Ask HN: Getting rejected by HR for cultural reasons? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Getting rejected by HR for cultural reasons?

10 pointsSouzana35 comments

Experienced software developer, got rejected via email after some interviews with X company.

I contacted them to ask for the reason, and they told me that I'm good technically but an HR lady decided that I'm not a good fit for the team as a person or something. The HR interview I had with her was strange, she had asked me several personality questions, like "what do your friends think about you?".

I really think they're just lying and don't want to pay what i asked for to be honest. Anyone has similar experiences?

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There's 1,000 potential reasons why you might be rejected for any job. It could be subtle discrimination, it could be not wanting to pay you what you're asking for, it could just be a crooked interviewer reaching for a reason to hire her friend over you, or it could be that they found somebody even better than you.

But the reality might be as simple as she didn't like you that much, just as you might not like random people for random reasons. People want to hire people they like talking to. Hiring is rarely as simple as Candidate A scored 19/20 on the tech questions we asked, but Candidate B scored 18/20 on the tech questions we asked, so we automatically must go with Candidate A if Candidate B seemed a lot more easy-going and cool to talk to.

If you sounded boring or rude to her or whatever or if your voice sounded unpleasant or whatever to her ear, maybe she didn't want to contemplate dealing with you 8 hours per day for the next few years. I guess the best thing you can do is try and figure out what makes your interviewer tick and try and bond with them over that. This is a tough pill to swallow for many of us introverts in the tech world who have to force themselves to be socially on for interviews, but this is part of the process unfortunately, particularly when not dealing with other super technical people in interviews.

Take it at face value.

Put it in context, though.

1. The culture might based on convoluted psychological theories. The culture might value asshole behavior. The culture might value people skills over technical skills.

None of those is a reflection on you…assuming you’re not offered a job in an asshole culture.

2. Finding reasons to reject candidates is most of the work of a hiring pipeline. There’s one job and a hundred qualified applications. Again that’s not a reflection on you.

3. If it was a great place to work, they would probably be hiring through personal networks not talking to strangers.

4. Bullshit interview questions can measure how a candidate navigates bullshit. Selection for thigh high bullshit boots is useful in organizations with a lot of bullshit.

5. Yes not getting a job sucks. But if you walk in looking for a job, you’ll probably walk out looking for a job.

Good luck.

Yeah. Nailed the in-person interview. They turned me down, telling the headhunter that they felt they were unable to connect with me personally.

Five months later, they laid off all but four people. That was in September or October 2008, when economically it looked like the world was ending.

I thank God they turned me down.

They tried to connect with you on a spiritual level and your aura didn't match theirs friend.

Your soul was the wrong color.

I am very, very sensitive to the "cultural fit" in my organization. It has nothing to do with you being gay, straight, black, white, woman, man or other typical trigger words.

It has a lot with you behaving in a way that will be acceptable/enjoyable to the team.

This does not mean that you have to be like them! I have all kind of personalities in several teams and they differ vastly. The thing that binds them is that they like to spend their time at the office together (and for some of them - outside the office too).

Of course this is not measurable and some people are just a "chemical fit", and some others are not. This does not mean that there is something wrong with you (or them, or us) - we are just different in the way we want to be together.

How do you control for bias and blindspots?

I don't. As I said, there is the natural "chemical fit" that you have or not with someone.

I consciously avoid making up my mind after the first seconds or minutes (which is an atavistic reaction) but after an hour or so I usually have an idea of "no", "yes", "not sure" (for the "will fit in" perspective).

Since the teams are already quite diverse, there are no obvious bias that would pop up. I want to have people of all kinds (everyone can provide something different) so i am very open by definition. But I need to feel that they will be a good fit.

This is of course completely arbitrary and based on gut feelings.

I am not sure about which blindspots you have in mind, though?

> I am not sure about which blindspots you have in mind, though?

Not trying to throw shade, but in my experience people who are confident that they have no bias usually do, often heaps of it, and are just not that much aware of it.

Especially when it comes to 'gut decisions' ('chemical fit'?).

Bias is human and we are all biased in one way or another. Saying that you’re not is a red flag, quite frankly, at least for me.

They didn't say they don't have blindspots. They said they don't control for them. And it makes sense to me. Yes, we have our blind spots but there's no method for finding them, nor is there a guarantee that the information they conceal is any more crucial than the rest.

In 2008 while doing interviews, I had a lady ask me as the final question:

- Do you play any instrument? Say the trumpet, the piano... anything?

