
Startups: stop using generic form letters when you tell a candidate 'no' - brandonb
http://brandonb.cc/startups-stop-using-generic-form-letters-when-you-tell-a-candidate-no
======
coffeemug
I have the exact opposite experience. I think giving unsolicited feedback to
candidates is unwise:

    
    
      * Sometimes the candidate just isn't good at what they
        do. Telling people that, even in the most constructive way
        possible, can generate lots of negative emotions. You don't
        know who you're talking to, and if they'll take it well.
      * Sometimes the candidate is pretty good, but doesn't quite
        clear your bar. It's rediculously hard to communicate that
        without hurting people's egos.
      * Sometimes it's a matter of taste -- the person is good, but
        you know the delta between what you want to accomplish and
        what they want to accomplish is too great. Some people won't
        understand that and will interpret it as you not hiring them
        because you're an egocentric asshole.
      * Sometimes they're really smart, but you know they'll spend
        time futzing around with different technologies for
        technology's sake and will not be productive. Most people
        like that won't hear what you're telling them.
      * Sometimes something just rubs you the wrong way. What if the
        candidate seems to be jumping to conclusions too quickly and
        doesn't seem thoughtful enough? What if it feels very nuanced
        and any given example seems petty, but you just feel off in
        aggregate? It's extremely hard to communicate that to people,
        and will likely open up lots of emotions you don't want to be
        dealing with.
    

I agree that it's a good idea to give honest feedback if people follow up and
ask for it, and agree with not using form letters. A simple personal note can
go a long way:

    
    
      Hi Bob, it's Jim at CompanyX. I discussed the interview with the
      team, and decided this isn't a good fit. Thanks for taking the
      time to interview with us, and good luck!

~~~
meric
What's the problem just telling it straight -

    
    
      Hi Bob,
      It's Jim at CompanyX. I discussed the interview with the
      team. It's difficult for me to say this and I don't know 
      how to say it properly, but we think you're pretty good but 
      doesn't quite clear the bar for us.
      We'd like someone who has more experience in X, Y, Z, but    
      in our interview, we thought A, B, C. I know our interview
      probably is no where near perfect and may not have 
      presented the entirety of your skills, but unfortunately 
      this is our interview process and we will have to abide by 
      it. 
      You're certainly welcome to try apply for jobs at our  
      company in the future.. XYZABC... Thanks for taking the
      time to interview with us, and good luck!
    

'Good fit' tells nothing to the candidate what they can improve, and deters
them from applying at your company in the future when they further develop
their skills and attitude.

~~~
badclient
Because my experience says that when you do the above, a good percentage of
the candidates will disagree and debate with you about your assessment of
them. Then when you just ignore them, you just look like a douche, not to
mention there are candidates who will never give up and go to any lengths to
express their disagreement with you. If you were only hiring one position for
the year, you could may be do this. But when you are constantly hiring, this
does not scale and can easily bog down down recruitment.

I also feel that I am not in a position to give _advice_ or feedback to
someone I've barely known. Just because I didn't hire the guy does not mean
that I was correct in not hiring him. At some level, we'll never know. So it's
pretty hard to even have feedback that I can be 100% confident about.

~~~
wwweston
So here's a question -- if you send out a standard rejection notice, and
someone came back to you and said:

"Thanks for letting me know; sorry to hear we won't be working together at
this time.

"If you have any suggestions to give for additions to my skills and portfolio
that might make for a more competitive application at some point in the
future, I'd love to hear them!"

Would you take the time to give any hints then?

I _occasionally_ send a note to this effect when I miss out on a job that I
wanted enough I'd love to be able to reapply later for a similar position.

But I've received a reply precisely once.

~~~
coffeemug
I always send constructive feedback if someone sends me a followup email like
that. We're a small company though, getting a useful reply out of a large
organization can be much harder unless you manage to get an e-mail of one of
your interviewers.

------
quesera
This is a totally reasonable, fair-minded, and simultaneously terrible idea.

Just like when you turn someone down for a date, or break up with someone,
anything more than "this just isn't the right thing for me, right now, but I
wish you well" is often seen as an invitation for all sorts of exhausting pain
that benefits no one.

And in the case of employment rejections, the potential legal issues are just
overwhelming. Thank them for their time, wish them well, and walk away.

Candidates, like suitors, can get advice, feedback, and consolation from
friends, coworkers, and peers. As much as it might seem "nice" to do more, it
really isn't. Not for either party.

