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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?

#141

Post by marcus_holmes »

pjc50 wrote: post #137
marcus_holmes wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

not so much "incriminating" as "not required to be kept and could possibly be misconstrued".

Not our HR process, our customer's. What was actually destroyed depended on their interpretation of the law.

One common one was the Data Protection requirement to not keep inaccurate data meant that all but the latest employee change of address forms had to be destroyed. Easy to implement post-scanning, pain in the arse to do pre-scanning.

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

#142

Post by rbritton »

dragandj wrote: post #112
rbritton wrote: post #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.

Maybe the reason is just that they have found the candidate that fits the job even more perfectly.

In my experience I have usually been told if someone else beat me out (usually phrased as "We're moving forward with another candidate who is a better fit"). While it's possible, I don't think it was the case here.

I think it came down to the interview. I went into it expecting the questions to focus around one thing and ran into another, so I wasn't as smooth with the answers as I think was necessary. That was ultimately my fault, but I'd have felt more comfortable with some confirmation of it so I knew where to focus my improvement efforts.

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

#143

Post by rdancer »

neoncontrails wrote: post #109
refurb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

" Get rid of the forms and it's basically your word against theirs in court." Isn't that the ideal situation to be in, if you're the defendant? The burden of proof rests on the employee to prove discrimination. From the company's point of view, surely, the fewer forms, the less proof.

In a civil suit, the standard is "preponderance of evidence". In a he said, she said situation, circumstantial evidence becomes very important. If you've hired a hundred black lesbian octogenarians, and you're sued by a class of 20-something latino hetero males, you better be able to prove your hiring process wasn't discriminatory.

Some jurisdictions also shift the burden of proof under some circumstances so it is actually worse for the defendant.

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

#144

Post by mapt »

Because they can. Because job openings are scarce enough that people are applying anyway, regardless of being treated like shit. That's why we tolerate "but we're scared of lawsuits" as a legitimate excuse.

This sort of thing (and hundreds of other similar phenomena) doesn't show up in unemployment metrics, but in a healthier economy, it doesn't happen as much, because people dislike working for assholes.

It's a bit like how an Australian 5% unemployment (at $12.30 minimum wage) is very different from an American 5% unemployment (at $7.25 minimum wage) or a North Korean 5% unemployment (making $0.40 at Kaesong); The supply demand curve on employment is real, but it extends beyond tangible quantities like wages and into ways the employer behaves towards its employees & potential employees, because for workers, civil treatment is to some extent fungible with wages. In the US, we have much less labor regulation and more lawsuits, and this is the equilibrium we have arrived at in the current economic climate; In a different economic climate, we would arrive at a different equilibrium.

The official understanding of the problem is plagued by Goodhart's Law - you can measure wages, but not being an asshole, so we will favor policies which push on one but ignore the other, and we can expect assinine behavior wherever there is even a little bit of profit to be gained; We sample and optimize "Unemployment", "Inflation", and corporate revenue growth as indicators of the economy's health, and a lot of other things have fallen by the wayside as we have reassured ourselves or worried ourselves with those numbers.

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

#145

Post by StanAngeloff »

I used to offer feedback to rejected candidates... until a person felt that was unwelcome and left us an extremely angered review on a trusted website. I have been careful with words and have tried to avoid confrontational or subjective topics. That didn't seem to matter much to them.

All in all be thoughtful of the person in front of you and try not to be a jerk. Be prepared despite that some people will not want to hear what you have to say.

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

#146

Post by weinzierl »

Buttons840 wrote: post #73
refurb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

In Germany the interviewers notes and all the other documents related to the candidate have to be destroyed when they are not needed any more (Datensparsamkeit, literally data austerity, officially data reduction and data economy).

When a candidate is rejected there is period of to months they can sue for discrimination. After that one additional month is considered to be justifiable. So everything has to be destroyed three months after the rejection letter if there is no discrimination case.

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

#147

Post by wildmusings »

newjersey wrote: post #136
pjc50 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

This is a ridiculous idea to me. If I run a business, my internal evaluations of candidates and employees are no one's business but my own. They are my observations about the world, with the productive end of hiring better employees. Whether my decisions affect you or not is really not relevant; we make free decisions that affect other people all the time. I take issue with any claim that people have legally-binding private obligations to each other beyond abiding by contracts, and refraining from violence and fraud.

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

#148

Post by wildmusings »

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.

Let's do some reductio ad absurdum here:

"We're not banning thoughts, just those that are inside books."

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

#149

Post by dominotw »

ennuihenry wrote: post #135
dominotw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was humiliated by interviewers for not having a ivy league degree. I was really angry but I could do nothing but suck it up and move on.

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

#150

Post by kafkaesq »

Swizec wrote: post #57
kafkaesq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to say or how to not sound like a dick. I'm sure you know the stock phrases. If you don't, "Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, but we've decided to move on with another candidate. Good luck with your job search" is perfectly adequate. If it's been a few weeks, and you feel you need to apologize for the delay -- then of course do so. Really, it does help. About the only "dick move" is sendi…

> I'm sure you know the stock phrases. I think it has more to do with feeling like a dick and not wanting to say No explicitly because it causes emotional discomfort. So you procrastinate to avoid that discomfort. I'm sure you've heard of the concept of "fade out" in dating. Same thing. I know on a logical level that this makes me a dick and that I shouldn't do it. But on an emotional level, it's so much easier to av…

Hmm -- sounds like you've fallen into a role (communicating yes/no status to candidates) that you basically aren't comfortable with. Right?
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