews, not better. So I just gave up applying to jobs
formally, and got one through a temp agency which didn't actually interview
people.

------
choppaface
For software engineering, the reason HR fears for arguments is because the
whole process is so utterly lacking in rigor compared to the work that
engineers do. Coding questions provide some amount of objectivity, but the
selection of those questions is largely baseless. Moreover, engineers are
accustomed to sharing key ideas and results, but in hiring even salary data is
used in information arbitrage (especially before levels.fyi).

Even worse, we have things like Rooftop Slushie where FAANG engineers will
give candidates feedback but for a price. As if FAANG engineers weren’t paid
enough.

One gap that individuals can bridge is for IC interviewers to ask for feedback
on their own interviewing. ICs typically don’t see how well hires do through
year one, and almost never see where non-hires go. Hiring managers often stay
on top of this data (or at least have access to it) in order to self-
calibrate. If that data has any chance of helping inform candidates, it needs
to trickle down to the IC interviewers first.

------
lallysingh
In the past, I've gotten good feedback when working with 3rd party recruiters.
They have long term relationships with the companies, and an interest in
getting your hired somewhere. So they get feedback that's useful for the next
company the recruiter has for you.

As they middlemen, they provide some insulation between the two parties.

------
jimbob45
Five hours for a tech test and interview at EA. I know I crushed the tech
test. Interview, not as much. Got a generic rejection letter.

Don't be surprised when we stop jumping through hoops if you're not going to
give any feedback. If you think you can run your company solely off hoop-
jumpers, more power to you.

------
timw4mail
This really explains why the last time I did job hunting it was such a stab in
the dark for 6 months.

Job hunting in general is terrible.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I applied to HackerOne to do the exact same job I'd already been doing for a
year.

They rejected me with the feedback "we asked you why you wanted to work for
us, and you didn't seem enthusiastic about the company". (My answer to "why
did you apply?" was "it's a good match to the work I was already doing".)

~~~
gunshai
I spend a fare amount of time on this question and it does get annoying it's
usually some version of the following.

Hiring Manager : "Why this company."

Me: "Carefully choreographed pile of horse shit that is rehearsed to sound
genuine / personal, but doesn't over share or reveal accidental character
flaws."

My brain: I get it company you do "things" and along the way someone pays you
money for them or it or w.e. Why should anyone be over the moon about this.
I'm here because I think I can do what ever vague role description you posted.
Stop asking this question, it doesn't reveal anything because we are all
lying.

------
throwaway1928
I was rejected by a pretty well-known DB startup over a fizzbuzz-level coding
assignment. I didn't blow it off because of its triviality--quite the
opposite, I gold-plated it with spec comments, code comments, computational
complexity comments, unit tests, type annotations, etc. I showed it to some
friends at FAANG companies and they couldn't understand why it was rejected
either. It was just really weird and unsettling to be rejected over a trivial
test when I know I'm capable of so much more (I've eg implemented major
features in a production MPP database engine). It might be partly due to their
resume-blind process, which I support in principle, but it seems weird to
disregard 20 years of mostly non-trivial software development when evaluating
someone on a trivial test.

~~~
watwut
Possibly they did not considered you fit. If they want to hack around (which
plenty of teams want), someone who polishes things looks like odd one and is
just annoyance to them.

Startups are unpredictable in their expectations. What you consider good code
they consider bad code. I have seen startup where long variable names were
wrong. So "nameFilter" would be wrong and "flt" would be correct. Seeing one
as stupid overengineering and the other as smart.

------
jeffdavis
Another concern is that there might be several weaknesses in a candidate,
where one weakness masks another.

If you say something like "You have weakness X", and they go take a class and
work on X, then they might expect that they are now hirable.

You can imagine the friction that might happen when a candidate keeps going
back only to hear about yet a new reason to be rejected.

Or, on the other side of the coin, you can imagine people who are good at
checking boxes and working a system, but not a good fit for the position. They
will knock down the reasons for rejection one after the next and eventually
get hired, but they may still be a bad fit for the role. You can't test for
everything perfectly during your interview process.

------
beaker52
I always push for feedback. I can be pretty feisty when it comes to asking. I
think it's only fair that if I bother to talk them either on the phone or in
person that I get some sort of feedback. I've even taken to asking the
interviewer in the interview itself. I love establishing an easy going, open
and honest rapport.

