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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

#81

Post by blaser-waffle »

eropple wrote: post #34
tstrimple wrote: post #20

Ain't nobody got time for that. When I was hiring developers, I was conducting dozens of interviews based off of hundreds of applications. My goal is to hire people who can help me solve problems. Running an interview improvement service isn't something I have time for.

This is a bad, bad take. You aren't "running an interview improvement service". You're being a decent human being to another human being. Being decent is important.

Being decent is a prompt, if perfunctory, rejection without humiliation or insult. You're asking for something more.

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

#82

Post by vkou »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #57
vkou wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because an employee is disgruntled, doesn't mean that their unhappiness isn't justified.

It also doesn’t mean that it is. How many times have you read a review on Glassdoor that said “great company, but I was fired for being a completely toxic bully”? The lack of credibility in the reviews cuts both ways.

When one person says that their work environment is shit, that's one thing.

When five people say that their work environment is shit, there may be something to it.

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

#83

Post by eropple »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #81
eropple wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad, bad take. You aren't "running an interview improvement service". You're being a decent human being to another human being. Being decent is important.

Being decent is a prompt, if perfunctory, rejection without humiliation or insult. You're asking for something more.

No, I'm not. They've invested their time, which is significantly more limited than yours at any company that's at a scale to be hiring, in jumping through your hoops. The least a decent person does is provide them with why it was for nothing.

And if your employer thinks you shouldn't be decent, quit.

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

#84

Post by eropple »

kenhwang wrote: post #69
celdon25 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comple…

They've only disrupted their day to talk to you, in many cases having done these increasingly-prevalent and always-bullshit 4+-hour "exercises", and they have way less time to be allocating than you do. That's all they've done. Their time isn't deserving of respect and it's just downright ridiculous to think that it's the decent thing to do to tell them something that might, just might, not make it a waste for them to have spent it.

...Or, you know. Don't be that guy. Candidate, candidate, candidate--depersonalizing language for depersonalized processes. How about person? These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your recruiter's cattle-call throughput, each and every one of them.

Have some empathy, my dude. Or at least some enlightened self-interest, for someday will be your day in the barrel.

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

#85

Post by blaser-waffle »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

How would you know that no one has ever sued? It if happened (and I'd bet it did many times), it wouldn't be public knowledge.

It does happen, and it is public knowledge:

https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/

Parsing out which ones specifically are about hiring is a little trickier, but they're in there.

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

#86

Post by kenhwang »

eropple wrote: post #84
kenhwang wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comple…

They've only disrupted their day to talk to you, in many cases having done these increasingly-prevalent and always-bullshit 4+-hour "exercises", and they have way less time to be allocating than you do. That's all they've done. Their time isn't deserving of respect and it's just downright ridiculous to think that it's the decent thing to do to tell them something that might, just might, not make it a waste for them t…

Interviewing is a business transaction, not social services. They'll min-max their time just like you'll mix-max your compensation.

I'll happily give advice, feedback, mock interviews, and other sorts of help on my own time in more appropriate environments. When it's company time, it's just business.

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

#87

Post by eropple »

kenhwang wrote: post #86
eropple wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've only disrupted their day to talk to you, in many cases having done these increasingly-prevalent and always-bullshit 4+-hour "exercises", and they have way less time to be allocating than you do. That's all they've done. Their time isn't deserving of respect and it's just downright ridiculous to think that it's the decent thing to do to tell them something that might, just might, not make it a waste for them t…

Interviewing is a business transaction, not social services. They'll min-max their time just like you'll mix-max your compensation. I'll happily give advice, feedback, mock interviews, and other sorts of help on my own time in more appropriate environments. When it's company time, it's just business.

You can rationalize how you'd like, but it's never "just business." These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your company does.

Be decent.

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

#88

Post by rockostrich »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #80
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…

Bingo. After the interview is done and the answer is a solid NO, as a company we have NO BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP with you. Any iota of effort we put towards you is essentially wasted effort, even if very minor. What changes that discussion further is that there is a small, but still quite real, possibility of lawsuit, social media rant (as another comment mentioned), or even a disgruntled applicant shooting up the plac…

> as a company we have NO BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP with you

I think this could be phrased as "we have the choice to have no business relationship with you." But it's not a good idea to straight up cut off candidates. We've had plenty of cases where we just didn't think we had the capacity to help a candidate get up to speed and thought if they worked somewhere else that could provide that to them then we could hire them 6 months to a year down the line. It's not the standard, but it's happened before.

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

#89

Post by kenhwang »

eropple wrote: post #87
kenhwang wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewing is a business transaction, not social services. They'll min-max their time just like you'll mix-max your compensation. I'll happily give advice, feedback, mock interviews, and other sorts of help on my own time in more appropriate environments. When it's company time, it's just business.

You can rationalize how you'd like, but it's never "just business." These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your company does. Be decent.

They're getting a prompt, professional, inoffensive response in exchange for their time. That is decency.

You can't expect a business to feed the hungry, cure the sick, and house the poor out of the goodness of their hearts because these are people that spent a couple hours of their day with you. There are more appropriate institutions for charity.

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