Tell me why I suck

Companies won't do it because they fear being taken to court for discrimination. When hiring we were specifically advised by our legal team not to tell people why they were unsuccessful. It doesn't matter how careful you are, anything you say can be leapt upon by an unsuccessful candidate and used as an excuse to drag you to court claiming that they were discriminated against. This is especially true in these days of "No Win, No Fee" lawyers.

Sometimes, of course, the prospective candidate really has no skills at all in the required areas. I'm reminded of the Tom Lehrer quotation:

  " ... one of the many fine things one has to admit
    is the way that the army has carried the American
    democratic ideal to its logical conclusion in the
    sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination
    on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also
    on the grounds of ability. "

But I'd love to tell people why they were unsuccessful. I'd love to give them the opportunity to learn, to grow, to improve, or in some cases simply to say "Well, I guess we weren't a good fit."

However, the age of litigation prevents me from doing that. And I'm not allowed to say "Sorry" either, because that could be taken as an admission of culpability.

(edited to add the Lehrer quotation)

1. There is no position. We're just "feeling out" the marketplace.

2. There is no position. This was a headhunter building his database.

3. We were planning to promote from within, but HR made us post the position anyway. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

4. We already had the perfect candidate, but HR made us post the position anyway. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

5. We posted the position as required by HR, but when an executive saw it on the intranet, he made us hire his son/nephew/family friend. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

5. We were planning to hire someone, but by the time the resumes started arriving, the perfect candidate presented himself. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

6. We were planning to hire someone, but the budget was cut. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

7. We got 1,200 resumes in 2 days so HR ran them through a filter with almost no correlation to potential suitability for the job. Your resume didn't get through the filter. Next time, add buzzwords from the ad.

8. Your resume made it through the HR filter, but we only had time to read 20% of them. Yours wasn't pretty enough.

9. Your resume didn't stick out in a field of many that did stick out. You probably should have some kick-ass differentiator FRONT AND CENTER.

10. We read many great resumes. Yours was substandard compared to many of them for one or more of many possible reasons. Have 5 friends proofread it and give you brutally honest feedback for next time.

11. Your resume sucked but you don't. Find 5 friends. See #10.

12. You interviewed well, but someone else absolutely kicked ass. We loved him/her. Tough break for you, I guess.

13. You didn't interview well, but we can't really put our finger on it and don't have time to respond. Tough break.

14. You interviewed well and are still under consideration. But we are waiting on corporate for 27 other things. You'll probably find another job before we get back to you.

15. You really do suck. (No you don't. Chances are the process never got this far.)

As a tech employer, I can tell you the top 3 reasons why it's hard to provide the feedback you seek:

1) Many times it's not that you're lacking in any manner, it's just that there's someone that suited the position better. It's like dating - if you reject someone because someone better came into your life, what do you tell the other person? Usually it goes "it's not you, it's me...".

2) Sometimes I don't know what I'm looking for until I look. Then I get responses and realize I'm looking for the wrong thing. Then when I say no, again, it's not because of you, it's because of me. Sounds like dating again.

3) Finally, connections and personal relationships help. If I don't know you from Jack Adam, then it's hard to provide any sort of useful feedback if I don't have that much useful feedback. If we had a relationship, then I could give you some sort of advice on what would be a better fit for you, make a recommendation to someone else.

Instead of asking "what went wrong", maybe you might want to ask "is there anyone you can recommend or do you think that something / someone else might be a better fit"? You never know whomever else we might know in the space that's hiring. And while we might have found for ourselves a great mate, that doesn't mean you're not dating material. Perhaps we have just the right fix-up for you. Or maybe not.

Just one additional perspective.

In the many interviews I've had to do last year, I'd say a rejection notice is a start. In far too many cases the company simply ignores you. I've gotten to second and third interviews and thought I was doing quite well. Only to never hear from them again. Just sending out a notice would have at least prevented me from wondering.

Knowing why... would be nice, but it's understandleable why companies avoid it. From a purely human perspective it's hard disappointing people and letting them down. People don't like giving other people bad news. Especially if they don't know you. There's no way to tell how the person receiving it is going to react. It's easier to just be as polite as you can about it and keep your resons to yourself.

