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

> What would be a polite way to say "I didn't hire you because you have no idea how to program?"

"This position requires knowledge of programming, particularly in (C, Python, insert details here)."

Dancing around that point is not a "politeness".

Hi, this is Brooke, the original hiring manager. I'm new to HN so please excuse me if I violate protocol.

I agree, life is about treating people well. However, although I find hiring is probably the single most satisfying thing I did on my job, it was very hard emotionally because in the case of nearly everyone I don’t’ hire it is because they say “NO” to me, and boy, rejection hurts. But at least I have a job and my candidates usually don’t.

More later but first…

If my site is unresponsive there is this on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/BrookeAllen1/brooke-allen-has-a-be... I've generalized my approach to hiring all sorts and describe it here: http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-... …

When I'm lucky enough to talk to programmers I'll describe it this way...

I don’t want to be stuck in Von Neumann’s bottleneck so rather than me processing candidates in series with the question “Who do I want to hire” I take an OO approach and send a different question, “Who wants to work for me?” to my candidates so they can work on it in parallel.

Since hiring is an elimination process I let them eliminate me in the first rounds. I don’t say “no” but I have to take a lot of it, which can be hard on the ego, particularly if I judge people too early and start to want one person over another. Desire is at the root of suffering. (Any fans of the move The Tao of Steve? Formula for getting the girl: 1) Be desireless. 2) Be excellent in her presence, 3) Let her desire you.)

I try to be the most flawed (e.g. honest) but-striving-to-be-excellent person I can be in front of my candidates and hope they will be the same for me (and magically they are). If we’re not going to be who we are before we start working together who do we plan on being afterward?

Because eliminating candidates is the name of the game, I concentrate on the negatives and that way there are only positive surprised later. Arguably many of my “best” candidates might eliminate themselves, but I’m not looking for the best – I can never afford them anyway – I am looking for the most appropriate for my budget, which I state early on and is almost never subject to negotiation. You cannot increases your desirability to offer to work for less, and if you are worth more than I can afford than I’m sorry, but I cannot afford you.

I want what I call hidden talent; those good at doing a job but bad at getting one. After all, the last thing I want you to be good at on my job is getting the next one. I'll help you find a better job before I hire you because afterward we've got to hunker down and get some friggin' work done.

Because I form an intentional temporary community of my candidates, and task them with something hard but meaningful that benefits them (like learning a new skill and/or helping each other find work) then by the time I say “yes” to someone everyone else agrees with the decision. In fact, in 10 years only once did a person tell me he thought I had made a mistake by not hiring him and the other candidates were so outraged they jumped all over him and one – who happened to be a lawyer – offered to defend me pro bono if he tried any funny business.

I never heard from him again but it is my great pleasure to say he is an exception in that regard and I count a few of the people I haven’t hired among my friends. This is a wonderful side-benefit because as I get older it is harder to make new friends, and it is certainly unwise to treat employees as friends as some do.

I seldom tell individual candidates what they did wrong, not because I am shy, but because it can be hard to take and I’m fairly tactless. However, I will offer a class on how to find work in which I anonymize specifics enough so as to benefit those who can identify themselves. Also, most people don’t do anything seriously wrong other than be unqualified or unlucky; no shame in that.

More later, if you’re interested.

After 30 years I’ve retired from the capital markets and they will do fine without me, but the markets for human capital are severely broken. Because I’m not ready to die, stop working, or give up on having a life's purpose, if you would like me to help you crack this nut then please do not hesitate in contacting me.

It is a concern. When we hire, all the "no"s are filtered through our in-house recruiters who have been through trainings on what they can and can't say to rejected applicants. The situation is very similar to giving former employees a reference when applying for a new job. You have to toe the line and be very sure that everything you say is verifiably factually correct or you can be held liable.

The thing is you can give the appearance of discrimination without discriminating. Consider this: You say someone [a minority] needs more experience in X so they didn't get the job. The person who did get the job [a white male] has the same amount of experience with X. But they have demonstrated other skills that just blow you away so you hired them anyways. Person 1 finds out and since they weren't in the interview process, they don't have any more context. Now it looks bad from an outside perspective.

Beyond just the legal, one reason is simply efficiency and time. If you have team members that are spending time explaining reasons someone wasn't hired, that is time that isn't productive.

For programming interviews, the tech interviewer has to tell the hiring manager, then the manager tells HR/recruiting, and then recruiting shares the reason with the candidate. I'm not trying to justify the morality of no feedback, as I personally think all interviewed candidates deserve an answer with a reasonable explanation, but when a client says "not a fit" I know it's because they either don't want to spend the time or they don't want to say the reason (usually would be something personal - how do you say "we don't like you" in a non-offensive way?).

Another reason for limited feedback is something you might not realize unless you have been in a position to deliver feedback thousands of times - when you give the reasons you didn't hire someone, they often disagree and may become argumentative. This takes up even more time and becomes a potential PR issue. One disgruntled applicant tells a friend that $COMPANY$ doesn't have a fair hiring process, and word starts to travel. Generic answers like "not a fit" are not helpful, but they are difficult to argue and aren't likely to turn an applicant into someone spreading negative info about your hiring practices.

I still genuinely believe that being as honest as possible is the best way to handle it, and my clients that give actionable feedback often see rejected applicants applying again once they gain more experience.