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

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

#191

Post by duxup » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

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…

>When I was a hiring manager, I used to always include a personal note that included suggestions and constructive criticism for the candidate

That's seriously awesome. I would so love that. For me most of the time they just stop responding, even right after "I'll get back to you by the end of the day!" type conversations.

I don't care if it is a no, I just want to get a message, and feedback would be even better.

One company I wanted to work at recently did exactly what I described .... all hyped up meeting, we all got along, good stuff, we'll get back to you by the end of the day. Then nothing, I called a bit later, emailed, nothing.... My impression was pretty negative.

I have a job now, I'm excited to start it, that other company, very negative feelings towards that other company ... if they just sent an email even to say no I'd feel better about it, but nothing.

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

#192

Post by duxup » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #113

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.

You'd probabbly apply again sometime right?

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

#193

Post by btilly » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #177

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 per…

This is a function of where you are in the interview process.

Most people get rejected at the resume stage. Most who have acceptable resumes get rejected at the first screen. All of this is invisible to software engineers who only see candidates at the last interview step.

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

#194

Post by mrkurt » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #184

mrkurt wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upside is that you've treated a human being with decency. People you treat decently in rejection help you with later hires. If you're going to argue the fantastical downside, you should at least acknowledge the possible upside (which my company, and apparently TripleByt, have both experienced).

That’s why I said it’s unfortunate. I intended to capture the logic of why things are what they are. And as much as it’s great to help someone out with some feedback, it’s not so great to risk the livelihood of your employees—you know, the people who actually depend on you to provide for their families—and the survival of your company for it. Sometimes doing the right thing requires you to have some perspective and b…

I think you're way overblowing this, but it's possible you know more than I do. What makes you think "either willfully or accidentally mis-interpreting rejection feedback" is a meaningful threat to any company? Have there been cases where companies were wrongfully sued for such a thing that I'm not aware of? And have they gone out of business as a result?

I've read an awful lot of employment case coverage and don't remember seeing anything like that. What I do recall seeing are people getting hammered for flippant comments _during_ an interview, but that's an entirely different thing.

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

#195

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #136

scarface74 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prom…

>Once you get to a certain level in your career, part of your job is to be the go to person that explains things, mentor, spend way too much time in meetings and just grease the wheels. The heads down developer is not seen as the multiplier like the team lead/architect is and they get paid accordingly. Great. That's exactly what I said in my original post -- hire someone specifically to do that. Problem solved. Now y…

If someone's going to deny me a promotion for linking a wikipedia page that answers a basic question and completely ignore my technical contributions, I absolutely do not trust that place has the best interests of its developers in mind and is likely driven more by politics than anything else.

No place has the "best interest of its developers in mind". That's true for any industry. It's a lot easier to replace the on the floor factory worker (i.e. the developer) than the foreman (the architect) and they get paid accordingly.

Don't get caught up on the title, role power is the least effective type of power in an organization. If you leverage relationships and can be seen as the expert, you can easily punch above your weight.

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

#196

Post by werbel » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #172

werbel wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

We do agree 100%. :)

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

#197

Post by irq11 » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

dunpeal wrote: post #185

jorblumesea wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 per…

> Most engineering interviewees fail to advance because of cultural/personality/communication issues and not technical competence. Not my experience. At least when hiring for programming positions, the typical fatal issue is that the candidate's coding is weak. In my first role as a hiring manager, I didn't stress coding tests for candidates with long work history on their resume. Since then, I learned better. I've s…

”I've seen candidates with anything between 1 and 15 years of full time coding work on their resumes fail to answer basic fizz-buzz level coding questions.”

I haven’t seen this. I have, however, seen lots of junior interviewers ask idiotic questions and wash candidates out for bad reasons, and then turn around and claim the candidate ”failed at fizzbuzz”, just to cover their own ass (or because they think TopCoder medium questions are “fizzbuzz”. Equally stupid.)

Me personally? I’ve never interviewed a senior person who couldn’t code at all. Not after the phone screen, anyway.

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

#198

Post by dbt00 » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

dsajames wrote: post #188

mrkurt wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Can't understand their accent" _is_ discriminatory. Please don't ever recommend against a candidate for that. Companies are definitely taking the easy way out. The reality is that most of them don't have a good hiring process, aren't consistent about hiring decisions, and tend to choose based on factors that have nothing to do with the job they're hiring for.

Good communication is a requirement of the job. If you can't communicate, you aren't likely to be efficient. Take some time to take classes and learn the language better. Try working in a Spanish-only environment as a pure English speaker and see how far you get. This doesn't mean "he has an accent", just that they couldn't understand it.

Speaking the language and speaking with an accent are two different things. Learning to listen to someone with an accent is a skill you can develop, same as they can develop their english skills (which they will, with practice and time).

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

#199

Post by munchbunny » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

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've done the TripleByte interview, so the decision to ask questions about relational databases instead of asking for a practical exercise makes sense in context.

It's because you can only fit so much into an already long interview (2 hours). A big chunk of that time is already spent on an exercise about reading/writing/debugging complex code. You can't fit everything in, so database stuff is moved to the non-coding section. Also, the questions aren't "guess the right answer" questions, the interviewer keeps digging with open ended questions to see how deep you can go.

> it could be that the candidates couldn't effectively communicate knowledge about RDMBS's. Or, it could be that the interviewer wasn't effectively listening to what the candidate was saying.

You could certainly get a bad interviewer, but that's a strawman here. If it's not TripleByte judging the candidate's communication skills, then it's the hiring team judging that. The suggestion was about how to give feedback about communication skills. And there are definitely stronger and weaker communicators, and it definitely makes a big difference in day to day work.

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

#200

Post by echevil » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

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.

Also, this looks like a feedback email after a take home project? I guess the rejection emails after the technical interview should be much more detailed.