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How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

brookeallen.com

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Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#91

Post by jlees »

sekasi wrote: post #61
fecak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what you wrote, you're probably being paranoid. I deliver lots of 'No' answers as well, and I don't see any issues with what you wrote. Legal liability tends to be around the generic responses where candidates may assume the worst (race, gender/orientation, age, etc.). A specific response that points to a lack of experience in a certain area seems a safer bet than 'not a fit' in most cases.

"Not a fit" is another way of saying "We don't like you" in a strange way. I stay far away from those sweeping personality statements personally.

"Not a fit" can get dangerously close to "You're not the same gender/race/orientation/age-range as our core team" (especially if that happens to be true).

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#92

Post by arenaninja »

fecak wrote: post #43

I sometimes consult to clients on improving their hiring process. Candidate experience is now a topic that at least some companies consider. This isn't your typical candidate experience - applying for a vague job ad, being asked to answer 6 puzzle questions, invite to an open house, two days of free training and then left alone for three weeks, followed by a vote by the tribe to see who will get the job. It's definit…

This is very true. I was invited for a company with pretty interesting problems. Here's their entire hiring process:

* Initial phone screening, 30 minutes

* One two-hour problem, via e-mail

* One over-the-phone interview, one hour

* One five-day problem (yes, five days)

* One final in-person interview

I had an offer already on the table, and when it was obvious that they were unwilling/unable to accelerate their process (e.g.: had to wait three days for the over-the-phone interview, meanwhile the clock is ticking on my live offer), I decided that it wasn't worth it; mostly because I always crash and burn on the in-person "let's see if we like you" interview (I'm not an asshole, I'm simply uninteresting to most people because I'm expected to share everything about me within 2 hours with people I've never met before). Ultimately, I went with the offer on the table. No regrets yet.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#93

Post by q2 »

wyager wrote: post #52
sekasi wrote: post #28

I've done a LOT of interviewing, recruiting and ultimately a lot of saying "no" to people. Over the years I've landed on a series of personal rules on how to do just that. 1. Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve 2. Always let people down gently reinforcing positive notions as well, you never know what state of mind they are in. 3. Always respond to requests for more information This takes me a…

>Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve Many recruiters don't do this for legal reasons. Anti-discrimination laws make it very risky for companies to explain their hiring rationale, even if it's perfectly reasonable. It would be too expensive to have the lawyers check over every rejection.

After all, we are humans and rejection hurts any one. Related case is, firing without reason, all of a sudden which also hurts. What explanation can the effected employee provides to his family/friends for this sudden change?

In both cases, human mind keeps circling on what went wrong. Is there any misunderstanding or wrong perception? So providing reasons is humane in any such life altering transaction.

Related to law, is following possible?

Before interview, there will be an agreement needs to be signed by interviewee, recruiter, company involved, so that, after interview, recruiters can provide reasons for rejections and as long as the reason is with in the laws of the country or appears reasonable, then involved parties will not proceed legally. If it is against the law, then interviewee may proceed legally. It may be expensive but we are not robots, right?

Different cultures have different opinions on work/job/career...etc. Since Americans are advanced in technology as of now, many countries are adopting similar policies and during that process, workforce management related laws also getting copied. These laws may be new to that society and difficult to understand by society/family. This makes lot difficult to effected employee to explain the rationale, which he/she also do not know. People won't even believe that reasons are not provided.

In conclusion, providing reasons or at least honest effort in that direction is needed, since we are dealing with other human beings rather than robots.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#95

Post by daniel_iversen »

sliverstorm wrote: post #71
kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

1. Or even more simply, they are afraid to reveal what is almost certainly a perfectly acceptable reason for fear a jury will decide it wasn't acceptable after all, and take them to the cleaners for it.

That's a bit of an insult to a lot of us hiring managers! ;) sure there are legal considerations and you have to make sure you don't accidentally do something that could be (maliciously sometimes) used against you (or your company rather) but there are a lot of good people out there and to be honest I will always give a candidate feedback in an honest constructive way (and I'm not a very harsh person so I will also consider their feelings when I say things).

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#96

Post by daniel_iversen »

jlees wrote: post #91
sekasi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not a fit" is another way of saying "We don't like you" in a strange way. I stay far away from those sweeping personality statements personally.

"Not a fit" can get dangerously close to "You're not the same gender/race/orientation/age-range as our core team" (especially if that happens to be true).

Yes that is a super tricky one and especially since cultural fit is probably one of the most important things to consider in the hiring process!!

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#97

Post by mathattack »

sekasi wrote: post #28

I've done a LOT of interviewing, recruiting and ultimately a lot of saying "no" to people. Over the years I've landed on a series of personal rules on how to do just that. 1. Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve 2. Always let people down gently reinforcing positive notions as well, you never know what state of mind they are in. 3. Always respond to requests for more information This takes me a…

Have you ever run into legal issues with #1 and #3? Every big company I've worked for has explicitly forbid this due to potential discrimination suits.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#98

Post by RobertKerans »

kazinator wrote: post #68
sekasi wrote: post #28

I've done a LOT of interviewing, recruiting and ultimately a lot of saying "no" to people. Over the years I've landed on a series of personal rules on how to do just that. 1. Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve 2. Always let people down gently reinforcing positive notions as well, you never know what state of mind they are in. 3. Always respond to requests for more information This takes me a…

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a polite rejection letter, we would often prefer not to explain the actual whys[1], as often they are personal. Kudos to the OP (and yeah, it would make you feel good), but I'd tend to agree with you on this.

[1] that being said we always, always try to give some constructive feedback if asked.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#99

Post by kazinator »

sekasi wrote: post #74
kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

Seems you've had some bad runs. I can pretty much debunk 1 and 3 personally. Good companies and people take hiring very seriously.

That people sometimes do first, then afterward invent a rationalization for what they did, and then accept that as the reason they did it, cannot be easily debunked.

E.g. woman buys new shoes on pure impulse. At home she finds they go really well with a certain purple dress. Why that's precisely why she got them, of course. Eight months later, that's all she remembers: I had that dress in mind when I saw those shoes.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#100

Post by MichaelGG »

dccoolgai wrote: post #40
bbcbasic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that > 90% of interviews to be the latter, unfortunately. The ones where I got the job were the former! I am stronger at concepts than memory.

The worst is when you have to go through one of those interviews with some smug hoser across from you whose face is contorted into a rictus grin because you couldn't recall, immediately from memory, some obscure Junior Year Computer Science thing. It's just amazing how bad the hiring situation is - It makes me a lot less likely to look around because I just don't want to go through that.

Yet the number of interviewees with a CS degree that can't even explain a basic algorithm, like traversing linked lists or binary search, is staggering.
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