Hacker News Reader

Comment by vsareto | Hacker News Reader

Why did the author experience this then? This should have been 1 phone call max to establish the author didn't have this experience. But instead, they sent him through multiple rounds and made them give a lengthy presentation.

>They were looking for someone with a few years of experience working with a specific technology I had never used. But… they knew that from my resume.

Can you explain why they might have gone with the above excuse rather than "we found someone better" or "we won't be moving forward"?

View on HN

Unfortunately rejecting candidates and/or providing feedback can be a legal minefield. The most generic excuse is the best one and using objective facts is one of the safest ways to reject someone.

I see liability cited as a reason all the time, but I never hear about specific cases or settlements, or even a justification from an actual legal team (HR doesn't count, they are trained to never allow anything as far as I can tell). It comes across from the inside and the outside as pure laziness.

It's a legal minefield in the sense that there is legal trouble if a hiring manager says "I hired the other candidate because they were white", but there is no such trouble if they just privately think it.

Would there be anything wrong with "we really liked you but found someone else better"? That's been the situation in my company recently. None of the candidates were bad, all of them would have been capable of doing the job but we had to choose one.

That's what they said. From the article: "They said that I interviewed extremely well, but that they decided to go with another candidate."

They were likely willing to hire the author anyway, even without the experience. But they ended up finding someone that was better than the author.

>Can you explain why they might have gone with the above excuse rather than "we found someone better" or "we won't be moving forward"?

They did say "we found someone better". From the article: "They said that I interviewed extremely well, but that they decided to go with another candidate."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com