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I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

triplebyte.com

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Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#111

Post by abakker »

lixtra wrote: post #93
werbel wrote: post #70

If you/your company doesn't have a policy of sending personal feedback please consider doing this at least for junior people. Volunteer your after work time if needed. Trying to find the first job is extremely stressful process. A junior person has no notion of his worth on the market. Each rejection even if only by a lack of any response ("I'm sorry, I'm afraid we are looking for a bit more experienced person" would…

Our HR asked me to personally call people and thank them for their declined application. But at the same time requested to not give any feedback because of fear from litigation. Sad world.

Managerial CYA, and fear of the potential for litigation are crippling corporations more that I think we'd like to admit. Financial risk is something people seem comfortable accepting, but the specter of unknowable legal risk cause so many management anti patterns and so much passive aggressive behavior is it incredible.

As a relatively junior person in management, it is amazing the kind of phantom fears I've been cautioned against. Some of which don't even have any legal precedent at all!

I think a lot of it is trotted out as managerial "emergency hypothesis" for why someone doesn't want to do something, and so invents some plausible legal risk to justify their decision. But, honestly, it can't be only that.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#112

Post by cm2187 »

werbel wrote: post #70

If you/your company doesn't have a policy of sending personal feedback please consider doing this at least for junior people. Volunteer your after work time if needed. Trying to find the first job is extremely stressful process. A junior person has no notion of his worth on the market. Each rejection even if only by a lack of any response ("I'm sorry, I'm afraid we are looking for a bit more experienced person" would…

Agree. I remember having applied to McKinsey many years ago as a graduate. I got rejected after the first round of interview, but one of the interviewers would call me to explain their rationale. I was very grateful but I can imagine that it must be painful when the candidate doesn't react well or sees that as an opportunity to put the foot back in the door.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#113

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #102

When I was a hiring manager, I used to always include a personal note that included suggestions and constructive criticism for the candidate. In a couple of cases, those people replied to me, demonstrated some actions towards those goals, and I hired them later, when I had more available positions. And those that I didn't hire, I encountered them at other companies. It was flattering to hear them say they remembered…

I interviewed for an internal position once and got similar feedback, by phone, from the HR person. She was on the phone with me for about an hour and, in all honesty, that rejection phone call made that one of the best interviews I've ever had.

I didn't get that job, but it gave me a lot of constructive advice and I ended up getting the next one I interviewed for.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#114

Post by tptacek »

michaelt wrote: post #101
tptacek wrote: post #40

When someone can’t answer an interview question about relational databases, it might be that they don’t know anything about relational databases. I thought you all were better than this. Why are you asking questions about relational databases? Why not just have candidates accomplish the thing you're assessing with an actual relational database ? I know you're work-sample-literate! But if your feedback emphasizes comm…

Why not just have candidates accomplish the thing you're assessing with an actual relational database? My employer interviews like this, and I can tell you one reason it's not very common: It's a pain in the ass. After all, it'd be unfair to judge someone on a platform they weren't familiar with - so now you gotta maintain a fleet of laptops with a really wide range of tools. And these have to sorta float outside the…

It is harder to build a work-sample regimen than to just send candidates to interviewers, sure. But then, the point of Triplebyte is that they're eating all that work for you.

Regarding "fleets of laptops" and environments and all that jazz: these seem like unforced obstacles. Just have the candidates use their own machines. Here's a crazy idea: have them use their own offices/couches, too.

Regarding security practices... come on. We have an interview process that involves giving remote developers read/write access to an entire AWS environment. These are simple engineering problems. If they're the only thing stopping you from having a better interviewing process, and you hire regularly, just go solve the problems.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#115

Post by thaumasiotes »

nosseo wrote: post #37
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Try again in three months" > Why? I wouldn't do anything different. But they will. The interview process is stochastic; exactly the same performance from you will lead to different results on different attempts. > Getting rejected at Triplebyte was actually a pretty good investment time wise. Guess the whole thing costed me three hours in total and I got quite a list of things to improve and how. It was clear it w…

That sounds like a feedback email from a couple years ago - am I right about that? We've definitely gotten better at this over time.

Yes, the email is from 2015.

