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Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

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Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#201

Post by thayne »

Koshkin wrote: post #144
adamredwoods wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rejection is incredibly difficult to deal with. I suspect some people will say they are immune to it, but (anecdotal example) I've been rejected from hundreds of jobs over the past 3 years and every one hurts a little. I felt it never got easier to deal with rejection, but it got easier to interview and move on. Perhaps it's not the rejection, but the energy in creating the next steps I need to take (more resumes, ta…

> rejected from hundreds of jobs Sounds extreme. Were you applying to random jobs?

Unfortunately, for many recent college graduates, it's not.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#202

Post by boring_twenties »

jnwatson wrote: post #8

I'm a software developer turned temporary recruiter for a startup (just hired last position yay!). The number one reason why I don't give feedback anymore is the candidate's response. It is almost universally negative. Candidates want to get into an argument about their skills or performance. Now, everyone gets a form letter, and I don't deviate from that.

Form letter is perfectly fine IMO.

The biggest problem is the lack of any response whatsoever is that you cannot simply move on with your job search. Frankly it's just rude and unprofessional, I don't care how commonplace it is.

More detailed feedback is a nice to have, I certainly appreciated it when I got it, but it's a different thing from being ghosted altogether.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#203

Post by sk5t »

ativzzz wrote: post #94
SkyPuncher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't do free projects for companies. It's never worth it. In my experience, I'd never get hired if I took this approach. Work samples are quickly becoming the interview standard for engineering. In fact, I find they're often completely replacing all day onsite interviews. I'd much rather do 8 hours of self-directed, self-paced work than get grilled on a whiteboard during an on-site.

The company I work at pays a lowish rate for our 10 hour take home project, which is also the last step of the interview process. I think this is a great practice, as this shows that we're taking this seriously and are willing to compensate for your time.

Does your company then issue 1099 forms (assuming US taxation)?

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#204

Post by thinnerlizzy »

zebnyc wrote: post #184

As an interviewee, I would love companies to provide some transparency and feedback. The feedback doesn't have to be super detailed, just areas for improvement. This was something which I really appreciated about Facebook. I interviewed onsite a year back and later the recruiter told me "You did well in all the coding interviews but we felt that you did not display the level of competency required in System design fo…

I had a rejection from Facebook a few months ago and I got no feedback like that. The feedback I got was that I did extremely well throughout the interview process and demonstrated that I was qualified for that type of position. It was just a no for some reason. Unfortunately it’s a rare position and they haven’t called me back with other opportunities.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#205

Post by specialist »

burtonator wrote: post #188
gwbas1c wrote: post #83

As 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 won't do 1:1 interviews any more. I want witnesses.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#206

Post by boring_twenties »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #14
b0rsuk wrote: post #4

> Too Much Data > It becomes virtually impossible for the company to get back to everyone who submits their résumé. This one seems like "blaming it on the victim" to me. You get too many candidates, you're unable to give each of us an in-depth review, you may as well say a single sentence like "You resume was quickly filtered out based on this one requirement." It's like they're ashamed to admit they pre-filter peopl…

> You get too many candidates, you're unable to give each of us an in-depth review, you may as well say a single sentence like "You resume was quickly filtered out based on this one requirement." So, the obvious application of feedback would be that you try to rectify the problem and then reapply. I suspect companies don't want you to reapply, regardless of whether you've improved. They already said no. But in that c…

> I suspect companies don't want you to reapply, regardless of whether you've improved. They already said no.

One small anecdotal counterpoint: I interviewed at Google many years back and didn't get an offer. They were nice enough to call and let me know, which I very much appreciated. Since then I've been getting hit up by their recruiters on a regular schedule, every 6-12 months.

At some point I was short on patience and straight up said "you guys know I already interviewed with you back in 20XX, right?"

Their response was "Well yeah, but so what? That was a while ago."

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#207

Post by NullPrefix »

burtonator wrote: post #188
gwbas1c wrote: post #83

As 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.

Would you be willing to share the details?

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#208

Post by boring_twenties »

sk5t wrote: post #203
ativzzz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work at pays a lowish rate for our 10 hour take home project, which is also the last step of the interview process. I think this is a great practice, as this shows that we're taking this seriously and are willing to compensate for your time.

Does your company then issue 1099 forms (assuming US taxation)?

They might not have to if it's a "lowish" (quoting GP) enough rate. I believe the threshold is $500-600 per annum, so if they're paying you $50 per hour for the interview, no 1099 needed.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#209

Post by leetrout »

fiblye wrote: post #197
burtonator wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sma…

I interviewed at twitter for a job working with their infra team. They had an Atlanta data center and they were interviewing me for that role to be remote out of Atlanta. I had to fly to SF to interview via video calls with the team in Atlanta because the manager was in SF. He told me he would prefer someone local in SF over lunch so I knew I was just filler.

After lunch interview was with a xoogler and everyone earlier warned me it would be a “google interview”. So he struts in and asks what I know about number theory. I say nothing and he tells me he was a math major and proceeded to ask math proof questions and push on the math side of things the whole time. Weirdly instead of asking how to make a Cartesian product in SQL he had this round about way of describing baseball players and teams and generating a report of games played.

So as it went on I gave up. He asked me toward the end how many prime numbers there are... I answered “optimus prime”. He looked at me and asked if I seriously wanted him to write down “optimus prime” for my answer and I swear on my life I looked at him and said “yep. Autobots roll out”.

Re: Reasons Why Job Seekers Are Not Given Feedback

#210

Post by xenihn »

tpmx wrote: post #58
jnwatson wrote: post #8

I'm a software developer turned temporary recruiter for a startup (just hired last position yay!). The number one reason why I don't give feedback anymore is the candidate's response. It is almost universally negative. Candidates want to get into an argument about their skills or performance. Now, everyone gets a form letter, and I don't deviate from that.

I've been interviewing job applicants for a very long time (15 years or so). I've never given any detailed feedback, but I have made sure that they at least get a "sorry, we can't offer you a job" form letter quickly. Noone has ever complained, except: At one job, we did run into a pretty annoying situation. We were recruiting mostly from a particular pool of uni grads, and everyone was communicating via the same par…

>We were recruiting mostly from a particular pool of uni grads, and everyone was communicating via the same particular "forum". (Late 90s/early 00s.)

Any chance it was Something Awful?

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