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

blog.interviewing.io

101–110 of 646 posts

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

#101
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 I'm much more comfortable giving feedback to new college graduates. Often times there is glaring weaknesses they can work on improving to get the best job possible.

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

#102
post #6

One time we gave feedback on request and the candidate contested the feedback, then went out on a social media rampage. So yeah, we stopped after that. It only takes one bad candidate to make it not worth the effort.

+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.

If you want the candidate to be more likely to reapply feedback would help.

In fairness I received feedback I didn't get the position because I was too chatty from a hr person who told me to act more chatty because qualified candidates on paper were failing for being too quiet. I kinda wished they didn't provide feedback because I have an opinion on the internal culture that would make me avoid them in the future.

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

#103

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…

On the other hand, by giving good feedback, your company engenders goodwill and brownie points ratings on Glassdoor and elsewhere. Shouldn’t good PR be worth a little work from a company?

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

#104
> While researching this piece, I spoke to a few labor lawyers and ran some Lexis Nexis searches to see just how often a company’s constructive feedback (i.e. not “durrrr we didn’t hire you because you’re a woman”) to a rejected eng candidate has resulted in litigation.

It's not "durrrr" and this is why feedback is not given, this immaturity is why people get sued.

Many non obvious statements can have implications about illegal discrimination.

It is probably very rare, this is a quite valid point people get wrong. But benefits are also probably rare, so it equals out.

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

#105

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…

> Someone has to collect, document, sanitize, and explain the feedback.

Either something like this is being up collected and articulated up through the decision points in the hiring process, or the decisions are being made on a fuzzy basis that can't even be explained internally, which presumably represents a risk that decisions couldn't be properly justified should a candidate suspect discrimination and pursue a claim.

(This is especially true for any kind of exercises, btw. If an employer asks me to do some, I am going to screen them on whether they have (a) complete reference solutions with (b) numbers on how long it took to complete each and why they're confident those numbers are reliable(c) a written rubric for evaluating candidate solutions that (d) they'll agree to share with me when we're done.)

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

#106
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.

It's interesting how "it's business" has become catch-all for absolving every breach of previously accepted social norm.

As a hiring manager, you're unlikely to be on the clock. And even if, I am somewhat certain that you could come up with good justifications for giving feedback if anybody asks, which nobody will.

It seems to be a specific disease of middle management to feel the need to demonstrate their "professionalism" by going out of their way to deny their humanity. At Wall Street, they buy ugly but expensive clothes for this purpose. But I guess on the West Coast you only have the Gordon Gecko playbook to fall back on.

I used to work at a branding agency, and it was interesting to see how risk averse middle management was: ideas for product names tend to only be good if they evoke some sort of not entirely pure concept. Think of "Plan B", "Virgin", or "CockroachDB". These would always get shot down by middle management as "unprofessional". Go a level up and people are far more open to be human. I don't know if they are just more self-assured and therefore willing to trust their instincts, or if the selection process for higher management actually works quite well.

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

#107

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.

You would probably find it easier to hire if your company gained a better reputation with prospective applicants. Having the courteous culture to give feedback is the sort of differentiator that applicants would value.

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

#109
post #92

I think I've taken around 50 interviews in the last year or so. I always end the interview with "do you have any questions for me?" No one asks what they could have done better, but if they did I'd tell them.

I would have worded this as "given around 50 interviews" because "taken" sounds (to my ears) like you were the candidate, which I don't think is the case here.

I would not ask an interviewer what I could have done better before I knew the outcome, because I'd prefer to be a confident candidate not second-guessing myself. But I'd like to know after the decision was made not to proceed. (or even if the decision was made to hire me!)

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

#110
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I give it whenever asked. Last I was interviewed, I got it at about half the places I talked to.

It's a very natural thing for people to ask about. And answering questions is also pretty natural. The notion that it happens approximately never strikes me as something that needs a lot more evidence than your personal experience.

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