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Comment by akmiller | Hacker News Reader

I interviewed at CircleCI many months back. Overall I thought the process was done very well until I got to the stage before the onsite and I was simply sent an email that said that while everybody like me and thought highly of me they were not going to move forward at that time. I followed up asking for more specific information and never heard back.

This process is never perfect, but I think when you don't hire someone it is always nice to provide something solid the interviewee can go off of. Even if the response is simply that we felt we had stronger candidates for whatever reason.

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This has been covered in previous discussions, but basically anything they say can be used against them in a lawsuit:

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-companies-give-interview-feed...

I think it would be fairly simple to avoid anything that would cause a lawsuit and if this is indeed the reason...what a sad state of affairs we are in.

That top answer there leaves a lot to be desired. Suggesting that a candidate offers "no value" to a company if they are not hired is very short sighted.

Why isn't there a waiver process so an interviewee can sign off that they won't use the feedback in a lawsuit?

Undoubtedly because that takes more time and money, for relatively little upside for the company, and often, relatively little upside for the candidate.

Waivers aren't legally binding. The company gets nothing by providing feedback, and even if there's a small chance of a lawsuit, why take the risk?

I'd argue that the company does get something back, potentially. Many companies will say to come back after 6 or 12 months to re-apply. If they like a candidate well enough to really mean that, wouldn't it help the candidate to learn what they were otherwise weaker with so they can work that out before returning?

But that's a fair point about waivers not being legally binding.

There's definitely legal reasons, however the main reason we don't is people tend to argue. "You don't have enough experience in ___" -> "Here, look at these 4 projects I created! You didn't give me a fair chance by asking about them!". Or "You didn't seem interested enough" -> "I was just tired!"

I've found most of the time, unfortunately there's no good in giving details. I realize people genuinely want to improve, but most of the time the reasons we don't hire someone aren't actionable.

I sat in on about 100+ onsites where I was involved in collecting feedback from the onsite team. I asked each candidate if they would like to receive feedback before they left the building, and most of the time we told them on the spot we wouldn't be moving forward with the reasons why (sometimes actionable, sometimes not). The candidates appreciated the feedback since it occasionally helped them perform better in their future onsites. Some of them wrote positive Glassdoor reviews, and we even received referrals from a couple. It's uncomfortable as a hiring manager to do this, but in my experience, it's a net positive.

That's really cool of you.

And, parent had a good point to. The one time I asked for feedback and received it, I did react the same way (Them: We didn't see this; Me: But I have done that!). I figured while I had their attention to give it a shot. I was already rejected so what's the worst that could happen? Anyway, I tried to be extremely thankful and polite about getting the feedback. Should've done the Glassdoor thing since they also actually formally rejected me and did so in a timely manner.

I saw a horrific case the other week where an internal recruiter cut and paste the feedback from an engineer verbatim. The candidate received feedback which said and I quote “You’d have to be a madman to have used X in 2017”.

Maybe the person was looking for a new job because the bosses forced them to use X in 2017.

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