I know why rejection emails suck – I write them • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by tptacek » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #151

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 are you asking questions about relational databases? Why not just have candidates accomplish the thing you're assessing with an actual relational database? It's not the same thing. Browse around the various SQL tags in StackOverflow and you'll see plenty of candidates who can "accomplish" things using relational databases yet have positively no idea of how they work. When shit hits the fan they're asking strang…

Are you trying to say that there's some technical detail about solving a problem with an RDBMS that can only be expressed in an interview question? I call "shenanigans" on that. If the most obvious challenges are too easy for candidates to solve, so that they can just copy the answer from Stack Overflow, come up with better questions.

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

#172

Post by mbesto » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

werbel wrote: post #149

mbesto wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you/your company doesn't have a policy of sending personal feedback please consider doing this at least for junior people. If you want to keep your job, don't follow this advice. Honestly, I would love nothing more than giving junior people (all people in fact) feedback on why they didn't get the job, but people will sue at even the slightest hint of any type of potentially litigious situation. It's even worse w…

I didn't say to do that against the policy. What I meant was if your company simply doesn't have a habit of doing it just say: "Hey, can I write some feedback and provide some resources to that candidate in your rejection message?". Edit: My intuition is most companies don't provide the feedback because simply they don't see a value in the time spent or simply never really considered that as there are always other th…

> I didn't say to do that against the policy.

And I didn't say anything about this having to do with policies of companies. Regardless of whether you have policies in place or not, doing what you suggested without any counsel is a very dangerous way of losing your job. Companies will make it very easy to fire a person who costs them a lawsuit (and the subsequent negative PR).

> My intuition is most companies don't provide the feedback

Your intuition is probably right, but it doesn't mean that people who DO want to give feedback should all of the sudden ignore sound advice. Bad HR teams who don't want to give feedback will always use legality as a shield for an excuse, but that doesn't mean that good HR teams who are also taking legal advice are not interested in doing so. As many people have cited in this thread - the long term effects of giving feedback to rejected candidates (they tell their friends, they come back later, etc) are numerous, but the downside risk makes it very difficult for any HR team to make this investment.

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

#173

Post by nfRfqX5n » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

joeax wrote: post #83

I'm going to go against the grain and say that interview feedback is overrated (at least for senior people). If you got offered the job, then there's your feedback. If not, the interviewing company isn't going to tell you any more than you could already discern yourself by playing back your answers and conversations with the interviewers. If you honestly feel you aced the interview, then other factors are in play - p…

the hours of interview time, scheduling, and travel shouldn't be discounted so easily. not that the company owes you anything, but surely some of the smartest business minds in the world can come up with a way to safely provide some feedback. i'd probably sign a waiver to at least get something for my time

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

#174

Post by dunpeal » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:57 PM UTC

> The number one reason companies cite for not sending feedback is legal risk. Interestingly, I don’t think this is true. Companies put themselves at legal risk if they are rejecting candidates for illegitimate reasons, like race, gender, or a disability. If they send feedback which tells candidates, truthfully, that they were rejected because they didn’t get very far on the coding project, then if anything a company reduces their legal risk: they have a transparent track record of evaluating candidates based only on their skills.

Ah, but have you considered what would happen when you give this "transparent skills-based feedback" to 90% of your rejected candidates, but then a couple of them get rejected for reasons you don't want to specify, or could potentially be interpreted (by an aggressive litigation attorney) as illegal discrimination?

Some candidates get rejected because "nobody enjoyed talking to him", "he seemed weird", "alienated the interviewers", etc.

Are you going to write any of that in your transparent rejection letter?