I hate wondering, but that's just part of the process. I've interviewed with a company where I blew past the technical interview. When I came in to meet with the CEO and do the social bit... well I thought I did alright, but I just never heard back from them again. I've wondered a thousand times what I might've said that would turn them off from a perfectly good candidate such as myself. I'll just have to live without knowing and I think it might be better that way anyway. It might be that the CEO just didn't get a good gut feeling about it, maybe I made a bad joke, maybe someone that works there recommended a friend... who knows? This stuff can be really, painfully arbitrary. It's best not to fret about it and keep your head up.

Discomfort.

As a former hiring manager I can tell you I once tried to give feedback.

There was no threatened litigation, nothing like that at all.

But it resulted in the guy trying to argue the points I made, convince me that he should still get the gig. I tried to be polite and explain clearly our reasoning -- but he just kept pushing. I nearly had to hang up on him to get him off the phone.

At that point I decided whenever I needed to turn someone down I would be as quick and opaque as possible. Since then I never had a problem. Better yet, have HR do it for you.

Things are both simpler and more complicated in the UK.

Simpler because the rules are quite clear (and very fair) and more complex because company managers tend to make up extreme rules that are way beyond what is necessary.

Job application disputes are not settled in a standard court, they go to an employment tribunal instead and are decided by one judge and two independent lay-member volunteers (often councillors, trade-unionists, clergy, business leaders etc).

For a case to be heard there would almost certainly have had to be discrimination on the grounds of disability, race, sex, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief. While some serious degree of "bad-process" might make it it would be unlikely to be successful.

Apart from blatant discrimination, tribunals mostly look for consistency in how workers are treated. So if you tell one candidate why they weren't successful there is an argument that all must be told. A simple way round this is to wait to be asked and only reply to those candidates that ask.

Sadly, UK companies seem to be un-necessarily paranoid about this and I have heard management claim all sorts of reasons why reasonable openness cannot be practiced during the job-interview process.

Generally, though, UK tribunals tend towards doing the right thing from my experience. In the 2 tribunals I have been present at, both sided with the company (as they should have). Both had a trade unionist on the tribunal.

I do think that companies have a moral duty to tell applicants why they were unsuccessful if they got as far as an interview, even if it is just to say "there was a better candidate on the day". They have made a commitment to the candidate and the candidate has reciprocated by turning up to be interviewed.

Companies should do the right thing rather than fear litigation.

America has an extremely litigious society. I won't tell you why you suck, because if I do you'll find a way to sue me.

When I have hired people, I have always offered to explain the reasons for rejection, when I turned people down. The ones that opted in, I have given an answer. This way, I don't have to spend time on telling people why I turned them down if they don't really care.

The thing is - It's quite hard to give that kind of feedback. A great deal of the assertion of candidates ultimately comes down to instinct. That's hard to qualify. Besides, you want to be very careful about your wording, so it usually takes up a lot of time to write even a few paragraphs back to a candidate.

This is great article. I recently was to an interview with a company and thought the interview went great. They even told me they had been looking for a candidate since August. To my dismay one week after the interview I received a similar email. No reason, just the "we looked at your credentials and those of other applicants and have decided to continue with other applicants". Funny thing is the job is still posted and probably will be for another 6 months.

What I don't understand is that if company x has been looking to fill a position for 6 months is company x just too picky or have too high expectations of a new applicant?

I really have to agree with this that companies should at least give some additional reason for the turn down instead of the typical form letter. You as an applicant spent a lot of time working on your resume and interviewing skills the least the company could do is let you know why they wont be offering a jab.

Just my two cents...

"I suck" is not a productive line of thought and potential employers will never give you feedback what you suck at. If you're sending out a large number of job applications and resumes, it might be a good idea to incorporate some basic testing methods. Try out different combinations of CVs, different tones, different vocabularies. Maybe there is a simple reason for all the rejections that can be fixed with some minor adjustments. For example, you might be giving too much or too little information on your CV. Perhaps you're applying at the wrong companies or for the wrong position. The point being, if you received so many fuck-off letters, there is probably something systemically wrong here, and chances are you can use a combination of quality assurance and data analysis to find out what it is.

Have you tried asking?

I've done this in the past with jobs for which I was not accepted. Some were happy to, some weren't, but where they did it was useful.

And as an employer now, I'm generally happy to share useful feedback. But I'll usually only bother if the candidate asks me. This is at least partly because - as RiderOfGiraffes alludes to, there are legal issues involved, and I have to think very hard about how I word a reply to make sure it stays within the bounds of relevant laws. And I'm happy to do that if the candidate asked after it - but not if they've expressed no interest.