The bigger difference that I see is your statement that "Every few months, I check that all our recommended resources are still up-to-date, available, and free."

In some unfruitful further communication with TripleByte, I asked how I was supposed to improve, given that their feedback seemed to be "we have no qualms with your ability, but we don't think you can pass an interview". They recommended that I sign up on interviewing.io. I did that, and a year later, I was still on the wait list. (I eventually got off the waitlist when complaining about this same sequence of events on HN, and an interviewing.io employee saw the complaint. I don't think that approach scales well.)

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#116

Post by mehrdadn »

nosseo wrote: post #9
mikepurvis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't giving detailed feedback a liability nightmare? Everything I've ever heard on this is to say as little as possible. It's certainly great as a candidate to get detailed feedback (would have really appreciated it back in the day as a co-op student), but I just wonder if the concerns over it have any merit or are overblown.

My understanding is that as long as you're not discriminating against candidates on the basis of race, gender or some other protected category membership, and as long as your feedback reflects that by being focused on the technical abilities the candidate demonstrated during the interview, you're not actually at all that much risk. Of course, if you are illegally discriminating, or if your feedback suggests that you…

How do you imagine they would give feedback on something that's neither technical nor illegal? I'm imagining everything from "we found you too arrogant" to "you smelled awful when you came in"...

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#117

Post by michaelt »

shawn wrote: post #41
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Try again in three months" > Why? I wouldn't do anything different. But they will. The interview process is stochastic; exactly the same performance from you will lead to different results on different attempts. > Getting rejected at Triplebyte was actually a pretty good investment time wise. Guess the whole thing costed me three hours in total and I got quite a list of things to improve and how. It was clear it w…

While we specifically designed the take home project track to help overcome the difficulties of coding under time pressure with someone watching, we do still need to see a certain level of programming during the interview. “How to set up a test that works and then completely ruin the results by doing nonsensical things during a dumb ritual that our entire industry seems set on preserving.” Question for Triplebyte: wh…

You need something that confirms the take-home test was really done by the candidate.

I have received take-home tests, passed via recruiters, where the recruiters literally sent me the solutions given by previous successful candidates "for reference".

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#118

Post by meggar »

nosseo wrote: post #74
pmiller2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

All the ways I discussed in the article - more nuanced, more thorough, more detailed, more focused on constructive advice you can take to your next interview. Plus, we've just improved our process in general so you aren't tested on skills you don't need. It's easier to give constructive feedback about an interview process you have a lot of confidence in, and much of the work we've put in as a company over the last fe…

I'd try it again, what is the process to reapply?

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#119

Post by scarface74 »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #105
scarface74 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they come to me for basic stuff, I tell them to go research it on their own. I'm not going to regurgitate wikipedia if they haven't put in some effort. And that’s why developers don’t get ahead.... There are basically “three levers of power” in an organization - relationship, expert, and role in that order. The developer who knows how to build relationships is the one that doesn’t get his silly bug put on blast by…

That's just silly, you can build relationships in other ways. If you want to be the go-to guy/gal that gets constantly interrupted with this sort of stuff, your time won't be respected. Plus, you're teaching them to go research things on their own. Why is that a bad thing?

Once you get to a certain level in your career, part of your job is to be the go to person that explains things, mentors, spends way too much time in meetings and just greases the wheels. The heads down developer is not seen as the multiplier like the team lead/architect is and they get paid accordingly. I have my office days where I expect to get interrupted and my work from home days where I don’t.

No one gets promoted by constantly telling coworkers and management to RTFM.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#120

Post by thaumasiotes »

nosseo wrote: post #74
pmiller2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

All the ways I discussed in the article - more nuanced, more thorough, more detailed, more focused on constructive advice you can take to your next interview. Plus, we've just improved our process in general so you aren't tested on skills you don't need. It's easier to give constructive feedback about an interview process you have a lot of confidence in, and much of the work we've put in as a company over the last fe…

> It's easier to give constructive feedback about an interview process you have a lot of confidence in, and much of the work we've put in as a company over the last few years has been designing an interview we think really works.

It's hard to take this at face value, as 100% of the TripleByte messaging I've seen since before I received that email focused heavily on how confident they were that their interviews were thorough, high-quality assessments.

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