As a sometimes job seeker: Screw hiring managers who don't give feedback. I want to know what I did wrong so I can improve.
Not giving feedback when people fail is a sure-fire way to make the whole ecosystem worse. In any situation.
Not giving feedback when people fail is a sure-fire way to make the whole ecosystem worse. In any situation.
The feedback you don't get, is almost always about personality. There's no litigation-safe way of saying "Man, you come across as a total douche, I'll pass"
Want to know more? No, because then you will threaten to sue us. The legal action is frivolous and will lose in the end but it will cost money time and attention to deal with.
But forget all that, seriously now, what's the real reason, the applicant asks? For us, if we didn't make an offer it's either because the applicant is a jerk, a liar, or incompetent. One or more of these covers the situation with the majority of applicants. Salary is not an issue, we pay what it takes for the right people. I can't say the same for other companies, they often want to find someone cheap. Jerks don't change, the incompetent can't improve, and liars only use feedback to make their lies harder to detect. This means all feedback is either useless or counterproductive. There is one exception. The rare case they are a sweet genius with severe BO. In this case little can be gained from feedback since there's little chance one is not aware of it. If one suspects BO might be the reason, then it is and it should be fixed before the interview.
What an incredibly cocky and pretentious view of the world.
And what about "incompetent can't improve"? This is plainly wrong. We all were incompetent at some point.
1. Stop lying on the CV, about past experience, and about skills.
2. Stop being a jerk, learn some social skills.
3. Stop being incompetent, learn to actually build quality products.
No one that has a problem with any of those is interested in fixing it though, and in general being a liar, a jerk and incompetent isn't something that can be fixed anyway, so feedback won't do any good.
If you are competent, truthful and not a jerk, you'll be getting job offers. If you aren't, you know what the problem is and how to fix it.
Often this happens because I'm in the wrong stack and they didn't specify. Other times ... shrug
What am I doing wrong on those occasions? I don't know. And never will.
Although once, just once, I managed to figure it out after a few months. That was with Google. But they gave me specific technical feedback on waht I did wrong. Eventually I was able to realise what I was saying wrong that made them think I didn't know those technical things (it was an extremely consistent brain fart that lasted all day, through all 6 interviews, but they can't know that, they just know I was saying the wrong things)
Your phrasing implies that you get a job offer after 80% of interviews. That seems a perfectly fine record and it seems there is no need to know what was going on in the other 20% of interviews, so things are good.