(fwiw, this is in the UK)

I was once not hired for a job i applied for (during the interview i was cross questioned a bit like an interrogation but a lot like i had done something wrong and this was my trial!), after the interview, his assistant was really kind and said to me,"really sorry about, that is my bosses confrontation style ..." then i was told they would like to see me again!

But after some thought (1 second), i just wanted not to go back again ... so maybe meaningful feedback to the interviewer/company would be useful too ...

"Tell Me Why I Suck" could be a great anonymous "3 words"-style service...People post their resumes, cover letters, and people can give anonymous feedback on why they suck.

One problem with telling someone why you didn't hire them is that most (yes, most) people will disagree with you. "No, you're wrong I really do know [skill X], and have experience with [technology Y]". (Uhm, no you don't, otherwise I'd have hired you). Or, "but I gave you a good answer!" (wrong again.) At best these are dead-end arguments that leave both parties frustrated. At worst you end up in a courtroom, as others have mentioned.

So, you want to know what you did wrong? Maybe it's that you didn't develop a good enough rapport with your interviewer to show you knew how to listen to them and "take a hint". Next time, be sure to checkin with the person you're talking to by asking things like, "does that answer your question", and "do you want me to go into more detail".

And it's great that you're looking for feedback, but why are you whining about not getting it after the fact when you could just ask for it in the interview? When an interviewer asks you a question, do your best to answer it and if you're not sure how you've done, just frickin' ask! "What do you think? Is that a good solution", or, "That's how I'd tackle it. What would you do?" Demonstrate that you know where your weaknesses are and that you have genuine interest in improving your skillset/knowledge/whatever.

One of the most important qualities I look for in people I work with is self-awareness of how they're perceived. People who lack this are a pain in the ass to manage. In the extreme, they're self-entitled primadonnas who are impossible to give feedback to. But even in moderation, this is problematic. Yes, I know you don't think copy/pasting code is all that bad, or that you're l33t-speak documentation is readable enough... but it's not. Don't make me argue with you about it.

I think all these explanation of fear of legal ramifications and how it's hard to provide feedback are just covers.

Employers and/or recruiters don't provide any reason because the the minimum that they have to do to let you know that you are not accepted is to tell you no. They are not bounded in any ways to do more than that. Telling you why means they have to think, to sit down and write more than a sentence. It's easier to just give a canned answer and send it out.

All the outer explanation of legal ramification, hard to provide feed back, it's just smoke screen to cover the most basic human nature to be lazy. Period.

Personally I've had good feedback 1 in every 50 application I sent. I've always proactively asked for feedback when I can and I think I've probably had 3 good feedbacks so far. One went as far as buying me lunch and explain the decision to me while another invited me back to his office where we sat down and chatted for quite a bit.

It's not that you suck, it's just human nature. Most of us are a lazy bunch.

Telling candidates why they are not a good fit is not the company job, it's your job as a candidate to figure out why you are not a good fit. Also it would open them to some liability, which is something that anyone prefers to avoid.

I sometimes made interviews with potential candidates, and if you do it at a time you'll learn that it's really not something personal. I just say this, so that you know that you don't suck actually. Most companies are looking for someone who know their stuff (surprisingly hard to find ) AND is nice (someone you can work with ).

If you do the two above thing for a long enough time, have a good CV, ideally some personal project to show, you'll land up a good job in the end.

Even small companies get many applicants.

Think about it this way. You are vying with 30 - 40 other people for one spot.

Failure should not be a surprise. Especially when there is no way to clearly differentiate the best from the top 10%.

There's also the fact that there's multiple candidates for one position. You might have been a good choice, but someone else had more experience, or another diferential.

Getting no feedback sucks. I wrote about this last year [1]. Now Google is somewhat of a special case because it's a highly desirable place to work and very large so you have issues of scale [2].

Sometimes I read posts like this and someone will say "I sent out X hundred resumes" and my response is always "really?". It always strikes me that if that's what you're doing, you're doing something wrong.

Let me explain. I contracted in Australia for some years (where I'm from) and also in the UK (London) for several years. Contracting in London is a soul-destroying experience and there is an industry in dire need of regulation but I digress.

Contracting is possibly the worst and most depressing form of looking for work because you in many ways are at the bottom of the totem pole. You may earn a lot but you pay for that. Companies will generally treat you as replaceable (which you are).

