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No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#61

Post by oceanghost »

rchaud wrote: post #11

The hiring process is a black box for a reason. The HR department's role is to protect the company first, not the employees, and certainly not prospective employees. If feedback can be interpreted as being discriminatory, or reflective of bad company culture in general, well, word gets around. For much of the time, the reason people don't get the job is that there was someone marginally more qualified/attractive/like…

This.

I have done hundreds of interviews, and I used to do a very easy, basic comp sci test. The last question I would ask was, "Tell me about a book, cd or movie that you've read/listened to/watched that was interesting or excited you."

The point was to see if the person was engaging with the universe, not to judge their taste or anything else. You'd be surprised how many people get tripped up by this.

The worst answer I ever got was a guy who said the last album he bought was "Free Bird" (which is not an album), and was 40 years old at the time of that utterance. This person could honestly not think of one thing that excited him since then. He also ranted about Object Oriented Programming like it was a brand new thing.

The best answer I ever got, was a gentleman who was not the strongest candidate but was clearly intelligent. His answer was, "I know this is not a recent author, but I love Bukowski." And he spoke at length about his novels and poetry, and even was aware that our office was only a few blocks from where one of the pivotal scenes in one of his novels was set, and that after the interview he had actually scheduled some time away from his job to go there.

perfect answer

In my report to HR, I mentioned that he probably needed to study a little but was quite intelligent, but had fantastic enthusiasm for literature and that he was very engaging.

Of course, HR put an immediate stop to the thing with the reasoning that someone could say that their favorite book was the bible, and that could form the basis for a religious discrimination case.

After that, I declined to do interviews anymore.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#62

Post by AmericanChopper »

wpietri wrote: post #27
pmiller2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven’t filed any documents, you haven’t sued anyone, either. I find it really hard to believe that every single case of an engineer suing over post-interview feedback has settled out of court, too.

Definitely. The fact that there are no known cases at least demonstrates the risk is very low. Much less risky than the kinds of things people do all the time in interviews.

It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates, or at least that when companies do, that they legally vet the feedback first (which would make you question the value and candidness of it). I have personally never heard of anybody giving or receiving it myself. So I’m not surprised that you would fail to find cases of disputes originating over it.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#63

Post by Tainnor »

Afton wrote: post #7

I got verbal feedback exactly one time (at Microsoft) during my attempt to land a post-1-year of university internship. I had solved the algorithm in a few minutes, but when trying to code it up, I struggled a fair amount before figuring it out. The feedback I got was "You seem like a smart person, who hasn't done very much coding. That makes you a bad risk. Go practice programming and come back next year". It was in…

I find that reply a bit puzzling. It was an internship, how bad of a risk could that have been?

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#64

Post by valleyjo »

I interviewed recently and didn’t get the job. I thought I did well enough so I wasn’t sure what went wrong. The recruiter told me exact detailed results for each interview including the hire / no hire outcome and why no hire for the no hire ones.

While I was disappointed to not get the job, it really gave me a sense of peace to know what went wrong and what I can do to improve.

I wish this was more common.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#65

Post by criddell »

bluesroo wrote: post #39
criddell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem like a smart person, who hasn't done very much coding. That makes you a bad risk, Assuming Microsoft actually measures this stuff, that's kind of surprising to me. I've never placed much weight on being able to write a program on the spot.

While you may not, Microsoft's hiring process (as well as others) clearly do.

Right. And like I said, I assume they've measured it. I wonder what the risk difference is and what the nature of the ultimate failures are?

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#66

Post by kenhwang »

celdon25 wrote: post #42
plake wrote: post #29

Because giving good feedback is hard work, and candidates won't always take it well (even if they don't sue). If the employer has already decided not to hire you, there's just not that much in it for them. For what it's worth, as an interviewer I'm happy to give feedback in person, at the end of the interview, if the candidate asks for it. It's much easier to do when you're both in the same room, and asking e.g. "is…

If it's hard work, then that's a symptom of the reasoning behind a no-hire not being sound to begin with. And there is plenty in it for them, as the candidate may want to apply a second time at a later point, having been made aware of and improved on the areas that were identified as needing improvement. They'll be more likely to re-apply to a company that gave the feedback than to a company that didn't.

