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Comment by guylhem | Hacker News Reader

>When rejecting candidates for my own company I wanted to tell them why I rejected them, and how to improve, but I have been told not to do it, for legal reason.

When the laws prevent you from giving actionable feedback to the person you didn't hire, you know it has gone too far.

The government should have no business in your selection or rejection of new hires, and the firing of them if needed.

>I believe the US way to be better

I don't. It may be less backward bent than France, but there is certainly a lot of room for improvement - like being able to give proper feedback.

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The government doesn't prevent you from giving actionable feedback to the person you didn't hire, it just gives the person you didn't hire the ability to sue you should you not hire them based on some criteria (race, sex, religion, or whatever their lawyer can argue).

I thought the real reason was that if you have a candidate that is, say, Black, and you tell him that you didn't hire him because you "felt that he didn't have enough knowledge of Ruby", he would be able to sue you if he found out you hired someone who supposedly has the same level of knowledge of ruby as him.

Sorta. The real reason is that you're giving the other party information that they can use in court. It's the same basic principle as "don't talk to the police without a lawyer" -- you can argue that it's paranoid, but it's a functional sort of paranoia. You have everything to lose and very little to gain.

> "felt that he didn't have enough knowledge of Ruby", he would be able to sue you if he found out you hired someone who supposedly has the same level of knowledge of ruby as him.

Except that you felt it because the other candidate interviewed and sold himself better.

The way it is being presented here you could always sue if you're black and the person they hired wasn't. It doesn't really work that way. They do have to provide proof of their claim of racism/sexism or whatnot. They didn't hire me isn't proof.

That's right. The rejected candidate can always sue. S/he might not win, but s/he can sue.

And for the employer, win or lose, it's a huge headache, risk and cost, with big PR downside to boot. The employer has no incentive to increase this risk by saying more than is absolutely necessary.

It's kinda the same reason that companies don't apologize for wrongdoing. Apologizing is admitting fault, and then they automatically lose the lawsuit.

I don't buy it. The legal reason is to be short. It's not about being rude. The valley's hiring standards are dismal and everybody is just following Google's antisocial geek stance. I believe they need to grow up as this will backfire. Good candidates are already being headhunted by competitors with smarter hiring policies.

Remember that almost always in the US you end up paying your own legal expenses even if someone else unsuccessfully sues you. That means it is expensive even if you are in the right.

Then look at it from the pov of the corporate lawyer. If they okay you supplying a rejection paragraph instead of a rejection sentence and you do get sued then it looks a failure of the lawyer. Whenever I've worked with corporate lawyers they have always erred on the side of not doing anything because the risk is to their career and the rewards go to other people in the organization.

That's not necessarily true. There are lots of situations in the US where the winning party can get a judgement for the losing party to pay reasonable legal expenses.

>>I believe the US way to be better

> I don't.

I was speaking about the technical interview instead of a more relaxing one we have in France.

I think rejecting candidate with a single formal sentence isn't what it should be, of course. Companies should be able to say what went wrong, but noone will for the legal issues raised in the comments below. Why should they take risks?

I think there's no reason to be afraid of lawsuits and very little evidence to support that you should. If a candidate decides to sue, it's probably because there's actual evidence of discrimination.

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