One time we gave feedback on request and the candidate contested the feedback, then went out on a social media rampage. So yeah, we stopped after that. It only takes one bad candidate to make it not worth the effort.
What I’m getting at is, there will always be bad apples, or people who react in a way that damages your organization. But not providing useful feedback to people who ask for it simply because one person went crazy is punishing a lot more people because of that one. Who knows if all of their negative karma ends up being worse in the grand scheme of things?
I personally avoid applying to places that other engineers tell me to avoid because I trust their opinion more than I trust a company selling me the highlight reel in an interview. If a trusted engineer said he got a rejection in an interview, asked for feedback, and none was given, I’d avoid that place too.
Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback. They want to get in a fight with you.
Edit: I don't remember ghosting anyone personally in either setting, but it's happened to me plenty. Getting upset about it just means you're new to the experience.
> Then maybe there can be a system that provides a disclaimer where they waive all ability to sue or otherwise get into a fight with you.
This ain't gonna help though, because it's not particularly useful at preventing the damage that these companies are afraid of, so it's not really going to tilt the existing balance.
Perhaps companies are just behaving too conservatively, and there is room for interviewing platforms to improving the hiring process by giving the helpful feedback that applicants crave.
Here in Texas, at least, that sort of thing does not seem like something that would ever be a real legal risk. This is a right-to-work state; I figured it’s pretty hard to get sued here.
The advice you will get on HR side is because no binding arb. agreement is in place you are exposed to full litigation efforts including attorney fees.
These can involve disparate effect or implicit bias - which can be difficult to defend against.
I've been interviewing candidates for more than 15 years (for PhD /RA positions and then for Engineering) and every time I've given honest feedback, candidates just get into an argument on why they think the feedback does not apply to them...
It is just not worth it. If I want to know how am I at certain skills... I test myself in a less "charged" environment.
The data I've seen suggests you're totally wrong about this.
I work at a company in the recruiting space. My primary role is interviewing technical candidates, and we provide very detailed feedback to candidates of all levels, regardless of whether or not we move forward with them.
People consistently tell us they love the feedback that we provide - in fact, people say the feedback we provide is one of the best parts of their experience with us.
The application process was partially automated, with multiple human reviewers that provided detailed scoring on the applicant’s performance.
Initially, we provided a score breakdown to applicants, but we turned this off within a few weeks after a cascade of hostility.
"Based on our interview we think you would really benefit from studying up on data structures and algorithms. If you want to study this stuff on your own, many people find (link) and (link) useful. But there's also (link) or (link) books available on amazon that we've had people recommend."
Or: "We were impressed by your spoken communication skills, but sometimes you seemed to struggle to remember specific technical terms for some of the concepts and areas we discussed...."
The feedback emails themselves are assembled from a mix of interviewer notes and reused snippets for comments we give frequently. This sort of stuff has been very time consuming for us to prepare. At the volume of candidates we interact with, we think its definitely worth it. But its possible that no feedback is better than bad feedback, and most organizations might not have the time to write good feedback to candidates.
But I can say with confidence that almost everyone really appreciates the feedback we send. While its easy for senior people to find work at the moment, there's lots of junior people out there sending dozens of resumes for every call back. Receiving rejection after rejection from companies (or worse, being ghosted) without even being told what you're doing wrong is a really awful experience.
Detailed feedback can mean a lot of different things. Recruiters always think they're giving people detailed feedback. That's nothing compared to an honest code review.
Bearing in mind that code reviews often cause tension even in fully employed people, it's hard to imagine they're always well received by job seekers.
Once you've been a hiring manager and reviewer long enough, it becomes obvious that, while the intent behind giving feedback is good, the reality of it is messy, and provides no consistent upside to the company.
They want to explain themselves. There is a difference. What you consider an argument or fight is just a Hail Mary, almost an involuntary recovery attempt, for some.
Accepting feedback without trying to dig your way out of a hole or justify your actions is a sign of maturity.