I did play the guitar all my life.

- No, I don't.

- Anyone on your family have that "knack" for instruments? Something-something art?

- No mam.

Of course I was turned down.

One thing that I can say about these bullshit questions though, is that to maximize chances, you can go ahead and try to be fun. No funny. Fun.

"Yes, I worked with home-automation, had some clients, I did everything from business to coding..."

instead you can do

"That was a time in my life that I really excited about. You ever had one of those situations where you jump out of bed an you just wanna get to work? Man those were the days... so, home-automation..."

Sucks as an introvert to put with stuff like this, but it only takes an hour, and it's six figures later on.

Why did you say you didn't play an instrument when you did?

he probably wanted to skip the bullshit

In the end it's better not to contact them afterwards. If they are interested they will let you know if they aren't they will make up some reason. The reason for not hiring you is unimportant.. it's a few placeholder words hiding the real reason.

Money is the number one reason, age probably two. Sex, race, nationality closely follow.

Next time look her up on facebook, check out her family photos, videos and minic her likes and mannerisms. You will be surprised how little actual qualifications are needed for a role. But no one does this because the effort isn't worth the reward but for some top jobs it might be.

> an HR lady

First of all would you have said “an HR man” if that was the case?

Second, it’s somebody’s job to determine who’s a good fit or not. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. But it’s their call. If they’re good at it, they might get to keep doing it. And if they’re bad at it, they might not get to keep doing it.

Honestly this is partially why it’s preferable to let people know that a company is moving ahead with other candidates but never give a reason. Just invites follow-up questions and confusion when the reason is that someone at the company didn’t want to hire you.

I think I said that because I noticed that she was kind of rude in a woman way. Not easy to explain this one here though.

I honestly think that if I was a female she would like me more for example.

Yeah I’d take a deep look at what you just said and work on that first.

Hard to imagine any company who wants women to be comfortable working there to think that you’re a good culture fit based on the 3 sentences here.

I'm sure she would like me more if i was a female.

But apart from that, it wasn't just about her i think, others were also rude in a more subtle way. I really wouldn't like to work with them anyway.

You can tell yourself whatever story you like, but you’re the one who thought this was worth posting an Ask HN about.

> I'm sure she would like me more if i was a female.

Would she? If you were you but a woman would you still have so many issues with women? Would you call a woman working in HR an “HR lady”? Or would she just like you more if you had more respect for women?

Yes, of course I thought it's a good idea to post this, this is irrelevant. Anyway, after my experience with them I don't respect any of those people, no matter the gender. It's not really a gender issue here. I dislike them all equally xD

Good luck with the job search.

go to pramp.com, get a handful of free interviews or do a paid interview, tell people in advance to be extra critical of you and hear what they say. Maybe you're coming off wrong. or maybe you're right and they lied.

However, I've never had a company that didn't want to pay say that. They have nothing to lose by saying "we decided that you are out of our budget".

simply didn't pass the vibe check, sometimes it's just simple as that.

and it's not unethical or illegal. what we think is right and what we feel right are two different things.

maybe logically you're a great candidate, yet her gut feeling just tells her you're not a good fit there.

Discrimination is both unethical and illegal. People who reject based on vibe are bad people.

Yeah, “cultural fit” is a jolly term used not to give an actual explanation.

In fairness though, they don’t owe you an explanation.

True they don't owe me anything, I asked for one anyway cause why not.

It’s also often a euphemism for not being a member of the same race/gender/age/class group as the rest of the team

Or political/mindset group

In my experience, both sides of an interview tend to avoid politics so that doesn’t often come into play directly. At least not in any of the technical interviews I’ve been a part of over multiple decades. Of course an interviewer may make assumptions about a candidate’s political positions based on the categories I mentioned in my original post (age, gender), but that type of fit would already be covered under those categories.

I could also see religious beliefs fitting into that category of culture fit if the candidate’s attire includes religious symbols or articles of clothing.

> In my experience, both sides of an interview tend to avoid politics

They do, but in many cases the interviewer looks at the social media profile of the candidates. It's always the most vocal on both sides that tend to fill their public profiles of loud political statements (so they're easy to spot) and many wouldn't hire an outspoken far right winger or a blatantly death-to-capitalism lib type in their team.

Is it though? Why is it an accepted term for such a long time then?

Culture here refers to the company's culture - not the candidates.

It can be both.

and you don’t owe them an interview

yep, exactly

sounds like discrimination

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