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Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
191–200 of 348 posts
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a rebuttal allows you to identify a good candidate you would otherwise have missed, that's actually a positive thing though? (I appreciate many rebuttals won't be in this category).
Very often you don't tell a candidate they're not getting the job until you have already filled the position.
Just like you don't tell a job offer 'no' until you've already signed a better offer. There's nothing to gain by closing off options prematurely.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#193As a candidate, I've always preferred polite "thanks, but no thanks" responses in a timely manner. The other kind of feedback that I like is things like, "we need people with a different background / experience than you have." IMO, judgement feedback (you screwed up how you handle your yak shaving, or I don't think we'll get along with each other) is too subjective to be constructive. And, I get it. As someone who's…
My worst interview was where the interviewer started yelling at me. After the interview the recruiter sent me an email and told me that he wouldn't work with me anymore as I was hostile during the interview. It was insanely bizarre. It was like being found guilty without ever even being given a trial or being told there was a trial.
Sounds like you had a bad recruiter setting you up with bad interviews. You can throw a pebble and hit five recruiters so no need to stick with a dud anyways.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
This happened to me with RedHat. They were my first choice, so being ghosted by them delayed my job search by several weeks. It was a serious problem for me.
I fail to see why. (Shouldn’t stop looking around, ever.)
You interview at two companies. Your first choice rejects you. Your second choice says yes immediately, then gives you time to decide.
If the first company rejects you and tells you so, you can immediately accept the second choice. If the first company rejects you and ghosts you, you instead wait a month hoping the first company will get back to you, then accept the second choice.
If you are willing to completely burn bridges, you could accept the second choice, with the intention of immediately leaving should you hear back from the first choice. While possible, I'd have some qualms about doing so.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Does said messaging app also not show up on Glassdoor? Making it hard for candidates to identify this problematic process.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#196As a candidate, I've always preferred polite "thanks, but no thanks" responses in a timely manner. The other kind of feedback that I like is things like, "we need people with a different background / experience than you have." IMO, judgement feedback (you screwed up how you handle your yak shaving, or I don't think we'll get along with each other) is too subjective to be constructive. And, I get it. As someone who's…
> “It's safer to pass on a good candidate than hire a bad employee.” After a decade of building teams in machine learning, I regard this as one of those hallowed mythical pieces of wisdom that is just totally wrong. It dramatically over-estimates both the chances and costs of hiring a bad employee, while discounting the huge, huge opportunity cost of not hiring rare, exceptional candidates. I’d much rather spend a ye…
Why do you assume the quoted phrase implies some ridiculous fizzbuzz HackerRank memorization-based hiring process? I agree with Spolsky that generally it's safer to err on the side of false negatives when hiring. I guess the exception would be if truly skilled people in your industry are extremely rare, so you essentially have no choice but to deal with false positives if you want to be able to hire at all.
But none of that has anything to do with the screening process itself, and it's certainly not advocating screening based on bullshit.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#197As a candidate, I've always preferred polite "thanks, but no thanks" responses in a timely manner. The other kind of feedback that I like is things like, "we need people with a different background / experience than you have." IMO, judgement feedback (you screwed up how you handle your yak shaving, or I don't think we'll get along with each other) is too subjective to be constructive. And, I get it. As someone who's…
My worst interview was where the interviewer started yelling at me. After the interview the recruiter sent me an email and told me that he wouldn't work with me anymore as I was hostile during the interview. It was insanely bizarre. It was like being found guilty without ever even being given a trial or being told there was a trial.
I had something similar. I was given an extensive exam to take before the interview, and it consisted of weird things like 200 arithmetic problems in 15 minutes, picking the best synonym for 100 words in 5 minutes, etc. Things not humanly possible without immense preparation for that precise test.
The interviewer comes in and starts berating me for not finishing and how I must’ve gone to a bad school, must not be smart, etc. Then he goes on and on about how I’m clearly not suited for the job and his young assistant is sitting beside him laughing.
It was a crazy interview. I mentally gave up after a few minutes because the guy was clearly fucking with me and didn’t want me, so I started giving smart ass responses since there was no reason to let myself get beat up.
I get a call a few hours later telling me I can start any time. I told the recruiter to tell the company that the interviewer was a dick (in nicer words) and I’d pass.
Worse than no feedback is opposite feedback. Don’t play mental games with people.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “It's safer to pass on a good candidate than hire a bad employee.” After a decade of building teams in machine learning, I regard this as one of those hallowed mythical pieces of wisdom that is just totally wrong. It dramatically over-estimates both the chances and costs of hiring a bad employee, while discounting the huge, huge opportunity cost of not hiring rare, exceptional candidates. I’d much rather spend a ye…
A large company can afford bad hires. You can shuffle them around or find something they can do. A small company can not afford that luxury so they have to be more careful in their hiring. A bad hire completely distracts a small team.
Why is simply letting the bad employee go not mentioned as an option?
We had a new hire that didn't work out at a place I used to work at. Fired after 3 months. No hard feelings, he took it well and found a good job a few weeks later. Everyone is happy.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#199As a candidate, I've always preferred polite "thanks, but no thanks" responses in a timely manner. The other kind of feedback that I like is things like, "we need people with a different background / experience than you have." IMO, judgement feedback (you screwed up how you handle your yak shaving, or I don't think we'll get along with each other) is too subjective to be constructive. And, I get it. As someone who's…
I feel that most of the time candidates just want to hear something that puts the situation out of their control, and therefore wasn't merit based. It's always easier to hear "I'm breaking up with you because I'm moving for a new job and want to concentrate on my career" than "I'm breaking up with you because you're awkward around my friends and aren't interesting".
I don't have hard numbers, but anecdotally, I know two people for whom this is simply not true at all. It took them months to find jobs, and they sincerely wanted to know why they were being rejected. If you are told "we didn't hire you, because you don't have skill X", or "you don't have any experience with Y", then you can focus on getting better at that thing. It was extremely frustrating for them to be told "We found a better candidate", or more commonly, getting no response at all.
Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft did the same to me, the same year. Product owner/manager position.
Bloomberg did it to me. Even blocked my phone number. I figured that out when I changed my caller id. It was back in the day when VoIP was new and they didn't expect that someone could do that. It was worth hearing the panic on the voice when they realized who it was. The only reason I called was because they stiffed my the reimbursement for travel expenses which they had agreed to pay for. The HR turnover was so hig…
Interesting, when I worked at Bloomberg we had a standard form letter for rejections that was sent every time. (Email)
Funny story about that, I'd set up a macro to fire off said email with one keypress. Finishing up a phone screen that went horribly, I thanked him for his time and all the other niceties, and pressed the key right as I was about to hang up.
"But wait! I have some questions for you, too!"
Cue the longest 5 minutes of my life.