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In-house recruiters or hiring managers, except perhaps the most inexperienced or unprofessional, will not press a candidate to explain a decision to decline an offer. If the company really wanted you and is disappointed about your decision, you might be asked if there was anything that could have been handled better during the recruitment process or that would have swayed you, but it is highly unlikely that you'll be asked to provide a detailed rationale for your decision. In the odd case that you are pressured for one, you are under no obligation to bow to that pressure.

As for relationship-building and helping others:

1. You cannot build a relationship with every person you meet. This is not a realistic goal. 2. You cannot help every single person you meet. This is not a realistic goal. 3. People are good at discerning whether an offer to help is empty or legitimate. If you were seeking employment a week ago and haven't even started your new job, you have no business suggesting to the people who interviewed you at a rejected prospective employer that you are now in a position to assist them professionally. Offering such help concurrent with a notification that you have accepted employment elsewhere is, again, an act of extreme hubris and is likely to be seen as such.

Perhaps we have some industry gaps between my professional experience and yours. I have experienced many recruiters and professionals who have wanted to know about specific competing offers and the reason for taking the offer.

I see your argument on relationships and I respect it. I think we differ slightly in personal opinion, which is perfectly ok with me.

You may have met some of the inexperienced or naive ones then.

If an experienced recruiter wants to know all about competing offers they are doing market research and you are giving them power over you and your future choices.

Just politely and distantly avoid answering any follow-up after a decline.

I noticed on your blog you referenced a recruiter that screwed you (or someone over). Do you think that experience and others has fundamentally altered the way you view recruiters and HR-types?

Sadly its rather that the decent recruiters/HRs I've met are few and far between.

You can't really rub shoulders with fellow contractors without hearing everyone else's horror stories too.

Sometimes some headhunter is referred around because they are that rare thing, a good person. But those exceptions are remarkably rare.

Thx for finding my blog.

In-house recruiters or hiring managers, except perhaps the most inexperienced or unprofessional, will not press a candidate to explain a decision to decline an offer.

I couldn't possibly disagree more. If I have invested time into a potential employee and they decide at the end of the process that they don't want to accept our offer then I wouldn't think twice about (respectfully) asking for their rationale. Primarily because I want to ensure that there was no misunderstanding of the role or package but also so I can learn from it and ensure the next person I offer doesn't reject for the same reasons.

I certainly wouldn't pressure someone into providing an explanation but I would consider it basic professional courtesy to be told why we were unsuccessful in acquiring that candidate.

Do you tell those candidates you decline why you declined them?

Categorically. If the applicant has taken the effort to come and interview with us and we decide not to proceed then as a rule I will always give full and frank feedback as to why we came to our decision. Sometimes the feedback is hard to swallow but occasionally I'll get an applicant who challenges our decision and we will genuinely reconsider if they present a valid argument.

This could be a US thing but you should avoid giving a why you reject a candidate because you are opening yourself up to litigation.

All companies big enough to have a policy on this have a "I'm afraid we don't have a position to offer you at this time" -kind of stock reply for this reason.

If there's any follow-up at all its purpose will be to leave the candidate with a good impression, not to give the candidate any actual information.

I've even known companies to say "I'm sorry, we don't discuss specific cases" and post a t-shirt to candidates who ask why.

Well we're UK based and the fear of litigation is certainly a lot smaller. Obviously there is always a concern that a candidate will have a significantly negative reaction to a rejection but I spend a lot of time with all candidates who go through our interview process and build up a lot of rapport with them so I like to hope that they don't take the feedback personally.

I expect you'll agree that most UK companies don't do this though. Even for small companies, most won't give any feedback.

Unfortunately this tends to be the case more often than not. I don't think it's out of fear of litigation, I think it's simply laziness and pointless HR process.

> I would be curious to know how you typically offer to help others.

The guy hasn't asked for help. He's come very close to outright threatening you. His question's not about him or his company, it's about you:

> "Why did you decide to take another offer?"

He's asking us to justify our decision; asking why we decided the way we did. And, in doing so, he's basically made the only choice how badly you're going to risk insulting him.

The tone of the conversation is basically 'Back down or go to war.'

They could have been enthusiastic and asked me about the other job I accepted - and the things I enthused about would probably be the reasons I accepted it. Could have tried to have a real conversation in other words. Would have got more information out of me that way.

I think it's probably a no win situation by the time someone's phrasing it as 'Why did you X?' It's such an aggressive question to ask. Oh maybe someone here and there's got a small enough ego that you're not going to insult them if you're honest - people who would bear you absolutely no ill will over the essential statement that their company is inferior in some way - but I think such people are rare and in that environment the trick is to say as little of worth as possible. Whatever I say, someone's going to find a way to hold it against me.

So, what would I say? I don't know, it would depend on the companies in question. I'd probably pick the least insulting difference I could think of between the two companies that couldn't be reconciled and enthuse about that. Even if the person on the other end of the line would honestly correct a difference in offer and hope to bid for me that way, it's not worth giving someone like that a handle on me - letting them have something I want that they can manipulate me with.

Products (and cattle) are branded. People are not. It's demeaning to imply that a person's reputation is the same as a brand.

I do believe there is a difference there, however. A brand is what people perceive of you before they know anything about your reputation. What do they see around the web? What image do you put off when you walk in the room? How do you treat people? What do your correspondence cards look like? How do you communicate? Those are all elements of a brand.

A reputation is all about what other people have to say and how you are preceded by what those people say. That includes things like LinkedIn recommendations, hearsay, references, etc.

Thoughts? What other terms would you use to describe the two different aspects? I do think it's important to distinguish.

I see the distinction you are making, but I would use the word "impression" instead of "brand". E.g. The kind of impression you make on other people.

Hackers tend to have very sensitive bullshit detectors. Anything that seems phony (like the word "brand") is going to raise suspicion that you don't understand us.

I can definitely appreciate the bullshit detectors. I'll have to keep that in mind in the future, for sure. It's hard in a field like career advice not to sound woo woo from time to time. It's easy to get lost in the industry and forget how it gets interpreted by the people you're actually trying to help.

Thanks for having the patience to call that out to me.

Back in the days when "branding" applied only to cattle, the word for what you're referring to as a "personal brand" was "your name".

As in: making a name for yourself, upholding your name, being a name in good standing.

I'll leave branding to cattle, thank you muchly.