> Most candidates finish the coding section in 40 minutes. You took 60 minutes.
> In the system design part of the interview, the candidates we hire talk about SLA requirements.
Facts. No interpretations.
I am not even telling the person what they should do.
How did I find all of this out? Over A month later, they called me back.
This was after I had been strung along by the business owner and the guy that interviewed me for over a week where they were going to make a final decision about hiring me..and then nothing. They couldn't be bothered to return my phone call or respond to any emails.
They left a message that I had to schedule an appointment with the guy that interviewed me to basically interview me again.
I, of course, never called them back, but sent both of them a nasty email telling them to fuck off in so many words.
I never thought I would be ghosted like this from a potential employer.
Get used to it. It sucks but if I got upset like I used to when a company ghosts me (I'm not just talking about after initial phone screens but even after lengthy on-site interviews), I'd be dead from the stress by now. It happens so often these days. Some companies behave decently but it seems that many more companies are following the lead of recruiters and behaving like jerks.
I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous: we give every applicant we speak to feedback and not once has anybody "got into a fight with us".
They don't have to provide feedback, so they don't have to take the risk if they don't want to.
Don't really think your comparison was fair.
So, your employer does give feedback to candidates on request? It must be difficult for you to find places that are acceptable to you to work, since very few companies typically give feedback. Or do your friends just not usually ask for feedback and as a result that clause on your criteria never trips (i.e. the company wouldn't have given feedback, but since your friend didn't ask, you don't strike it off your list)?
Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on a social media rampage.
A good typical whiteboard interview naturally includes hints, feedback, and collaboration. After several hours of it, we have a very good idea of how well they may respond to feedback from members of our organization.
Honestly, I love giving feedback. I love helping candidates be better at interviewing. Bad interviews are painful to the interviewer too. I'm out of a small market so people and word gets around.
If it really isn't their fault they didn't get the job, we try to make that very very clear. It really sucks when we have to pass up on someone who absolutely killed the interview because someone else did better.
The harsh reality is, many people that don't pass on the interview are people we do not want in the industry. The good ones we give every hint and help we can.
There's also more tactical ways of extracting feedback from companies rather than directly asking for it. We can't tell you about how you did well after rejection, but we can talk about what our expectations are during the interview; put two and two together. I've noticed the good candidates that are serious about improving their interviewing do it, and from the company side, it's a strong signal they're not trying to contest a decision.
Food for thought, when was the last time you gave a company feedback on their interview process? I've traded feedback for feedback quite successfully many times when I was interviewing.
> A good typical whiteboard interview
It's pretty bold of you to claim your interview can accurately qualify candidates across the entire industry.
Maybe you have found an interview that works for most companies? There's chests of gold waiting for you if you have.
These are the candidates that can't FizzBuzz or even write a line of code and/or are humongous asshats.
Interviewer: you have great interpersonal communication but I think you need a bit more knowledge in python techniques XYZ. I like being up front and transparent, and the python stuff is a big deal to us, so although you had a great set of traits, we want someone stronger in python.
Me: Thank you for giving me a clear indication on what was important, where I was strong, and most importantly, for not giving me a “we’ll call you if we want to move forward” response. I highly respect you for not wasting my time unnecessarily.
edit: I'll argue instant feedback is even more expensive and risky. It's not coordinated, potentially duplicative, may impact/contaminate later rounds, and may not be complete or representative of the interview as a whole. Engineers aren't known for being naturally HR/legal-compliant, and having multiple expensive engineers spend time doing things not in their typical skillset that's typically done by a single resource that specializes in said skillset doesn't sound cheaper at all.
...Or, you know. Don't be that guy. Candidate, candidate, candidate--depersonalizing language for depersonalized processes. How about person? These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your recruiter's cattle-call throughput, each and every one of them.
Have some empathy, my dude. Or at least some enlightened self-interest, for someday will be your day in the barrel.
I'll happily give advice, feedback, mock interviews, and other sorts of help on my own time in more appropriate environments. When it's company time, it's just business.