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

#175

Post by qaq » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:57 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #151

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 are you asking questions about relational databases? Why not just have candidates accomplish the thing you're assessing with an actual relational database? It's not the same thing. Browse around the various SQL tags in StackOverflow and you'll see plenty of candidates who can "accomplish" things using relational databases yet have positively no idea of how they work. When shit hits the fan they're asking strang…

I'd care more if a candidate understands MVCC and transaction isolation levels. (which surprisingly few do)

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

#176

Post by tptacek » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:57 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #133

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…

> I thought you all were better than this. Why are you asking questions about relational databases? You write about hiring from the perspective of someone with hiring authority. TripleByte doesn't have hiring authority, or even sufficient reputation to get their candidates out of doing another technical interview at the companies to which they apply. There are two problems you might solve: - Joe Nerd needs a job. He…

My experience with trying this for a year at a previous startup which shall remain nameless is that no matter how I approached candidate qualification, work-sample or interview or ritual chicken sacrifice, I'd still have the same problem of clients rejecting candidates by default. Recruiters mostly all work on your "second" model. So why add crappy tech qualification to your problems? Do at least that right!

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

#177

Post by jorblumesea » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:58 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #141

I believe that the article is fundamentally wrong. The bulk of the article is true. But companies are not lying when they say that legal risk is a reason not to send feedback. Triplebyte is in the unusual position of being able to say, "Everyone who has enough technical skill gets through the interview." And that fact is sufficient to defuse their risk. But real companies don't have the luxury of ignoring non-technic…

Most engineering interviewees fail to advance because of cultural/personality/communication issues and not technical competence. The amount of people I've washed out of the interview process because they've gone on some rant about windows vs linux, political ideology or just came off as unable to communicate in general.

This is also the hardest to communicate as it is something inherent to the candidate. It's not personal, but it gets personal at this point.

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

#178

Post by mehrdadn » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 8:59 PM UTC

nosseo wrote: post #159

mehrdadn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"...

For arrogant, I'd try to make the feedback as concrete and specific as possible - "sometimes you gave confidently wrong answers. If you're guessing, it's better to tell your interviewer that. Interviewers typically won't hold it against you if you guess and guess rightly, but if you don't acknowledge you're guessing and get things wrong, it raises questions about whether you know what you don't know." or "sometimes i…

The thing is you still reduced arrogance to technical correctness. However, what I was trying to get at was, what about cases where the technical correctness is just fine? If it's their attitude or hygiene or something else that you don't like, how do you tell them that?

I was trying to get at the same thing you just said, which is that, like you, most people would become uncomfortable providing feedback on at least some of these. Meaning that you would have to turn away these candidates without any concrete feedback. Now how do you imagine they'll react when they realize most people do get feedback but they didn't? Is their reaction (which might result in bad publicity) a risk you and your company really want to take? For what gain?

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

#179

Post by _delirium » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #50

I'd settle for "do you at least send a rejection email of any kind to the candidate?" vs. the "dropping someone on the floor and not responding for weeks/months/ever". Even without detailed or personalized feedback, it's a huge improvement. Also if an internal person refers someone, you should let the internal person know if you're passing, I think (depends on other factors, though.)

This is the biggest US/Europe cultural difference I've noticed. I can't speak for every country in Europe or every industry, but for every job in Europe I've personally applied for, I got a rejection letter if I wasn't offered the job. Sometimes just a minimal notification, but always something. Not in America though...

The best is for European academic jobs. Often there's a schedule up front for when they'll make a decision, usually a 2-stage thing like: we will shortlist candidates by Sept 15, interview in the following 3-4 weeks, and make a hiring decision by Oct 15. So if you didn't get shortlisted, you get informed early and don't have to wonder whether your resume is still under consideration or what. American universities, though, leave you guessing what their schedule is, may take months to get back to you even if they're interested, and usually don't send a rejection letter if they aren't.

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

#180

Post by starpilot » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

Hard to care about the specific content of rejection emails when the average applicant will get hundreds of them before landing a position. It's like getting mad at the rain in Seattle winter. Though I do admit, the more effusive they seem to be about turning me down, the more offended I am as a professional. Then I forget about it 5 seconds later and move on to my next applications.