EDIT: I do strongly support a _personal_ note saying the above, and of course
believe that a prompt response after the interviews is an absolute requirement
for professional courtesy.

~~~
tracker1
I think either of the above is far better than how Microsoft handles their
decline decisions.. which is just to not communicate with you any further.

------
yeukhon
Here is my experience with RedHat (and I don't care if they never considered
me again - after this I think RedHat is not a place I want to work for
anymore).

I submitted my application and the recruiter contacted me a few hours later
over email. He said I am put into a candidate pool. I didn't get what that
mean but I thought it was cool and it was fast. I was interestd in developing
opens tack technology this year and thought it would be cool to work as an
intern with RedHat developing openstack.

The recruiter told me to follow him on twitter. I asked him questions on
twitter but he didn't respond to my questions on twitter. I thought it was my
privacy setting. Okay, let's move on.

I finally got an email a few weeks later. It said something like this:

"After an interview with you we think you lack of the requirements we are
looking for..."

(again that's just from my vague memory)

But I clearly remember it said "I HAD AN INTERVIEW".

What bullshit is that? I never had any interview with any redhat person. I was
never contacted beyond just putitng me in a candidate pool.

I sent an email back and asked what he meant by interview. He never responded.

Well. Fuck you. That kind of generic response pisses me off and has crushed my
dream working on openstack (and anything have to do with redhat in general).

So even for well-established companies, please stop sending generic emails
like that. If you have to, please select an appropriate one. In my case say
"we have filled up the role. Sorry!"

Find a human to be a recruiter. That recruiter is a damn machine acting like a
real human.

after that I was lucky to get an offer from another company. Well. I am so
damn happy that I didn't get into RedHat. Totally worth it. It's like I will
never work for LinkedIn anyway

~~~
coffeemug
Large companies like RedHat have thousands of candidates, and managing a
process like that well is really, really hard. Someone was probably going
through a batch of resumes in their internal system and accidentally checked
the wrong box.

Your comment is actually a wonderful example why sending unsolicited feedback
to candidates is a bad idea. If I take half an hour after a long hard day to
write thoughtful feedback for you, I really don't want to deal with "what
bullshit is that?/fuck you!/I'll tell everyone I know your company sucks"
because I accidentally phrase things poorly or confuse an aspect of your
interview with five other interviews I did that day.

~~~
yeukhon
Well, I do understand that part. Hence I didn't emailed him for the first few
weeks. I normally wait a month (for my summer intern I waited two months to
send an email on status). But it seems like I wasn't important. If it were a
mistake, my email back to him should be visible.

Let's blame email system (spam).

~~~
fecak
To be clear, you were applying for an internship (as you said in your post),
and now you write "seems like I wasn't important". I'm not sure how we are
defining important, but there are tons of people that apply for internships at
places like Red Hat, and I'm not sure how many would classify themselves as
"important" (or at least important to Red Hat).

I don't mean this as any disrespect to you, and companies should make efforts
to make applicants feel comfortable and valued, but you are probably making
more of a point for not sending specific feedback by your reaction. The sour
grapes stuff is probably the most common reaction to the problem, and detailed
or generic rejections can have that same negative result.

~~~
yeukhon
interns are just as important as full time. Any one interested in helping a
company to grow is considered important.

I did send n email back and asked to clarify the "you had an interview with
us" part nicely.

~~~
fecak
"Interns are just as important as full time" in what sense exactly? Of course
interns have a level of importance, but I think your overestimating some
things here. If you were a senior level engineer, you may be more likely to
get a personalized response. If you interview to be the CTO of Red Hat, I'm
guessing you would not get an automated email response when you are not
chosen.

Let's not kid ourselves that there is not a hierarchy of importance. It's
based on merit and contribution (or potential contribution in the case of an
applicant), and it's a bit naive to think that applicants for internships will
always be given the same level of respect as experienced professionals.

~~~
OmleteDuFromage
I'm sure a lot of senior level engineers would think twice before working for
a company that treated them poorly when applying in the past, even for an
internship.

