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Comment by dangero | Hacker News Reader

I agree.

When my company is hiring, and we lose a candidate like this, I often send emails that are similar, "Sorry to hear you're not accepting our offer. Can I ask why you didn't choose us?" This is actually the potential hire's chance to pay me a compliment, give a small amount of feedback, and keep the door open for the future in case their other "better" option falls through.

I think this blog shows a terribly self absorbed reply. My response to receiving this would be to forward the reply to my team and say, "Glad that didn't work out for us... Blessing in disguise. See below."

Know your audience. Remember, the person you're emailing works there, so you're essentially telling them that their job and work environment sucks when you write something like this.

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"This is actually the potential hire's chance to pay me a compliment, give a small amount of feedback, and keep the door open for the future in case their other "better" option falls through."

That's quite narcissistic and self-absorbed. You're really not that important and to take a letter like this and try to paint it as a "blessing in disguise" is arrogant and foolish.

He doesn't want to work in a Windows shop. He wanted to be able to work with particular technologies. He's a new grad and idealistic. He has preferences and opinions and had the insight to skip working in an environment he believed he wouldn't do well in. He's not a bad hire, just a bad hire for your organization. Get over it.

"That's quite narcissistic and self-absorbed. You're really not that important and to take a letter like this and try to paint it as a "blessing in disguise" is arrogant and foolish."

He bolded a sentence in his email that read "It may seem arbitrary, but the platform an organization uses is indicative to me of a whole lot." BOLDED IT! If that doesn't scream arrogant prick, then I don't know what does. So, yes, not hiring him is a blessing in disguise. I don't want to work with someone who is that arrogant and condescending.

As I said in another reply, I wasn't suggesting that I need a compliment. I was just giving an example of a successful way to respond in order to keep the door open. A compliment won't hurt that, and in reality, it wouldn't hurt to keep the door opened.

I agree it wouldn't hurt to keep the door open but I also don't believe he was being condescending. The platform a company uses is indicative of a whole lot. In this case, that it's a Windows shop. No one said there's anything wrong with that but that's not what he wants.

And how would a fresh grad know anything about what organisations are like? He's spent his entire life to date in the artificial environment of school...

Honestly you seem to be focusing a heck of a lot on a <b> tag here.

> Know your audience. Remember, the person you're emailing works there, so you're essentially telling them that their job and work environment sucks when you write something like this.

What's the point in asking a question and waiting for a meaningless (but diplomatic) response?

People are always incredibly nice when they want something (like a job) from you. If you really want to see how diplomatic someone is, you have to pay attention to how diplomatic they are when they don't have to be. That's why (for instance) a lot of employers pay special attention to how polite you are to clerical staff and others who aren't involved in the hiring process.

I would think everyone would know this by now, but amazingly they don't.

I remember long ago interviewing a fellow. I asked him why he wanted to work for my employer. He answered that he wanted someone to pay for his move to Seattle where he could go skiing. People can be astonishingly dumb sometimes.

Yes, and I did and still do many astonishingly dumb things.

Baffling on the face of it, but I think he answered that question when he said he wanted to be paid a compliment. I took that to mean he just wanted reassurance that he and his company did not come across in a negative light. Maybe they weren't the best, but at least it would be reassuring to know they didn't "suck".

False dichotomy. A third option is meaningful, constructive feedback. Only things they can improve.

Right, because they need someone just out of school to tell them how to improve their business. LOL.

They do if they are concerned about losing too many viable candidates to competing employers, which seems likely since they sought feedback.

Apparently they liked the guy. Even if the fit isn't right for this particular candidate, he might be able to refer (good) developers who are. I recall reading about some CEOs treating unrecruited interviewees as recruiting tools for their good friends. Always seemed like a sound idea to me.

> This is actually the potential hire's chance to pay me a compliment, give a small amount of feedback, and keep the door open for the future in case their other "better" option falls through.

Out of curiosity, is the compliment required for you to consider keeping the door open? I'm guessing you didn't mean for it to sound that way, but I'm not quite sure how else it should have sounded...

No, definitely not. What I meant is, if I put myself in the prospective employee's shoes, he has been given an opportunity to keep the door open. A compliment to the hiring manager would help do that in light of not taking the job. That's all. No I definitely don't expect a compliment. Just a suggestion along the lines of how to win friends and influence people.

So you ask someone why they didn't choose a job but only accept the reason as valid if it is positive? With that attitude what happens when someone in your company suggests some of your current methods suck and could be improved? Dismiss them out of hand because they are being negative?

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