Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 348 posts

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#171

Post by tmm84 »

paul7986 wrote: post #137

In October I had one of my best phone interviews. I never heard back yet other recruiters keep contacting me about the job. Today a recruiter got back to me saying oh yes they interviewed you and they said you have too much graphic design experience and not enough UX. Huh I've been a UX Designer and UI Developer for ten years. Not helpful and their reason has to be personal, so they just say nothing or as today were…

Sometimes companies just don't understand a role that well. Maybe the last UI/UX person they had was initially a UX person that turned UI and so they think you need more of one than the other. I can't count the number of times I seen job descriptions that look like a copy and pasted resume of the previous employee they had.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#172

Post by mark-r »

dominotw wrote: post #46
wgerard wrote: post #10

We interviewed a lot of hiring managers/etc. while we were working on a previous business in the hiring space. As part of that, we asked them this very question. The fear of litigation was by far the biggest reason we heard, but there were some other popular reasons (mostly relating around conflict avoidance): * Notably, giving feedback feels like an opening for the candidate to submit a rebuttal instead of ending th…

> Someone better came along to fill the role and nobody wants to tell a candidate "We found someone better than you". This is actually the most common feedback i that i get :D

That's because it's the safest thing to say, even if it isn't true.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#173

Post by paul7986 »

tmm84 wrote: post #171
paul7986 wrote: post #137

In October I had one of my best phone interviews. I never heard back yet other recruiters keep contacting me about the job. Today a recruiter got back to me saying oh yes they interviewed you and they said you have too much graphic design experience and not enough UX. Huh I've been a UX Designer and UI Developer for ten years. Not helpful and their reason has to be personal, so they just say nothing or as today were…

Sometimes companies just don't understand a role that well. Maybe the last UI/UX person they had was initially a UX person that turned UI and so they think you need more of one than the other. I can't count the number of times I seen job descriptions that look like a copy and pasted resume of the previous employee they had.

Well it was weird cause it came directly to the recruiter via the UX Manager. But oh well I fortunately have a job and sometimes just go and see what's out there.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#175

Post by Iv »

exabrial wrote: post #158

I would love to be able tell applicants why we didn't choose them to help them along in their job search or clear up any misconceptions. There problem is it is a risk to a business with 0 chance of making it more profitable. Chalk this up as overregulation at it's finest having predictable secondary affects.

But you are not your business. There are more things to life than making profits, like helping fellow humans. If the risk is very low and the cost basically null, doing nice things is a positive externality.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#176

Post by lonelappde »

ticmasta wrote: post #87
wgerard wrote: post #10

We interviewed a lot of hiring managers/etc. while we were working on a previous business in the hiring space. As part of that, we asked them this very question. The fear of litigation was by far the biggest reason we heard, but there were some other popular reasons (mostly relating around conflict avoidance): * Notably, giving feedback feels like an opening for the candidate to submit a rebuttal instead of ending th…

How about the fact that there's absolutely no upside for a hiring company/manager to give feedback? It's all potential downside...

Facebook gave (gives?) feedback. It's good PR in the candidate community, not just bet candidates like it, but because it promotes Facebook's reputation as a fearless company that does what they believe in regardless of conventional wisdom.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#177

Post by dehrmann »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #29
shadow-banned wrote: post #6

Experienced this at a local tech company that will remain nameless. They're in the logistics space. They enable fast shipping for merchants. Did 10+ hours of a challenge project - something I would have charged $5,000+ for, including a channel-specific attribution model (with defense of my choice), a complete onboarding campaign flow with timing, and sample email creative, lead scoring model, and a bunch of pedantic…

I had a similar thing happen with a well-known messaging app startup I interviewed with. This company had me do an initial technical screen (2-hours of work) and expressed great interest in the work I did. They asked me to complete a follow on "work sample" which I promptly completed with extras (error handling, specs, etc). After completing the work sample (a non-trivial amount of effort), they suddenly decided they…

I also had something happen with a well-known messaging app. They gave me a take-home assignment that turned out to be pretty non-trivial (16+ hours). They liked it, even had good things to say about it, I had an hour mostly non-technical meeting with a manager(?) there that seemed to go reasonably well, and nope, they weren't interested.

I told people to avoid this place because of how bad of an experience it was.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#178

Post by monksy »

jeffdavis wrote: post #143
monksy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it's not in a phone call. That's a huge waste of time just to be told that they're passing. Google insisted on a call. It's just annoying.

A phone call is considered more respectful than an email. It may waste time, but signs of respect often do.

No way man.

Being terminated by phone or in person is respectful compared to email. Being rejected by phone for something that for most times is going to not be successful, that's just twisting the knife.

At the moment I don't know how to respond to call requests when it's not successful. I fear that saying: "Hey if this is a rejection, I would prefer to just get an email. I understand."

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#179

Post by ben509 »

rconti wrote: post #67
mdturnerphys wrote: post #43

A couple years ago I took a full day off work to interview with a midsized startup that had been after me for months. Halfway through the interviews it started to become clear that they'd expect me to work 60-hour weeks, with regular weekend travel, for less pay than I was making at my 9-5. In the final interview with one of the founders I told him I wasn't willing to do that, so I wasn't surprised when the head of H…

So you expect the person setting the policy to feel free to break it at will? That would be a terrible example, even if the head of HR set it unilaterally, which, as someone else mentioned, is unlikely. Furthermore, if it WAS unilateral, wouldn't that mean that the head of HR who set the policy was the biggest believer in said policy?

When the question is asked "why are you doing this" and the answer is, "because it's our policy," what that means is, "we are doing this thing because it's the thing we do."

I think people who give that answer honestly believe it's a valid answer possibly because they're thinking of the rationale behind the policy rather than the literal meaning of what they're saying. But when I've heard it, it's felt like an insult to my intelligence, like it's some stupid word game to dodge my question.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#180

Post by zeroonetwothree »

danaris wrote: post #166
gwbas1c wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if people cared at all about interviewees they’d give some semblance of honest feedback rather than “no thanks.” A former Apple architect once gave me "honest feedback" about the languages I work with. It was his opinion about industry direction, that 8 years later, was 100% wrong. (Although I don't think I was a good match for his startup.) That's why I consider honest feedback flame bait.

If you get a piece of feedback from one person, you know what you would need to do differently to get hired by that person. If you get similar pieces of feedback from 3 people, you now likely know what you need to do differently to get hired, period. It’s not about getting specific, individual pieces of feedback. It’s about being able to triangulate toward what you need to do differently. And maybe you get 3 pieces o…

That assumes there is no systematic bias. Which clearly there is.
Post reply on HN