Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

Quick answer from the article:

>In a litigious society, and particularly in the aftermath of many of the class action and civil lawsuits of the late 90s and early 00s, companies became hypersensitive in order to protect their interests. As such, many companies adopted a blanket approach to dealing with things like interview feedback for candidates by simply declining to give any details.

Not only does fear of lawsuits prevent companies from disclosing no-hire reasons, it prevents them from even recording those reasons internally.

If you get rejected and don't know why, take heart: a year from now the company also won't know why. You can apply again as if it were Groundhog Day.

Oddly, Facebook(where the author works) is the only tech company that has given me actionable feedback.

I get it, lawsuits. There's very little upside for the employer, the benefit would go to the candidate, and the liability is on the employer. I suppose one benefit for the employer might be that the candidate could improve, should there be an opportunity to interview again later.

It's a problem, though. I once did a 7 hour take home exam, didn't hear back for a month, and finally got the one line rejection listed in this article "we've decided not to move forward…" A month is too long to make someone wait regardless, but I really would have appreciated some technical feedback, because all I could do is wonder. The test was in Java, and I did use what I believe is a somewhat outdated way of using threads, but that's just a guess… I also interviewed at Google, and I understand that this "exam" (I think we should start calling it an entrance exam rather than an interviews) does result in actual, numerical scores that are currently sitting in a database somewhere at google, but I'm not allowed to know what they are. Again, I'd really like to know. Was I way off, or close? No idea.

I think this becomes especially toxic in the context of tech interviews, because they really do often amount to exams. I've spent some time reflecting on this, and I believe that exams usually come with a bill of rights for the examinee (or student). It's very unusual to take an entrance exam with no idea who will evaluate it, how it will evaluated, how you did, and why you did (or didn't) pass.

This "bill or rights" isn't an accident, it evolved, I believe, to counter balance what we demand of a student, and to provide safeguards against abusive and capricious behavior from institutions that act as gatekeepers, whether it's the bar, the medical or nursing boards, a committee deciding whether to award a masters degree, and so forth.

I understand why liability terrifies employers, and that there is no real benefit for them. But unfortunately, you do need to look at this from the perspective of the people who take the exam. We get all the negatives of high stakes and stressful exams, but without the considerations that offset the stress and safeguard against abuse. There may be reasons for it, but developers are the ones who don't really know why their performance at the whiteboard wasn't acceptable enough for a job offer, or what happened after they sent their take home exam to a recruiter where supposedly it was evaluated by a tech team.

In short, just because there are good reasons an employer wouldn't want to do this doesn't make it acceptable from the perspective of an applicant who has to essentially sit for these exams.

I consider this a very serious problem in the high tech industry, and is certainly something that deters talented people from entering or remaining in the field.

I always make a point of trying to give unsuccessful candidates feedback - especially when it's "we love your enthusiasm, get some experience under your belt and let's talk again".

A candidate who didn't get hired and came back stronger is EXACTLY who I want working with me, and its shortsighted of companies to burn off a candidate as soon as they stumble on fizzbuzz or something equally bullshitty.