
How to Reject Engineering Candidates - tacon
http://code.dblock.org/2013/05/26/how-to-reject-engineering-candidates.html
======
morgante
Please don't do this. I actually find these example emails much _more_
insulting than the generic "we're going in a different direction" emails.

The reason I prefer the generic emails is that in many ways they're a
testament to the fact that interviewing has a high degree of randomness. In
many/most cases, rejecting a candidate comes down to an amorphous feeling that
they won't fit in. Or just a brain block on a particular problem which doesn't
speak to overall technical ability. Bottom line: the process is often quite
random, so attempting to ascribe random decisions to inherent personal
attributes is insulting.

The one kind of feedback I appreciate is when it's specific and actionable.
For example: "we only hire people with an active open source presence" or
"we've decided to curtail all remote hiring." This is something with a clear
reason that isn't inherently personal. And no, "improve your culture fit" is
not actionable.

~~~
lemevi
I've seen interviewers that were worse than the candidate, knew less, made
mistakes in asking questions and evaluating the answer and then rejected the
candidate anyway. To get an email like from the OP after something like this
would be pretty terrible.

Recruiting personnel in human resources are not in a position to evaluate the
merits of the interview and it might help if this person wrote the feedback
from the perspective of the interviewer and not as a collective "we".

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vezzy-fnord
_These aren’t perfect and they stay pretty general, but they aren’t canned
bullshit responses either._

Hm, I find that debatable. Your example rejection strikes me as overly verbose
with little substance, is almost comically apologetic, and again boils down to
the exact same one-liner of "You're not a good fit at this time."

It's really a long-winded way to convey the exact same (lack of) message, but
with tidbits of one's resume and lots of apology sprinkled in to seemingly
convey depth and empathy.

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FlannelPancake
Oh god, please don't do this. This is worse than "We decided to go a different
direction," because at least that takes less time to read.

If you're not going to provide substantive feedback ("we felt like your
performance on the nearest-neighbor problem was pretty rough and were looking
for a more optimized solution") then just give the one liner and be done with
it.

We get it: you're hamstrung because of legal liabilities. That's fine. Don't
make it worse by making us read a paragraph that isn't going to be helpful for
the future.

~~~
BurningFrog
> We get it: you're hamstrung because of legal liabilities.

At one place that rejected me the recruiter offered to tell me the reasons
_over the phone_.

I think that sidesteps any liability problem. The phone calls leaves no paper
trail, and recording it without his consent is illegal.

~~~
vonmoltke
> recording it without his consent is illegal.

Depending on your (and his) jurisdiction. In many US states, it _is_ legal.

~~~
BurningFrog
I'm in California, where it is illegal.

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canistr
_We appreciate your huge desire to learn and your creative instinct. You’re
obviously excited to code and solve hard problems. But tech-wise we don’t
think you meet the bar that we’re aiming for a candidate for this position._

Stopped reading right there.

You don't need to provide a wall of text why I'm not the right candidate. I
don't intend to read your summary of my resume. There's really no point. I'm
already in a mad/frustrated/disappointed/etc. state and giving me a great wall
of text is adding insult to injury.

Engineering candidates are really looking for feedback on how the
interview/technical component went. The "cultural fit" answer is a blackbox
and stating it doesn't really answer what you're looking for.

You're better off just telling me I'm not the right fit and for legal reasons,
you can't go into details. That's really it. Don't tell me about what you
think of my previous experience. Don't tell me about the other candidates
(frankly, I don't care unless they become my co-workers).

~~~
Bartweiss
This does have useful info in it - the line starting with "But tech-wise".

I think you're right that technical feedback is the biggest thing, and even a
binary answer is useful. "Cultural fit", "we found someone better", and "the
boss' nephew got the job" are all somewhat interchangeable from the
candidate's perspective, but "we didn't think you could do the work" isn't.

For a company willing to provide information (and yes, most seem to be scared
of the legal issue), that's the most value-dense thing to provide.

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rckclmbr
I got rejected from Netflix, and they gave me the best feedback I've ever
gotten after an interview. They said "Based on the interviews, we don't think
you could get done what we need to get done fast enough".

I disagreed with them, but that didn't matter. I looked back on the interview
and could see exactly why they thought that. That feedback helped me improve
for the future.