Be decent.
You can't expect a business to feed the hungry, cure the sick, and house the poor out of the goodness of their hearts because these are people that spent a couple hours of their day with you. There are more appropriate institutions for charity.
And why are you stanning so hard for a process whose bloodless mind would bleed you dry and kick you to the curb for a nickel? Was Steinbeck really that right?
As a hiring manager, you're unlikely to be on the clock. And even if, I am somewhat certain that you could come up with good justifications for giving feedback if anybody asks, which nobody will.
It seems to be a specific disease of middle management to feel the need to demonstrate their "professionalism" by going out of their way to deny their humanity. At Wall Street, they buy ugly but expensive clothes for this purpose. But I guess on the West Coast you only have the Gordon Gecko playbook to fall back on.
I used to work at a branding agency, and it was interesting to see how risk averse middle management was: ideas for product names tend to only be good if they evoke some sort of not entirely pure concept. Think of "Plan B", "Virgin", or "CockroachDB". These would always get shot down by middle management as "unprofessional". Go a level up and people are far more open to be human. I don't know if they are just more self-assured and therefore willing to trust their instincts, or if the selection process for higher management actually works quite well.
The answer is that they'll leave negative reviews, tell people to avoid your company or decimate any goodwill your company might have. I have in the past left scathing reviews on Glassdoor and was on some occasions the first one to drop my experience. Because after long projects or a company promising to get back in touch, they decided to instead ghost me or make me do ridiculous tricks for the application process.
If you view something as a business transaction, then you should know one of the worst things you can do in business is spurn the person you're working with.
I naturally left a scathing review for that place, but Glassdoor removed it (of course).
Either something like this is being up collected and articulated up through the decision points in the hiring process, or the decisions are being made on a fuzzy basis that can't even be explained internally, which presumably represents a risk that decisions couldn't be properly justified should a candidate suspect discrimination and pursue a claim.
(This is especially true for any kind of exercises, btw. If an employer asks me to do some, I am going to screen them on whether they have (a) complete reference solutions with (b) numbers on how long it took to complete each and why they're confident those numbers are reliable(c) a written rubric for evaluating candidate solutions that (d) they'll agree to share with me when we're done.)
The pursuit of protit over courteousness is bound to happen when positive courteousness has a negligible and potentially negative impact on profit.
In fairness I received feedback I didn't get the position because I was too chatty from a hr person who told me to act more chatty because qualified candidates on paper were failing for being too quiet. I kinda wished they didn't provide feedback because I have an opinion on the internal culture that would make me avoid them in the future.
I'd be so happy simply hearing feedback on whether I should bother with the company again.
"You were barely beat out by another candidate, we hope you apply again next time!"
"You are not a fit for this company, don't try again"
If this is true and if the company is half competent they'll be reaching out to you proactively next time, not hoping you might see the position and think to apply :)
Do companies really want that? Presumably they didn't hire the candidate because they believe better candidates exist. Why invest in someone if there are better candidates readily available?
That's one reason I hate the "just hire the best person" argument against diversity; usually "the best person" is entirely non-obvious.
Especially when interviewing for non-intro-level stuff...
I suppose if you're thinking exclusively about a short-term benefit to the company alone without considering the impact to the candidate, the wider ecosystem and culture in general then it wouldn't make sense to take the risk.
I applied to one company and got a response back which was effectively "we really like you as a candidate, but it doesn't seem like you would be the right fit for this job / it doesn't seem like the interests you expressed in your interviews [which they correctly restated] matched up well with the duties we would have you perform. We will likely have jobs opening up which would align with what you like and you will be on the shortlist of candidates if you apply for those". Was it truthful? Who knows, but it left me feeling happy about how things went and I would consider applying there again.
Similarly, earlier on in my career after taking a few CS classes I applied for a different job, and the response was effectively "You are smart but you don't have the skills we require yet which are [x, y, z]. Come back when you do". What they said was true and I appreciated the feedback.
