Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates? • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ennuihenry » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #120

Turn it around. Imagine that you have several offers from different companies. After you choose one (and you can choose only one), do the other companies have reason to get all mopey and feel offended to hear no reason for the rejection? Of course they don't. Why should candidates feel any differently when a company chooses someone else?

How does a candidate improve on himself/herself if a company gives a stock phrase? Maybe doing a mock interview, but it's difficult to replicate the stressors associated with an interview.

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

#132

Post by wheaties » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

spoiler wrote: post #114

wheaties wrote: post #21

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.

I assumed all companies did this actually. The company I work for (it's a relatively small one, ~60 employees) does this. Although, the actual interviews and results are kept secret from the rest of the company—apart from higher-ups—I got insight into them because I was asked to filter out through some final candidates by interviewing them. I realised that they kept notes from past interviews, and based on the fact t…

That's fantastic. Yes. Improvement > current ability assuming a base skill development suitable for the career track.

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

#133

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 1:52 PM UTC

I wonder if having a mostly objective criteria would facilitate hiring and reduce frustrations

For example, give them a coding test (not fizzbuzz bs mind you), it might be just a multiple choice test, hence if they don't get approved this is an objective criteria used to turn them down

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

#134

Post by marcus_holmes » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #102

Buttons840 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there laws that would allow me to get the interviewers notes?

EU data protection does, but only if the notes are computerized.

I used to be the IT Director for a document scanning business in the UK.

Scanning paper HR records was the single most painful job we had to do. The entire file became a complete legal nightmare purely because it stopped being paper and became covered by Data Protection.

Usually the HR department had to go through every single employee file and shred any documents that might be grounds for legal action before they got scanned.

The process before scanning was: - employee is annoyed - employee requests their HR file - HR sanitise file and sends it to employee

after scanning, every single page was indexed. So they couldn't react to a request by destroying pages (because there'd be holes in the index). So they had to sanitise every single file before scanning.

I understand the point of Data Protection law, but in this case it was really counter-productive. Evidence was destroyed wholesale.

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

#135

Post by ennuihenry » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #66

geebee wrote: post #8

I get it, lawsuits. There's very little upside for the employer, the benefit would go to the candidate, and the liability is on the employer. I suppose one benefit for the employer might be that the candidate could improve, should there be an opportunity to interview again later. It's a problem, though. I once did a 7 hour take home exam, didn't hear back for a month, and finally got the one line rejection listed in…

I did a phone screen, coding exercises, took two days off and flew into sfo for 2 days of interview at airbnb. All I got was a 2 line email with "not a good fit" in it.

That would infuriate me.

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

#136

Post by newjersey » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #130

rayvd wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Thank you. I guess I didn't articulate it well enough for the grand parent comment here. I guess we could make an exception for personal AND non-commercial diaries but if you make business decisions that affect me based on information you store about me, then I should have a right to see them.

I'm also thinking about the rights of everyone including criminal (including terror) suspects to see (I am specifically not asking permission to alter or delete, that's another conversation) all the information the government (and their agents in the private sector) stores about them.

I know it sounds onerous specially because of the issue of authentication (how does the CIA know that it is me who is asking for information about me and not someone impersonating me?) and I don't have a good solution for these questions.

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

#137

Post by pjc50 » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 2:38 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #134

pjc50 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU data protection does, but only if the notes are computerized.

I used to be the IT Director for a document scanning business in the UK. Scanning paper HR records was the single most painful job we had to do. The entire file became a complete legal nightmare purely because it stopped being paper and became covered by Data Protection. Usually the HR department had to go through every single employee file and shred any documents that might be grounds for legal action before they go…

That sounds like "working as intended" - after all, if instead of just requesting their file the employee had initiated legal action against you, it would have been illegal to destroy those documents. And it also raises the question of which part of your HR process is generating incriminating documents in the first place?

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

#138

Post by foobarqux » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #83

foobarqux wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of "behavior problems" have you seen?

People showing up to interviews drunk or high, clear untreated mental health problems, etc. One guy showed up hung over after walking a few miles to the interview after he wrecked his car the night before while out binge drinking and drunk driving. I had one large guy block the exit from the interview room and demand that we hire him to do GPU programming, even though he clearly knew nothing about the subject. We sai…

Wow. Can you elaborate on the mental health cases? Are we talking about mood disorders like depression or detachment from reality like schizophrenia or something else?

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

#139

Post by yason » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 3:00 PM UTC

I just assume the simplest explanation: there were at least a few good candidates and they had to pick one so obviously the rest got rejected by the very decision to hire one. Companies hiring employees don't explicitly spend time thinking about the reasons why they might reject someone: they spend all their time trying to think which candidate stands out the best and could be that best choice for hiring.

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

#140

Post by bane » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

foobarqux wrote: post #138

bane wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People showing up to interviews drunk or high, clear untreated mental health problems, etc. One guy showed up hung over after walking a few miles to the interview after he wrecked his car the night before while out binge drinking and drunk driving. I had one large guy block the exit from the interview room and demand that we hire him to do GPU programming, even though he clearly knew nothing about the subject. We sai…

Wow. Can you elaborate on the mental health cases? Are we talking about mood disorders like depression or detachment from reality like schizophrenia or something else?

I probably can't diagnose correctly, but the ones I dealt with personally reminded me very strongly of some schizophrenic family members I have when they've stopped taking their medication.

One guy had to ask to leave the interview multiple times to go wash his hands.

That sort of thing.