~~~
reagency
Was the interview about stuff they need to get done, or doofy puzzlers?

~~~
rckclmbr
Stuff they get done. It was a really good interview. Without going into too
much detail (NDA), I had a take-home project about a real world problem, then
there were a lot of questions about the project. Of course there are always
doofy puzzles too, but those weren't a focus.

The only thing I didn't like about the interview was that they compared
themselves with qualifying for the Olympics. That I should "consider it an
honor" because I made it to the interview, which is like making it to the
Olympic Trials. While I understand what they meant, I think it was a very
pompous statement.

~~~
Bartweiss
I've heard similar statements to that one, and never been pleased. I met
someone with Dropbox who spent much of our conversation telling me how they
only take the best (with extensive namedropping) and most applicants never
even get a return phonecall.

I think it was meant to draw me in by promising a selective team (he took my
resume), but it didn't work at all. It simply felt like he was bragging about
his own greatness (because he _did_ have a job there) while telling me they
would probably waste my time.

Even if the sentiment is good, any variant of "we're so great that failing is
still an honor" feels tacky and self-aggrandizing.

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itsdrewmiller
Providing feedback is pretty hit or miss - if you give anything specific
enough to be constructive you also end up with people often wanting to argue
the particulars. The feedback examples here are pretty bad. "You don't have
enough experience" \- so you are going to hire him or her in two years once
they have gained experience? "You aren't a culture fit" \- why not? Is it
because he or she isn't a 20-something white male who likes video games and
beer?

The feedback I have tended to give is along the lines of "Our process has a
high chance of providing false negatives, so just because we are not offering
you a position doesn't mean we are convinced you are not qualified. On
[Programming Problem X] we felt that your code involved too much deep nesting
and the variable naming was poor; in an environment with many programmers that
is one of the most important things to do well. You also missed [Requirement
Y] which, while not critical for the functioning of the program, did show a
lack of attention to detail of the problem statement." And then they still
argue. :-)

If they are really horrible they get rejected in real time, and if it's late
in the process we have a conversation internally about how they managed to
make it so far.

~~~
klenwell
I think your first line is a great generic response and sufficient in itself:

 _Our process has a high chance of providing false negatives, so just because
we are not offering you a position doesn 't mean we are convinced you are not
qualified._

I don't really care for the reason why I'm rejected. I'm deluded enough in my
own abilities to rationalize the reasons why you're making a huge mistake. :)

The main thing I want is a timely response. What drives me crazy is not
getting any response at all.

~~~
itsdrewmiller
That is something I didn't realize before but seems to be a common theme in
the comments here - So I learned at least one thing to do better from this
thread, even if it wasn't from the article. :-)

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peter422
As somebody who has been rejected a few times (and been on the other side), I
completely disagree.

All I care about is speed. A boilerplate rejection in 1 day (or even that
night) is 10x better than a more specific email. Also the reasons given in the
example emails are so vague I think I would be more annoyed. Rejection sucks,
there is little an employer can do to lessen the blow other than do it
quickly, so as to avoid days of agony while the candidate waits.

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eagsalazar2
I do tons of hiring and there is no way I would ever write rejections like
that. First of all if you are running a business and doing lots of hiring,
there is no way you have time to write that many long thoughtful emails that
refer to research you've done on their background, etc. Second, I highly doubt
any adult developer gives a crap.

The only thing people want (and appreciate in my experience) is hard, cold
facts about _exactly_ where they messed up so they can do better on subsequent
interviews. There is nothing that feels worse than failing and not feeling
empowered to succeed in the future. As lovey dovey as those examples are, they
don't do anything to help the person succeed in the immediate future which is
what really sucks about overly terse rejection emails.

~~~
barefoot
I completely agree. I would never write anything like the examples in the
article and would be very discouraged if I received any of those responses to
an interview I attended.

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rpedela
Even though it is from a movie, I think this is better advice: "Do you want a
bullet to the head or five bullets to the chest and bleed to death?" [1]

If you want to add something about what to improve, I think that is fine too
but do it succinctly (not terse).

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXEtOPMW2hM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXEtOPMW2hM)

~~~
overgard
Yeah I think that's much better advice. The problem with giving out reasons is
that there's a good chance your perception of them disagrees with their own
self perception, and so you run the risk of insulting them.