Contrast that with the myriad companies I applied to and never heard a response back from or didn't get a response back for many months from. I will never apply to these places again because it is clear that they don't respect prospective employees enough to even send a perfunctory email. Boiler plate rejections aren't as irritating but they are definitely still irritating. If you don't provide reasons for not hiring then employees will construct their own reasons, and they may not be true and / or favorable towards your company.
They didn't hire you now, but might be able to hire you in the future because you would maybe apply again (assuming you get passed the "we already didn't hire this person" filter)?
With all the risk, that doesn't seem like much of a payoff to the company, to me.
(Though I am glad you got feedback you considered valuable, and I think it's cool that the companies did that)
Reputation matters a lot.
I'm a .Net developer. In my area there is a well known company that hires a lot of .Net devs. I heard from 2 people that .Net devs are basically treated as 2nd class citizens (after Delphi devs). So now I will not consider applying there. I don't know if they would want to hire me, but I have nothing to gain finding out.
It’s not you, it’s me
Edit: Just for context on the interview—they had me do a take home assignment in Django, which I had never worked in. Was desperate, so I learned Django and completed it in a week. Went onsite and their whole office was a one tiny, dated swelteringly hot room. The interview was mostly around a bunch of basic syntax stuff, and had me implement merge sort. Didn’t hear from them at all for a month so I wrote on Glassdoor about it.
Sometimes it’s no one’s fault and it’s simply a bad fit.
And of course like you say, people aren’t taught how to evaluate feedback and they may actually contest what is a courtesy in an adversarial manner and thus make things so much worse.
It used to be common knowledge that doctors should never say they're sorry, for the same reason (fear of lawsuit). Then research showed that apologizing actually reduced the number and severity of malpractice lawsuits.
I see plenty of people attacking tech company interview processes on social media already, without being provoked by honest feedback. I'm having trouble imagining how feedback could make a person more angry.
Usually the blowback to the company hits marketing/legal/HR. Gathering and delivering feedback takes work. It's really politically expensive to explain why you're going out of your way to do work to cause other departments to do work for the sake of tech community altruism, especially right after it just burnt you. Giving career advice to strangers after an interview isn't the norm in any other field.
I don't really care if the candidate tries to sue the company. I don't work in legal, that's mostly not my problem. But if legal doesn't want to deal with it and ends up being a pain in my ass, yeah, I'm dropping the practice.
It was a whiteboard session on how to manage scheduling and reporting progress/success/failure information for long-running jobs to a frontend UI... which is something I had been specifically doing at my previous company for a year, and have done many times in many ways before. I took some lessons about communication and focus from it, but in my mind it showed that either that section's interviewer was not very good at evaluating candidates, or some other reason was the real reason and they chose to voluntarily tell me something else as a cover instead.
I'm assuming the former, because I never asked nor expected a specific reason for rejection - no cover was necessary. Finding out just frustrated me further - I really wanted that job, and of course you can't go back saying "Maybe someone else should give that section? I think I'm really good, trust me, the guy you just rejected!"
I don’t know which way it tips, but looking at just the potential damage of providing feedback seems insufficient.
Fear of the occasional keyboard ninja is not a rational reason for giving every single job applicant a worse experience.
Not to mention that generally they end up looking worse than you do, and you've probably done the rest of us a favour by outing them as an asshole (I'm assuming you were respectful and constructive in the feedback that you gave).
That's the problem, though - you're trying to make a hiring decision on hopelessly incomplete information, and so it will come down in large part to gut feeling. And the moment you admit to using some non-quantifiable feeling as a basis for not hiring someone, you open yourself up to claims of some form of discrimination.
It's all around safest to just stay quiet.
Anyway, the way to avoid negative reactions and defensiveness from candidates is to practice giving feedback in a way that’s constructive. We’ll cover this next.
Surely a reasonable person with good critical thinking skills can look at one of those "rampages" and recognize it for what it is.
you monitor candidates social media post interview? quite disturbing trend if so.