Worst I had was after completing an unpaid "test" project that took me almost
a day of my time, I was rejected without feedback. I pushed for feedback, it
was a trial but I finally got it. The feedback? "No comments in the code".
Thank you. I'd dodged a bullet, I told the recruiter.

------
downerending
I understand the rationale, but it's not without cost.

If I've taken the time to do an in-person (or even a lengthy set of calls),
then there really has to be something in it for me after they decline, or I
won't apply with them again.

Also, if everything else seems like a match, my potential new mates and I hit
it off, and they clearly need to fill the position, the vacuum left by a lack
of explanation with the decline often leaves me wondering whether it didn't
involve irrelevant (and often illegal) demographic bias. No way to really
know, of course, but like everyone else, I play the probabilities.

------
ManlyBread
I received feedback a few times and it was quite motivational. I failed an
interview and the feedback stated that I need to work on more advanced object-
oriented topics like SOLID and design patterns. I studied these up and it
helped me land the next job. I also became a better programmer as a result.
Recently I went through something similar - I was rejected due to the lack of
of experience regarding modern front-end frameworks so I'm now going through a
book about Angular. I now feel more confident when applying for fullstack
jobs.

------
boyband6666
Every job ad I've put up since starting my company has had over 100
candidates. 80 of whom are wholly unsuitable and do not send any cover letter.
Another 10 don't bother with the cover letter but may have been suitable. All
these are instant rejects with no feedback.

The 10 I phone interview I will at least give feedback to, likewise the 3 who
we eventually interview.

Given so many no hopers though just clicking apply or sending a generic CV,
I'm not surprised the vast majority get no feedback.

~~~
drharby
I've never given a cover letter in my 10 year career thus far.

------
wiseleo
Part of the problem is inaccurate job descriptions. They should be structured
with transparent weights attached to specific requirements. They are currently
written by lawyers and for lawyers. If a job description requires automated
parsing, it contains too much irrelevant to jobseeker content.

So far, they only do that for travel time estimates.

An interview is like passing an acceptance test. It would be nice to know the
actual acceptance criteria and other metrics.

------
Elof
This just happened to me and I was kind of shocked. I haven’t taken a formal
interview in a long time, but 0 feedback, not even a thanks for your time,
seems potentially damaging as well. Especially in the long run. Word of mouth
is a powerful thing and I’m definitely not going to say kind things behind
closed doors after this.

------
zcw100
I always think of Akerloff's "Market for Lemons" when I hear about hiring in
IT.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons)

(Not that any particular company or person is a lemon but the market collapse
from information asymmetries)

------
lkramer
My favourites are going to an interview, not hearing anything for 3 weeks and
then being told "congratulations, we would like to invite you to the next
stage".

At that point I have likely mentally moved on, and probably moved on in very
real terms.

------
jariel
Feedback can be controversial + legal problems, I don't mind absence of it.

But - for god's sake - give a 'yes or no' in reasonable terms.

So many 'good companies' have ridiculous hiring processes without any
information to the candidates.

------
xwowsersx
I've helped a lot of people land good jobs over the last 8 years or so. I'm no
pro, but I think I'm usually helpful. Happy to provide feedback/advice if
anyone is interested. Contact details in my profile.

------
peter_d_sherman
And people wonder why Catbert is such a popular character...

------
strathmeyer
I assume companies don't explain why they aren't hiring you because it would
cause too much self-realization at the organizational level.

------
gunshai
Does anyone here record their phone sessions? Some states this is completely
legal to not inform the other party they are being recorded.

------
fiatjaf
Lawsuits, for sure. I never give negative feedback to anyone. I never say the
truth to strangers because I fear lawsuits.

------
m0zg
That's actually not universally true. SpaceX would happily share feedback with
you (or at least it did in the past). FB will share it if you request it.

This strikes me as a more "honest" and transparent position on the issue, and
it also forces the company to stay well clear of race/gender/age/sexual
orientation/ethnicity/etc as _latent_ disqualifiers (it's never overt, mind
you), because factual justification is required in the feedback.

------
zwetan
it is a two way street

I can imagine some candidates reusing half of those arguments ("Too Much
Data", "Stalling For Time", etc.) to ghost recruiters and not answering to
offers

someone should definitively write a counterpart "The Real Reasons Why Job
Seekers Are Not Giving You Feedback"

------
bitwize
What'd I keep telling you, Hackernews? This is the new norm, get used to it.