But in the course of much job-seeking I've spoken to many recruiters and some have given me the lowdown on what they do (including the shady practices). But the thing that stuck out the most for me was they all say they can throw out 90-95% of the resumes (CVs actually) they receive within seconds of receiving. This is a combination of them being bad but, more interestingly, the person just isn't suited for the job. Like not even remotely. Basically people take a shotgun approach of applying for everything. If you're a C++ programmer living in Leeds you end up applying for an Oracle DBA position in Reading. I'm not kidding.

I've generally had a reasonable success rate with both getting interviews and getting the job at that point. One reason for this I think is not that I'm some super candidate but that I really target which jobs I go after as being something I'm particularly interested in or something I'm particularly well-suited for.

Part of it too is understanding the process and this varies from place to place.

So in the UK for example you want to deal with only a handful of recruiting agencies. There are many fly-by-night operations who are either harvesting CVs or just hoping to get lucky. Filling one candidate a month can keep a small operation afloat.

So if applying for a job with a bank in London there are three filters you have to make it through:

1. The recruiter. The recruiter may be limited in the number of CVs they can submit (eg 2). Even if they don't submit you they'll often tell you they will, which is why it's important to find one you can trust. Trust but verify;

2. HR. This is in my experience the biggest impediment to filling jobs. HR know nothing about programming so they'll word scan your CV/resume based on buzzwords. So you need to fill your CV with buzzwords, particularly those for the job. This can often mean catering your CV on a per-job basis. Some may not like this because it's more work (which it is) but that's the point: target high-probability jobs. The problem is that a buzzword-filled CV is actually a red flag to anyone technically competent;

3. Hiring Manager: if you make it this far, with UK banks at least, you'll be in a pile of up to 10 CVs generally speaking. Rarely will a hiring manager interview all candidates. They might pick 2-4 they like, screen them by phone and go down to 2-3 onsite interviews. Or they might just interview people until they find someone they like (very common in my experience) so, if you ever have a choice of interview slot, pick the earliest one. Cancel anything else. You can lose a job simply by choosing a slot on the second day and never being seen.

So to return to the issue of feedback: it's even worse with recruiters in the picture. The hiring manager may give feedback to the recruiter (but generally won't; they're too busy). But even if they do the chances of the recruiter passing it along, unless you have a very good relationship with them, is almost zero. At the point you didn't get the job, they lose interest in you until the next job they can shop you for comes up.

Recruitment as it stands now is a disaster but won't really change until companies (who have the money) sign on to changing it. The feedback loop isn't there to inform them of how they're not getting the best result out of this (if they even care). Bear in mind that the person running the team you would potentially work for may be as frustrated by this process as you the candidate are.

Google again is a special case here. We're large enough that we have our own recruiters. I can't imagine how horrid the situation would be if we outsourced recruitment. Of course not everyone can do that but not everyone needs to I guess.

The process here is scrutinized (and criticized) quite a lot so is subject to gaming. So please don't take my comments to mean the process here is perfect. It isn't. But I have a hard time figuring out how it could be done better on the same scale. Every large company will be selective in some way, just to limit the deluge of applicants to manageable levels.

Other commentors have likened recruitment to dating and it's an apt analogy IMHO. A lot of recruitment comes down to chemistry between those doing the hiring and the candidate. If the interviewer likes you then you're in a much better position. So you can be technically well-suited for something but just not a great "culture fit".

There can be luck involved here too. It can depend on who interviews you, other factors (maybe an interviewer is just having a bad day; maybe you are). I think it's important not to dwell on the feedback and rejection for too long. Try and just move on to the next thing.

[1]: http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/07/my-google-interview.html

[2]: http://screamable.com/google-received-over-75000-job-applica...

Just a thought.

Maybe it is not who sucks.

But rather the first person in line receiving and reviewing your profile who has the crab mentality thinking that this person seems so good that s/he may change the way how business is done.

And let's accept it. A lot of these front end people dislike change. A lot of them have the same repertoire of outdated processes in hiring and looking for people who would be a good fit in their organization.

Not sure where you are looking but there has been no lack of jobs for software developers where I am located. If you can code Java in Dallas you can slip and fall into a 6 figure salary. I guess I am spoiled but the ideas of sending out "Hundreds" of resumes seems foreign to me.