I remember years ago, one company I interviewed with ultimately didn't hire me
because "my experience was very strong in graphics and game development but
they needed more of a generalist". This was, I think, because my unix command
line skills were mediocre (At least that's where I flubbed the interview a
bit); but at the time they rejected me I was working in web development... so
it's not like I'm not adaptable. Anyway, the only reason that I even remember
that is because their rejection was _memorable_ , and it was memorable because
I thought they were _wrong_. Of course I didn't argue with them because their
minds were made up, but with this sort of decision you don't even want to
invite the possibility of debate IMO, you just want to give a yes or a no.

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tslug
Thanks for your article suggesting a better way to reject peeps. It made a
good point, and I'm confident your hiring and rejecting career will be a
colourful one, but we're going to stick with being human and not over-
analyzing others' perceived shortcomings because we decided not to pull the
trigger on doing the money-in-exchange-for-services thing. Cheers!

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brandonb
Yes! I wish more companies would do this. I wrote a little blog post on this
topic a couple years ago: [http://brandonb.cc/startups-stop-using-generic-
form-letters-...](http://brandonb.cc/startups-stop-using-generic-form-letters-
when-you-tell-a-candidate-no)

It's incredibly time-consuming to do well, so I cannot claim to hit the target
100% of the time, but I think it's worthwhile.

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pithon
Writing, in general, is an activity that engineers usually put at the bottom
of the priority list but it's when you write that you actually organize your
thoughts and think things through. The process of writing the rejection email,
even if you don't actually send it, is likely to make you think about why
you're rejecting them, and formalize/ reinforce concepts and ideas to keep in
mind at the next interview.

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patio11
I would not find it easy to operationalize the feedback regarding cultural
fit, either as a hypothetical jobseeker or as someone who theoretically knows
what "cultural fit" is supposed to mean, which I would not model the modal
jobseeker as understanding.

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autotune
While this was interesting, what I'd love to hear about are the candidates
that were accepted who very obviously turned out to be a bad match within a
few months time, and how they adapted the interview process and questions as a
result.

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kachnuv_ocasek
I'd hit delete on those messages after I'd have read the first sentence, which
is one sentence sooner that on the generic one. If you're a hiring manager,
please, don't post emails like this.

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sosuke
I always thought they said nothing as a matter of liability.

~~~
lostcolony
Yeah, that's the explanation I've heard. "We don't feel you're a good fit at
this time" says nothing beyond 'no', and so there is nothing for a
particularly litigious candidate to use against the company. A more verbose
explanation, which would be appreciated by a majority of candidates, might
accidentally give them fodder for a lawsuit.

I'm actually curious how useful it would be though. I can only think of a
couple of times I've interviewed, and been genuinely curious why the company
decided not to continue with me. Most times it's been "-Wow-, that was a poor
fit", either culturally, or what they expected me to know, or how the position
was sold to me, or whatever (my favorite being an interview with Microsoft,
where the HR rep scheduling it said coding in Java would be fine, but then the
interviewer was predominantly a C guy, and so was telling me that my for(int
i=0; i<stringObj.length; i++) meant I was running in O(n^2) time, and my
having to correct him...yeah), and only one or two times left me curious what
their impressions were.

~~~
reagency
A litigous candidate would litigate based on the interview experience, not the
rejection letter, and then access to internal notes (where the illegal
discrimination happens) during legal discovery. The rejection letter is
irrelevant. I cases that win, do you think the HR rep said "sorry blackie, we
don't want your kind here"?

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dominotw
I literally walked out of an interview at AirBnb in tears after the
humiliation. I've been so traumatized after that I've stopped looking for jobs
for over 3 years.

