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Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

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Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#91
post #72

Former technical recruiter, current CEO here. The recruiting and hiring process as presently practiced by most firms is an enormous waste of everyone's time. We are inefficient in how we gather information from applicants and how we communicate it to them. This is partially because it's hard to standardize the information needed for each job and available from each candidate. By the time you meet the minimum requirem…

To your point of huge emotional drain, I was surprised at the behavior that the article mentioned about rejected candidates reacting to feedback. It's like they never felt failure before...

I like her saying - chew the meat, spit out the bones and thank them for the feedback.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#93
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only does fear of lawsuits prevent companies from disclosing no-hire reasons, it prevents them from even recording those reasons internally. I don't get this mentality. A) I seem to be unaware of the rash of lawsuits befalling companies that provide feedback. I admit I just may be ignorant of them. B) It seems that not recording reasons actually makes the company more vulnerable. When you combine a "preponderan…

The lawsuits are discrimination lawsuits. Candidates will allege racial, gender, or age discrimination. If you given them any sort of justification, plaintiff's council will go searching through your organization for anyone who works there already and fails to pass whatever justification you provided. Then, jurors are free to infer that the real reason why intentional bias and the justification was just a cover story…

[deleted]

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#95
post #4

Not only does fear of lawsuits prevent companies from disclosing no-hire reasons, it prevents them from even recording those reasons internally. If you get rejected and don't know why, take heart: a year from now the company also won't know why. You can apply again as if it were Groundhog Day.

We keep a record of all coding exercises performed by people who want to come in for an interview. We reference it for those who reapply to see if there has been improvement. All of our interview questions are in a github repo and peer reviewd so you don't get those brain teaser useless questions. I wish we took notes during interviews. On well. We still remember candidates who apply multiple times.

Are you in the UK? What are the DPA implications of this? Is it not PI?

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#96
The timing on this posting is somewhat darkly amusing for me -- I was just rejected by Stripe on Wednesday. I fit the job posting perfectly, so I asked why, and the answers I received were almost identical to those highlighted in the posting. It's unfortunate what the bad eggs in the hiring process have done to make it effectively useless for everyone else.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#98
Relying on interviews is not a great hiring strategy [1]

Better to use testing, either by psychometrics or assessment days (group tasks, short notice presentations etc.). [2]

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140606071003-7589947-no-cor...

[2] http://www.inc.com/articles/2002/01/23815.html

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#99

I think asking a less litigious and confrontational question might be more productive such as "What do you think I could do/change/improve to make my next interview more successful?"

Unfortunately, this is a situation that requires zero-tolerance. The cost of a single candidate reinterpreting what you say and dragging you into court is too high to risk. Even if the case is complete BS, the cost of arguing over BS will make you regret every reasonable candidate that you tried to help.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#100
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We keep a record of all coding exercises performed by people who want to come in for an interview. We reference it for those who reapply to see if there has been improvement. All of our interview questions are in a github repo and peer reviewd so you don't get those brain teaser useless questions. I wish we took notes during interviews. On well. We still remember candidates who apply multiple times.

Are you in the UK? What are the DPA implications of this? Is it not PI?

I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but the only one of your acronyms I'm familiar with is UK. But perhaps that because my answer to your first question would be 'no'.
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