~~~
fecak
No argument with that, but I think most senior engineers would think twice if
they felt they were getting the treatment they got as an intern. I think
everyone should expect some level of respect, but it's naive to think the CTO
is getting the same treatment in an interview as an intern.

~~~
yeukhon
I am sure most senior engineers would think twice if they felt they were
getting the same shitty, non-important treatment internship applicants are
getting.

I will agree that in reality senior folks are generally more valuable than
interns are. Experience for one is something most interns usually don't have.

But let me clarify one thing: interns are not all undergraduates fresh out of
high school. A lot of interns are in master or PhD program and some have a
fair amount of technical experience before returning back to school. We keep
hearing how awesome some interns are from time to time, so there are superstar
interns. It's unfair to say interns are less important. In what sense is a
senior person more important or useful than an intern?

Technically? Maybe. You can have a stubborn 15 years coder who believes in
some obsolete way of coding and writing protocol and there is a great intern
who can deliver the project on time and build a viral, interesting side
project during internship. Who is more capable? Who is more useful in the long
run? You can spend 10 years at a local firm writing the most horrible Java
code and pass interviews at RedHat and becomes a senior engineer. That's
possible. Now comes a 20 years old college junior with a pretty resume and he
or she passes the same interview.

I suppose no company out there makes a big distinction between senior hire and
junior hire unless the position is special or the applicant is an internal
referral. For big companies like redhat, the fact above means most applicants,
regardless of their years of experience, applications will sit in the queue
for few weeks or few months.

Go to glassdoor and read how many 10+ years people complain about sitting in a
job queue for weeks. So in general, senior people isn't all that special from
a recruiter point of views.

Also, from a company's point of view, an intern could in fact work on a secret
project (think Google glass?) and they will work with senior people with super
high security clearance. So they are equally important. You can be short of
one intern and delay delivery by two weeks.

The thought of "I have 10 years knowledge in this domain so I am more
important" will fail because tomorrow another senior hire will have 20 years
in your domain and you are now a rookie to him. Your idea will be crushed and
thrown away even though they are useful and actually really useful and
profitable. If seniority overruns a team, that's a red flag. It is a sign of a
plague. It is a sign of destruction.

In some way we have to appreciate interns. They are there only for 12 weeks
but most of them are self-motivated and they will get work done in their free
time. If you think about interns, they are probably the most passionate people
you will find around your office for 12 weeks or so. Your senior folks come
and go. Interns leave because they have to leave. So interns could be seen a
contractor hired for 12 weeks or so. They are full time during those twelves
weeks, carrying same mission as you senior folks do. They are just as
important as you. Most of them can deliver the product as a team with you, and
you don't have to solve every problem. They deserve the same respect as you
senior folks do too.

~~~
fecak
Let's take a step back. This article is about notifying rejected candidates.
You made some sort of claim that you felt unimportant, and you were an
'applicant' \- not even an intern, but someone who wanted an internship and
didn't get it.

Are interns important? Sure, they can contribute. Are intern 'applicants'
important to Red Hat as a company?

I'm not condoning the sending of generic rejections. But again, if you expect
your rejection as an internship applicant to be the same as the person who
interviewed for the CTO position, it's a naive thought. I'm not saying it's
correct or just, but it is naive.

There would be hundreds or thousands of applicants for internships, and in a
perfect world the HR of a company will spend 1 hour reading each résumé,
speaking to every candidate, and then writing a very personalized and
sympathetic letter to each rejected candidate.

You are comparing the importance of interns with employees. The discussion, as
it started, was about rejected intern applicants. We got way off track here.

------
aray
I'd be wary not to open yourself up to debate, arguement, or even (!!)
lawsuits. On one hand, a positive person may take this as points of possible
self-improvement, but another may take issue with your assessment as unfair,
unrepresentative or biased.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's hard to imagine _not_ getting sued at some point if you make a policy of
expanding on rejections.

------
wwweston
I think the piece does a decent job of laying out the advantages of being
responsive in this way: you're creating an opening for referrals, you're
increasing the chances of your rejection pool transforming into a future
hiring pool, and you're building a positive reputation. I _also_ suspect that
there might be some positive effect on the actual hiring process -- someone
who knows they're going to have articulate their decision might be more
thorough in the process of making it. I don't know if it's a decisive
advantage, but it seems reasonable enough.

The part I'm curious about at this point is if anyone has actually gotten good
at _eliciting_ this kind of feedback during/after the interview process.

Usually, it's better to just move on to the next opportunity, but as I've said
elsewhere in this discussion[0], I occasionally come across a job that I know
I'd like to be able to apply for again if I don't get it, and in those cases,
I try to send follow up notes asking for suggestions to become a more
competitive applicant.

My response rate is 1 out of about a dozen or so.

It's possible this is actually pretty good considering the facts on the ground
(people are busy/time is scarce, that's why they're hiring, and nobody wants
to open themselves to legal threats).

I'm just wondering if anyone has learned to do considerably better.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6524750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6524750)

------
phamilton
This feels a little like entitlement. Like the candidate is saying "You owe me
an explanation". They already gave you a big chunk of their time. You gave
them a chunk of yours. Nobody owes anyone anything.

~~~
sebkomianos
If you want to speak in such terms, that would be the case if the prospective
employer visited the prospective employee for the interview. When (99.9999% of
the time) it's the opposite, I can say that you could give them some feedback
to appreciate their...commuting, let's say?

------
wodow
Is it possible to avoid the problem of potential lawsuits by asking candidates
to sign an agreement in advance saying that they will not sue you based on any
feedback letter sent after the interviews?

(This would still leave them with the option to sue based on how they were
treated in general during the interview.)

~~~
thirtyseven
I don't think you can legally waive your right to protection under the Civil
Rights Act.