Only point of the idiotic BigO/whiteboard kind of interviews is to make the
interviewer feel good about himself/herself.

------
Bartweiss
Some of the emails you present are straightforward and useful - the second one
in particular I'd be happy to receive. If you feel like someone would be a
good fit after improving their skills in some specific area, that's a good
thing for the candidate to hear.

Others, though, feel downright insulting - especially the first email.
Praising someone's programming background, past projects, and eagerness to
_solve hard problems_ isn't an appropriate lead-in to telling them they failed
a technical interview. It's either vacuous (they weren't talented, but you
needed something to compliment) or back-handed (if their technical skills
weren't good, how can you actually respect their past projects?) That's just a
way to leave a candidate feeling worse about themselves and you.

Don't abandon this idea. I hugely value specific rejections, even blunt ones
like "You don't have the skills we need" or "You failed the second technical
interview". Just don't mix that with praising traits you're about to reject
someone for.

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geofft
Do you have evidence that rejected candidates prefer this? That they find it
less insulting, instead of more? Do candidates take you up on your offer to
help with placement elsewhere?

All I see in defense of this approach in the article is "As a hiring manager,
I...". This isn't about you.

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davesque
I tend to agree with others saying this is a bad idea. What I find the most
irritating and insulting is when someone primes me to have a discussion about
something (such as mentioning exactly what went wrong with the interview) and
then acts as though there's no room for debate. If I got a rejection email
like that, the first thing I'd want to do is write a reply detailing all the
different reasons the interviewers were either wrong or overly concerned with
the significance of my particular responses.

A lot of people are determined enough to start a debate about an interview.
Comparatively few companies are willing to engage in such a debate and they
shouldn't pretend otherwise.

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nvader
All the examples in that article come across as instances of a "praise
sandwich" (also known by a less savoury name). The formula is, "We thought you
were good at X, BUT, we need someone also good at Y".

Perhaps it's the impact of reading them all back-to-back, but the insincerity
of that interstitial BUT begins to stand out. The impact of reading this
feedback is to discount the praise, and emphasize the gaps.

Given that, the feedback doesn't seem specific and actionable enough in most
cases. The last example in particular, I parse as [we appreciate your
interest, but your skills aren't good enough], which I'm struggling to read as
better than the standard template.

~~~
reagency
A feedback sandwich is:

1\. Congratulate for successes.

2\. Point out weaknesses to improve.

3\. Give encouragememt to keep working at it in future.

Plenty of people do it wrong and give BS feedback, but those people can put BS
in any form.

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joe_the_user
The standard rejection, even more "thank you for your interest, while you have
excellent qualifications, we have chosen a different candidate" is fine.

The main thing is making the selection process _visibly_ fair and undemanding.
The rejections that are most annoying are those in which the employer has
candidates jump through numerous "hoops" and then rejects them, especially if
the rejection is "oh you passed the test but we don't think you fit the
culture" or something similar.

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shaynbaron
Great topic! I try to put myself in the engineers shoes. I'd want to know why
they didn't pick me and how I could improve.

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dyeje
Writing these emails does not seem productive. You say you spend at least a
half hour writing a draft, and you have someone else look over. That's alot of
valuable time spent on a response that is almost as vague as the canned one
liner.

Also, the cultural fit responses were worrisome.

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BhavdeepSethi
I like the intent behind it. I don't like the verboseness of it. Would you
send this out to your own team? A simple "What worked, What didn't" with
bullet points would definitely be way more useful.

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dblock
Author here. Old article, looking forward to reading your feedback!

~~~
jon-wood
Has your approach changed since posting that article? What's the feedback been
like from candidates that have received emails like that?

~~~
dblock
I still send detailed rejections and so does my entire team. We get a lot of
genuine thanks for doing so and some smaller amount of nothings meaning this
was either useless or the candidate got upset.

I try to minimize unnecessary praise and focus on actionable items. And I
always use written feedback as source.

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brobdingnagian
There is no good rationalization for not hiring someone, because you cannot
empirically connect your hiring process to more objective measures of success.

