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Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

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Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#71

Post by yuhong »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #67
yuhong wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike employment anti-discrimination laws for this and other reasons. I suggest a compromise of limiting it to manual labor jobs and the like for which the anti-discrimination laws were actually designed for.

At a well-known Java school in the Southern US the student body is ~ 2/3 Indian and 1/3 Chinese, the secretarial staff is 1/2 white, 1/2 Latino, and the tech support staff is 100 % white. It's an odd distribution, no matter how much you dislike anti-discrimination laws.

Yes, the question is whether anti-discrimination laws would actually be an effective tool.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#72

Post by vonnik »

Former technical recruiter, current CEO here.

The recruiting and hiring process as presently practiced by most firms is an enormous waste of everyone's time. We are inefficient in how we gather information from applicants and how we communicate it to them.

This is partially because it's hard to standardize the information needed for each job and available from each candidate. By the time you meet the minimum requirements of gathering information about an applicant, sharing it with your team and getting them to make a decision, much time has passed. Time when you should have been doing other things.

Then you face the question: How much more time can I spare sharing with the candidate the reasons why they were rejected? A recruiter may get the decision from the VP Engineering, but not know the reasons. If you do know the reasons, some of them will make the candidate upset, and they aren't always fixable. (What if all you can say is: The hiring manager didn't like you. Wasn't impressed. You don't seem smart enough for this role...?) That is: sharing all the reasons for rejection will lead to a huge waste of time and emotional energy with someone who you may never speak with again. Except in the rare cases where you see potential, there's almost no incentive to go into detail.

I've written more here, for those who are interested:

https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/13992315?trk=prof-sm

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#73

Post by Buttons840 »

refurb wrote: post #64
jzwinck wrote: post #4

Not only does fear of lawsuits prevent companies from disclosing no-hire reasons, it prevents them from even recording those reasons internally. If you get rejected and don't know why, take heart: a year from now the company also won't know why. You can apply again as if it were Groundhog Day.

I don't think that's true for all companies. The big, multi-national company I work for keeps all candidate assessment form that have been filled out by the interviewer (even for summer interns). Of course we're trained beforehand to not put stuff in the form that could be construed as discriminatory based on protected classes. You have to keep in mind that if a candidate is rejected and comes back and says it was il…

Are there laws that would allow me to get the interviewers notes?

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#74

Post by HarryHirsch »

yuhong wrote: post #71
HarryHirsch wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a well-known Java school in the Southern US the student body is ~ 2/3 Indian and 1/3 Chinese, the secretarial staff is 1/2 white, 1/2 Latino, and the tech support staff is 100 % white. It's an odd distribution, no matter how much you dislike anti-discrimination laws.

Yes, the question is whether anti-discrimination laws would actually be an effective tool.

In places as rotten as that one you'd ideally fire everyone and rehire from 4 states away. Antidiscrimination laws are weak tea, but the only tool we have. You sit and hope that the University President takes note after the first suit and fires management.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#75

Post by dms105 »

lazyant wrote: post #18

I get it that giving feedback can expose a company to lawsuits and takes a lot of time, now, what's the excuse for not even informing the candidate of the rejection? many companies simply stop communicating.

In my experience the lack of communication is caused by a combination of workload and lack of experience. A lot of the larger tech companies have an assembly line approach to recruiting, with teams of coordinators, sourcers, and recruiters each handling a portion of the process.

These teams tend to grow fast and hire of a lot of junior people - that lack of experience combined with pressure and a huge volume of interviews(at a fast growing firm) results in a lot of inconsistent communication. When a sourcer/recruiter is dealing with 5-10 interviews a day with 80% of them not making the cut, sometimes they make the decision to prioritize building pipeline over closing the loop properly with people. And sometimes people just have poor time management abilities and let things get lost in the shuffle.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#76

Post by Alupis »

Buttons840 wrote: post #73
refurb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true for all companies. The big, multi-national company I work for keeps all candidate assessment form that have been filled out by the interviewer (even for summer interns). Of course we're trained beforehand to not put stuff in the form that could be construed as discriminatory based on protected classes. You have to keep in mind that if a candidate is rejected and comes back and says it was il…

Are there laws that would allow me to get the interviewers notes?

Yes, during discovery, for instance.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#77

Post by dms105 »

nsedlet wrote: post #35

At HireArt (W12) we've been working on a feedback feature for awhile and are close to finally releasing it. We have a fairly rigorous screening process, and every candidate is assessed by a grader according to a rubric. Our thinking was that if we provide this assessment to employers, surely we could provide it to candidates, too. When we spoke to a labor attorney about this awhile back, their first reaction was basi…

Your company is appropriately named, as hiring for sales is certainly more of an art than hiring engineers. It's difficult to hire for sales and other customer facing positions without taking into account personality fit and likability, which are hard to measure/quantify and will often result in someones idea of unfairness.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#78

Post by kstrauser »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #53
Symbiote wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe ask if it's worthwhile applying in the future? Google recommended I did, then phoned me a little over a year after that rejection. Presumably I didn't do too badly on their tests up to that point.

Google didn't specifically recommend reapplying when they rejected me, but they did solicit me to interview again a couple years down the line. They rejected me again, and that time the recruiter did say "I hope you'll still consider applying to Google in the future". Why would I? I paid several hundred dollars for the privilege of applying the first time, and history strongly suggests that they're not going to take…

What'd you pay for? They flew me out, paid for the rental car and hotel, and gave me a food stipend. I took a couple of paid days off from my then-current job so I wasn't out salary, either.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#79

Post by thaumasiotes »

kstrauser wrote: post #78
thaumasiotes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn't specifically recommend reapplying when they rejected me, but they did solicit me to interview again a couple years down the line. They rejected me again, and that time the recruiter did say "I hope you'll still consider applying to Google in the future". Why would I? I paid several hundred dollars for the privilege of applying the first time, and history strongly suggests that they're not going to take…

What'd you pay for? They flew me out, paid for the rental car and hotel, and gave me a food stipend. I took a couple of paid days off from my then-current job so I wasn't out salary, either.

They flew me out, paid for one night before the interview and one after at a hotel in Manhattan, specifically denied me a rental car, and gave me no stipend. Since I thought showing up to a day of interviews with terrible jet lag was inadvisable, I had to pay for an additional night before the interview myself. I also had to take two days off work. This was "paid time off", but since paid time off is cash equivalent, yes I was out salary.

Re: Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates?

#80

Post by verisimilidude »

cortesoft wrote: post #23

The reason is almost always "There was a better candidate"

There are many more reasons. One time I got this, "We can't bring you on at this time because our department no longer has the funds we were expecting." They actually called back six months later, out of the blue, and offered me the job.
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