Tell me why I suck

I was once not hired for a job i applied for (during the interview i was cross questioned a bit like an interrogation but a lot like i had done something wrong and this was my trial!), after the interview, his assistant was really kind and said to me,"really sorry about, that is my bosses confrontation style ..." then i was told they would like to see me again!

But after some thought (1 second), i just wanted not to go back again ... so maybe meaningful feedback to the interviewer/company would be useful too ...

In the many interviews I've had to do last year, I'd say a rejection notice is a start. In far too many cases the company simply ignores you. I've gotten to second and third interviews and thought I was doing quite well. Only to never hear from them again. Just sending out a notice would have at least prevented me from wondering.

Knowing why... would be nice, but it's understandleable why companies avoid it. From a purely human perspective it's hard disappointing people and letting them down. People don't like giving other people bad news. Especially if they don't know you. There's no way to tell how the person receiving it is going to react. It's easier to just be as polite as you can about it and keep your resons to yourself.

I hate wondering, but that's just part of the process. I've interviewed with a company where I blew past the technical interview. When I came in to meet with the CEO and do the social bit... well I thought I did alright, but I just never heard back from them again. I've wondered a thousand times what I might've said that would turn them off from a perfectly good candidate such as myself. I'll just have to live without knowing and I think it might be better that way anyway. It might be that the CEO just didn't get a good gut feeling about it, maybe I made a bad joke, maybe someone that works there recommended a friend... who knows? This stuff can be really, painfully arbitrary. It's best not to fret about it and keep your head up.

Getting no feedback sucks. I wrote about this last year [1]. Now Google is somewhat of a special case because it's a highly desirable place to work and very large so you have issues of scale [2].

Sometimes I read posts like this and someone will say "I sent out X hundred resumes" and my response is always "really?". It always strikes me that if that's what you're doing, you're doing something wrong.

Let me explain. I contracted in Australia for some years (where I'm from) and also in the UK (London) for several years. Contracting in London is a soul-destroying experience and there is an industry in dire need of regulation but I digress.

Contracting is possibly the worst and most depressing form of looking for work because you in many ways are at the bottom of the totem pole. You may earn a lot but you pay for that. Companies will generally treat you as replaceable (which you are).

But in the course of much job-seeking I've spoken to many recruiters and some have given me the lowdown on what they do (including the shady practices). But the thing that stuck out the most for me was they all say they can throw out 90-95% of the resumes (CVs actually) they receive within seconds of receiving. This is a combination of them being bad but, more interestingly, the person just isn't suited for the job. Like not even remotely. Basically people take a shotgun approach of applying for everything. If you're a C++ programmer living in Leeds you end up applying for an Oracle DBA position in Reading. I'm not kidding.

I've generally had a reasonable success rate with both getting interviews and getting the job at that point. One reason for this I think is not that I'm some super candidate but that I really target which jobs I go after as being something I'm particularly interested in or something I'm particularly well-suited for.

Part of it too is understanding the process and this varies from place to place.

So in the UK for example you want to deal with only a handful of recruiting agencies. There are many fly-by-night operations who are either harvesting CVs or just hoping to get lucky. Filling one candidate a month can keep a small operation afloat.

So if applying for a job with a bank in London there are three filters you have to make it through:

1. The recruiter. The recruiter may be limited in the number of CVs they can submit (eg 2). Even if they don't submit you they'll often tell you they will, which is why it's important to find one you can trust. Trust but verify;

2. HR. This is in my experience the biggest impediment to filling jobs. HR know nothing about programming so they'll word scan your CV/resume based on buzzwords. So you need to fill your CV with buzzwords, particularly those for the job. This can often mean catering your CV on a per-job basis. Some may not like this because it's more work (which it is) but that's the point: target high-probability jobs. The problem is that a buzzword-filled CV is actually a red flag to anyone technically competent;

3. Hiring Manager: if you make it this far, with UK banks at least, you'll be in a pile of up to 10 CVs generally speaking. Rarely will a hiring manager interview all candidates. They might pick 2-4 they like, screen them by phone and go down to 2-3 onsite interviews. Or they might just interview people until they find someone they like (very common in my experience) so, if you ever have a choice of interview slot, pick the earliest one. Cancel anything else. You can lose a job simply by choosing a slot on the second day and never being seen.

So to return to the issue of feedback: it's even worse with recruiters in the picture. The hiring manager may give feedback to the recruiter (but generally won't; they're too busy). But even if they do the chances of the recruiter passing it along, unless you have a very good relationship with them, is almost zero. At the point you didn't get the job, they lose interest in you until the next job they can shop you for comes up.

Recruitment as it stands now is a disaster but won't really change until companies (who have the money) sign on to changing it. The feedback loop isn't there to inform them of how they're not getting the best result out of this (if they even care). Bear in mind that the person running the team you would potentially work for may be as frustrated by this process as you the candidate are.

Google again is a special case here. We're large enough that we have our own recruiters. I can't imagine how horrid the situation would be if we outsourced recruitment. Of course not everyone can do that but not everyone needs to I guess.

The process here is scrutinized (and criticized) quite a lot so is subject to gaming. So please don't take my comments to mean the process here is perfect. It isn't. But I have a hard time figuring out how it could be done better on the same scale. Every large company will be selective in some way, just to limit the deluge of applicants to manageable levels.

Other commentors have likened recruitment to dating and it's an apt analogy IMHO. A lot of recruitment comes down to chemistry between those doing the hiring and the candidate. If the interviewer likes you then you're in a much better position. So you can be technically well-suited for something but just not a great "culture fit".

There can be luck involved here too. It can depend on who interviews you, other factors (maybe an interviewer is just having a bad day; maybe you are). I think it's important not to dwell on the feedback and rejection for too long. Try and just move on to the next thing.

[1]: http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/07/my-google-interview.html

[2]: http://screamable.com/google-received-over-75000-job-applica...

Discomfort.

As a former hiring manager I can tell you I once tried to give feedback.

There was no threatened litigation, nothing like that at all.

But it resulted in the guy trying to argue the points I made, convince me that he should still get the gig. I tried to be polite and explain clearly our reasoning -- but he just kept pushing. I nearly had to hang up on him to get him off the phone.

At that point I decided whenever I needed to turn someone down I would be as quick and opaque as possible. Since then I never had a problem. Better yet, have HR do it for you.

"I suck" is not a productive line of thought and potential employers will never give you feedback what you suck at. If you're sending out a large number of job applications and resumes, it might be a good idea to incorporate some basic testing methods. Try out different combinations of CVs, different tones, different vocabularies. Maybe there is a simple reason for all the rejections that can be fixed with some minor adjustments. For example, you might be giving too much or too little information on your CV. Perhaps you're applying at the wrong companies or for the wrong position. The point being, if you received so many fuck-off letters, there is probably something systemically wrong here, and chances are you can use a combination of quality assurance and data analysis to find out what it is.