------
brandonb
I'm the OP -- curious if anybody else here has given personalized feedback to
candidates and has positive or negative experiences.

~~~
sebkomianos
I can speak from the other end of this communication - that of the candidate -
and say that I would _really_ appreciate some kind of feedback from the
startups that have rejected me so far.

I am actually going to write a blog post about this during the weekend - will
pingback!

EDIT: "But somebody who spent a day interviewing with you deserves more than a
form letter."

This. Exactly this.

~~~
coffeemug
Then ask them! "Hey guys, I'd really appreciate some feedback on how to
improve. I won't get defensive and could really use your advice -- please be
honest!" This can go a _really_ long way.

~~~
sebkomianos
That's the actual funny part: They get back to you with the same b*llshit,
just using different words.

~~~
coffeemug
It's always a good idea to ask for feedback in a thoughtful way, put people at
ease, and communicate that they won't have to deal with emotional fallout.
When people do that, I _always_ take the time to give good feedback. If people
_still_ give you a BS response after that, they're just jerks and you
shouldn't be paying attention to their feedback anyway, even if you got it out
of them.

------
auctiontheory
I've been on both sides of this - still am - as an employer and a candidate.
There are two reasons not to give specific feedback, even if it is requested:
(1) A good proportion of candidates will disagree, argue, and waste a lot of
your time. Think about how many people you know in real life who don't want to
accept the truth about some flaw they have. Probably all of us do this in some
way. (2) In the US, any feedback beyond generic opens the employer up to
creative lawsuits. Unfortunate but true.

In rare cases, where the issue is purely a technical skill, I could see
telling someone: learn this, get this specific experience, then come back to
us.

------
codecrusade
OK- I have had terrible terrible experiences in India, where to date I have
ZERO(0!) responses from any company on 'NO'. This frustrating includes not
only Indian companies but also several 'Great to Work' places(The likes of
Amazon and even Google) This is frustrating and honestly interviewing is a
pretty frustrating experience now. Anyone thought how to fix this? If you are
a recruiter, for god fn sake do write a one liner to the candidate expressing
your decision. P.S. This is the case with pretty much most people and Im not
entirely an idiot

~~~
brandonb
Almost no big companies will provide feedback since they interview thousands
of candidates per year and become large targets for lawsuits. Startups have a
little more flexibility, but, unfortunately, the likes of Google and Amazon
usually have very firm policies against giving candidates any feedback.

~~~
codecrusade
Its not about feedback- Its about saying "Beep- Your process is over. Stop
expecting a beepin reply from us" \- I dont think this will attract lawsuits

------
7Figures2Commas
> Out of 100+ candidates, only one person has tried to argue with the result.

Did the author ever consider that the reason for this is often that candidates
were not thrilled about the job post-interview?

Far too many startups don't seem to recognize that the interview process is a
two-way street. After all candidates are put through (phone interviews, on-
site interviews, FizzBuzz, etc.), the likelihood that a candidate will choose
not to accept an offer (if one is made) is probably just as high as the
employer choosing not to extend an offer.

~~~
brandonb
Most candidates who received an offer accepted it, and multiple people who
didn't receive an offer referred others, so I suspect that wasn't the problem.
Of course, there's no real way to measure it, but the signals all point in the
same direction.

------
lhnz
> We sent a long message explaining our reasoning, and, surprisingly enough,
> the student said he understood our reasoning, but thought his roommate would
> be a perfect fit.

Pay it back. Next time you interview somebody great that isn't right for you,
direct them to a company that they seem just right for. :)

~~~
brandonb
Good idea. We've definitely tried to pay it back in other contexts, e.g.,
helping a person to whom we didn't make an offer fundraise for their own
startup. (In that case, I sure regretted not making the offer. :) )

------
throwaway9156
Interesting that Brandon no longer appears to be at SiftScience, of which he
was a co-founder. I recently received a rejection after an interview at
SiftScience that was precisely of the form that he criticizes in his post
("sorry, not the best fit right now").

------
perryh2
Giving personalized feedback seems to be a potentially good idea when telling
a candidate 'yes' as well. People interview at multiple companies and
sometimes a more personal connection to a company that gave out an offer can
be enticing.

------
caphill
I just got an email saying they have to pass because they just hired someone
with my skill set.

To me this is far more hurtful and depressing than the generic "We do not feel
like you are the best fit at this time".

~~~
Iftheshoefits
The very best interview processes produce at best an inaccurate melange of
first-impressions, stress-related (or otherwise 'artificial') missteps (by the
candidate) (or, worse, a candidates' misrepresentation of his own
abilities/achievements), and a glut of grab-ass frequently
misinterpreted/misrepresented by the interviewer(s) as High-Minded,
Thoughtful, Rigorous Questioning To Make Sure We Only Hire The Best (tm).

Chances are if "they just hired someone with [your] skill set" it was random
and doesn't reflect poorly on you (and possibly not them). Don't take it
personally.

------
philwelch
I'll take the generic form letter over just never speaking to me again.

