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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

#31

Post by dep_b »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #16
dep_b wrote: post #14

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 was tailored towards the interview not just a larger generic mail. There are tons of companies that give you a generic email after you completed an IQ test, a questionary, open questions and of course the 8hours+ homew…

> "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's quite a bit less than I got. Perhaps you're just better than me? ;) But I didn't know there might be another take home assignment.

> But they will. The interview process is stochastic; exactly the same performance from you will lead to different results on different attempts.

Yeah I thought about that. But "try x months later" really means that you didn't pass some kind of bar. If I would be one of the five people that passed there would be no problem if I applied next week again, right?

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

#32

Post by segmondy »

Seriously, we need something written on why rejection sucks?

Rejection sucks because we all like to imagine that we are good enough and the only reason we applied is because we believed we are good enough so it stinks to be told that we are not good enough.

Doesn't matter how you phrase the email, might be nice to give a feedback, but for anyone who receives it, it stings. The only difference is that some folks have a positive mindset, they get over the sting and work towards getting better. Feedback or not.

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

#33

Post by [deleted] »

account2 wrote: post #19
nosseo wrote: post #2

Article author - I'm on the writing team at Triplebyte. Most of what we do is summarize candidates' technical performance for their introduction to companies, but we also send feedback to everyone who takes our two-hour interview. I took this responsibility over from our first engineer, who built a bunch of software to make the process faster - it lets me quickly autogenerate emails by clicking all the resources I wa…

>Every few months, I check that all our recommended resources are still up-to-date, available, and free. What are your recommended resources for technical improvements in coding interviews?

[deleted]

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

#34

Post by desireco42 »

I was lead dev in a company, I felt strongly that I don't want to reject people without providing them with clear feedback what they did well and didn't do well.

VP hated the idea and very quickly was abandoned. We got a lot of bad candidates tbh, so it was hard to tell them what they did wrong (they bombed pretty much).

I still think, done well, it provides great benefit to candidates being considered.

Thing that worked well for me, I had elaborate set of topics/knowledge I want my developers to know and be rated on, it wasn't arbitrary selection. Still, when someone bombs, it is hard to relay they did bad.

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

#35

Post by faitswulff »

nosseo wrote: post #2

Article author - I'm on the writing team at Triplebyte. Most of what we do is summarize candidates' technical performance for their introduction to companies, but we also send feedback to everyone who takes our two-hour interview. I took this responsibility over from our first engineer, who built a bunch of software to make the process faster - it lets me quickly autogenerate emails by clicking all the resources I wa…

As a writers for TripleByte, how much technical background do you and the rest of the writing team have?

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

#36

Post by sigstoat »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #15
nosseo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get why companies don't do honest rejection letters, but this there's no excuse for whatsoever.

It'd be nice to have some kind of public list where we could report companies that ghost, to warn other engineers to stay away.

seems like the interviews portion of glassdoor would support that?

(caveats re trusting glassdoor, blah blah)

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

#37

Post by nosseo »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #16
dep_b wrote: post #14

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 was tailored towards the interview not just a larger generic mail. There are tons of companies that give you a generic email after you completed an IQ test, a questionary, open questions and of course the 8hours+ homew…

> "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.

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

#38

Post by apetresc »

> I work at Triplebyte, and over the last year I’ve written over 3,000 detailed, individual rejection emails.

Wait, what? That means you're interviewing on average 12 people every single working day of the year. Even for someone who's job title was "Technical Recruiter" that would be a TON, let alone for someone who is a Team Lead and presumably has other duties. How is that possible?

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

#39

Post by paulie_a »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #15
nosseo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get why companies don't do honest rejection letters, but this there's no excuse for whatsoever.

It'd be nice to have some kind of public list where we could report companies that ghost, to warn other engineers to stay away.

Just write up a review on glassdoor. Specifically calling them out for a crappy interview process. Or if you are really bold and bother with linkedin, make a post.

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

#40

Post by tptacek »

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 communication, doesn't that imply a lot about your process is subjective? After all, and to extend an analysis used in this blog post: 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.

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