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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?

#121

Post by dclowd9901 »

readams wrote: post #44
vonmoltke wrote: post #34

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…

Exactly this. An attorney will practically start salivating if a despondent candidate comes to them with a story of not getting hired and the company telling them they weren't a good "culture fit."

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

#122

Post by dclowd9901 »

basseq wrote: post #45
nsedlet wrote: post #35

At HireArt (W12) we've been working on a feedback feature for awhile and are close to finally releasing it. We have a fairly rigorous screening process, and every candidate is assessed by a grader according to a rubric. Our thinking was that if we provide this assessment to employers, surely we could provide it to candidates, too. When we spoke to a labor attorney about this awhile back, their first reaction was basi…

You're dead right: hiring is hard. Hiring with quality training, repeatable processes, feedback loops, etc. is incredibly hard . For most companies, whether they like to admit it or not, a B-grade process is "good enough". And the ROI to take it to A+ is either non-existent or hard to prove. Here's the thing, though: that doesn't mean your labor attorney is wrong. One employee says something to a rejected candidate t…

It is hard. The problem is that it's also hard to back out of a bad hire, so the cost of making a mistake is tremendously high.

I'm a very "right to work" (bullshit term I know) oriented person, in that I think neither companies nor their employees should be obligated to each other at all. Firing/quitting should be frictionless and easy. Instead, firing is wraught with legal problems such that you can't even fire an employee unless you can monetarily justify the cost of a lawsuit against their impact of being a negative influence, or they're part of some indiscriminate layoff procedure.

If I'm quitting or changing jobs, I'm harangued about it left and right by managers as to why or how this could happen.

Let's not pretend we owe each other anything and just move on like any other business transaction.

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

#123

Post by jrochkind1 »

sreenadh wrote: post #119
blubb-fish wrote: post #115

I am currently in the situation of playing the HR role for hiring a developer in our start-up - for which I am actually working as a Data Scientist. I not just almost always give a reason for why we decided against a candidate - I even often give advice which might be relevant for future applications. Why am I not afraid of a law suit? B/c the hiring process I designed is based on a couple of quick tests directly rel…

You are a rare breed. I wish it was standard practices everywhere. People really need feedback to correct something they are doing wrong. I would love to be interviewed by you just for the feedback.

The internal recruiter at GitHub gave me a couple sentences of feedback passed on from the interviewers when I was turned down after the final interview round. I appreciated it, it was helpful, and I saw how I could have done better at the interview, although I still thought they were making a mistake. :)

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

#124

Post by tyingq »

blubb-fish wrote: post #115

I am currently in the situation of playing the HR role for hiring a developer in our start-up - for which I am actually working as a Data Scientist. I not just almost always give a reason for why we decided against a candidate - I even often give advice which might be relevant for future applications. Why am I not afraid of a law suit? B/c the hiring process I designed is based on a couple of quick tests directly rel…

Do you make any attempt to interview for things are inherently subjective?

At least for some positions, personality and culture fit might be important.

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

#125

Post by Gracana »

refurb wrote: post #64
jzwinck wrote: 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.

I don't think that's true for all companies. The big, multi-national company I work for keeps all candidate assessment form that have been filled out by the interviewer (even for summer interns). Of course we're trained beforehand to not put stuff in the form that could be construed as discriminatory based on protected classes. You have to keep in mind that if a candidate is rejected and comes back and says it was il…

The university I worked for had a very strict hiring process, and it was all recorded as well.

The process worked something like this:

1) Get approval from HR to start the hiring process. Your department needs to have the money to hire someone, and a need to fill a position. I'm not sure how either is decided.

2) Define the position. Several people are involved here, basically you define the role and the areas of expertise that you want and need.

3) Information from 2 gets sent back to all involved parties, and everyone ranks the skills by necessity and comments on things.

4) HR takes the information and creates job listings, and collects candidates.

5) Interviews take place, and you grade applications according to what you decided in 3.

6) Hire someone who satisfies the requirements and did well in the interviews.

There's some leeway in the system because the interview and the judgment of the interviewers matters, but you can't just accept somebody because you like them, and you can't reject someone because you don't.

As for what happens with an applicant's information after they're rejected... I'm not sure where it goes or whether it gets called up again if they re-apply. Our department was pretty small though, if we didn't hire you the first time, we won't have forgotten you by the second time around.

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

#126

Post by cm2187 »

Headhunters are a pain in the ass but they are useful in that respect. You can provide feedback to the candidate indirectly without the feedback starting to be a negociation or pissing off the candidate. Internal candidates aren't that lucky.

Usually recruiters made their decision when walking out of the room on whether the candidate is suitable or not. This timeout process is a bit wasteful.

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

#127

Post by larryb »

Where there's a will there's a way.

If you wanted to give candidates feedback, you could have them sign a form along the lines of "you agree not to sue us for giving you feedback" and give you feedback.

Professors are already doing a variation of this, the reverse actually, when asked to send recommendation letters for grad students. They ask the student to sign a form that waives their right to a copy of the letter.

Live everything else, the companies bold enough to provide better interviewing service will have a leg up on companies that don't.

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

#128

Post by cm2187 »

icedchai wrote: post #85
Buttons840 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? I was thinking for example: I can request a copy from my employer of HR docs specific to me. Does this only apply because I'm employed, or does it extend to interview notes?

You actually think "interview notes" are recorded anywhere formally? Pretty unlikely in 90% of corporations. You're likely requesting something from the circular file.

And half of the recruiters are drawing dinosaurs on their notepad during the interview!

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

#129

Post by rayvd »

newjersey wrote: post #116
tomp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be so? It's not the candidate's personal information...

If you store I formation about me, it is by definition my information. It may be your thoughts but if there is a link to me, I should get to see it. Think multi device ad retargeting. How cool would it be to get back information on what the ad exchange thinks I am like...

Wow. No. My thoughts are none of your business.

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

#130

Post by pjc50 »

rayvd wrote: post #129
newjersey wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you store I formation about me, it is by definition my information. It may be your thoughts but if there is a link to me, I should get to see it. Think multi device ad retargeting. How cool would it be to get back information on what the ad exchange thinks I am like...

Wow. No. My thoughts are none of your business.

It's not thoughts, it only applies to data stored in a computer.
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