It's hard work because then you'll have to explain and document the hiring proceedings, then sanitize it before sending out, with content that's actually actionable by the interviewee. What we put in internal candidate notes is very different than what should be sent out, and someone has to do that translation.

There's also plenty of reasons a candidate didn't get hired that not really immediately correctable or not even their fault. For the latter, we do provide feedback/explanations and try to keep in touch in hopes they apply again in a couple of years. But 80% of the time we really just don't want to see the candidate again. I'd say 10% of the time, we see the candidate again, but so far, even on reappearance years later, they get the same feedback from completely different interviewing committees.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#67

Post by jgwil2 »

A lot of the time hiring decisions are more or less arbitrary. It makes me sad how unsystematic the approach to hiring is, but it often comes down to one person that you talk to liking you enough after an hour of talking that they're willing to go to bat for you. The fact is there often is not any good feedback to give.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#68

Post by SubuSS »

plake wrote: post #29

Because giving good feedback is hard work, and candidates won't always take it well (even if they don't sue). If the employer has already decided not to hire you, there's just not that much in it for them. For what it's worth, as an interviewer I'm happy to give feedback in person, at the end of the interview, if the candidate asks for it. It's much easier to do when you're both in the same room, and asking e.g. "is…

I haven't read the article, but it is off-point to say no-one sues. History has no effect on what someone will do tomorrow - exposure is what companies try to limit.

The sueing angle kicks in when you do stuff like give feedback for folks who you think will take it well Vs keep it away from folks who give you a bad feeling or whatever. It is all exposure.

Almost in all the companies I have been at, there has been a big push to keep the interview experience uniform for all candidates. So you can't have hugely different loops setup for the same level for different candidates for example.

Fun fact: This is a main reason why as a company grows, you aren't able to get in with a wink and a nod anymore, even if you know 100% of the folks already there.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#69

Post by kenhwang »

celdon25 wrote: post #50
leothekim wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on this. The company has nothing to gain in delivering more feedback other than a thumbs up/down, and a lot more to lose.

What are they losing in this case? I don't see how a company is actually harmed by someone complaining about an interview. Unless you're trying to attract people who subscribe to cancel culture, I don't see a problem.

Employee hours. Someone has to collect, document, sanitize, and explain the feedback. Then respond to the response to the feedback. In the time it takes our recruiter to provide feedback to a candidate, they could have sourced 20 more candidates.

edit: I'll argue instant feedback is even more expensive and risky. It's not coordinated, potentially duplicative, may impact/contaminate later rounds, and may not be complete or representative of the interview as a whole. Engineers aren't known for being naturally HR/legal-compliant, and having multiple expensive engineers spend time doing things not in their typical skillset that's typically done by a single resource that specializes in said skillset doesn't sound cheaper at all.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#70

Post by rchaud »

oceanghost wrote: post #61
rchaud wrote: post #11

The hiring process is a black box for a reason. The HR department's role is to protect the company first, not the employees, and certainly not prospective employees. If feedback can be interpreted as being discriminatory, or reflective of bad company culture in general, well, word gets around. For much of the time, the reason people don't get the job is that there was someone marginally more qualified/attractive/like…

This. I have done hundreds of interviews, and I used to do a very easy, basic comp sci test. The last question I would ask was, "Tell me about a book, cd or movie that you've read/listened to/watched that was interesting or excited you." The point was to see if the person was engaging with the universe, not to judge their taste or anything else. You'd be surprised how many people get tripped up by this. The worst ans…

This scenario of an interviewee answering with the name of a religious text is an interesting point; transparency in interviewing is a two-way street.

In a way, I can understand why people get tripped up on the "casual/lifestyle" question. Interviewees may not think of it as a casual question, but rather another question to weed out the desirables from the undesirables. So people may censor themselves or their honest beliefs because they want the job. Which is a position I totally understand.

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