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How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

nathanmarz.com

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Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#71

Post by bsiemon »

follower wrote: post #70
alexgartrell wrote: post #62

I interviewed at a bunch of places and only got two offers. One of the places I interviewed and failed was Microsoft. They had the interviews throughout the day (about 4 of them), and then after that they had an HR person give you the good or bad news. (It's worth saying that the developers I interviewed with were really outstanding. They were in the Dev Tools group (CLR, Visual Studio, etc.) and were really sharp).…

> he emailed to "give me the bad news," he said "we're going with another candidate, but enjoy your summer at Company X!" I'd say this loosely qualifies as rejecting me like an asshole. Really? Wow. I'd have interpreted that as an attempt at being "friendly", showing at least some personal interest and wishing you well. I guess that goes to show it's difficult to predict how other people will interpret things. :)

They implied he would only get a summer internship when he was going for a real job.

Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#72

Post by barrkel »

follower wrote: post #70
alexgartrell wrote: post #62

I interviewed at a bunch of places and only got two offers. One of the places I interviewed and failed was Microsoft. They had the interviews throughout the day (about 4 of them), and then after that they had an HR person give you the good or bad news. (It's worth saying that the developers I interviewed with were really outstanding. They were in the Dev Tools group (CLR, Visual Studio, etc.) and were really sharp).…

> he emailed to "give me the bad news," he said "we're going with another candidate, but enjoy your summer at Company X!" I'd say this loosely qualifies as rejecting me like an asshole. Really? Wow. I'd have interpreted that as an attempt at being "friendly", showing at least some personal interest and wishing you well. I guess that goes to show it's difficult to predict how other people will interpret things. :)

The implication is either that the candidate is actually going to end up as an intern (rather than full-time position) at Company X, or is only going to last a few months at Company X, or possibly that only Company X would accept such a candidate (depending on whether or not the candidate told him which companies had offered).

All the implications seem insulting to me, based on the story as told (that the guy wasn't interested in an internship).

Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#75

Post by merubin75 »

Reality check -- sometimes you reject a candidate for less than scientific reasons. Either you didn't "click" with them, or there was something that you just didn't like. Shallow? Maybe. But when I've hired people in the past, I've made the mistake of overlooking someone's personality in favor of what looked like a superior skillset. Several magnificent failures later, I won't do that again.

The reality is that you have to look at someone's personality and whether they'll mesh with your team as much as their skills. That's a fact, and nobody -- repeat NOBODY -- wants to hear that they come off arrogant, ageist, misogynist, etc.

Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#76

Post by lincolnq »

MrFoof wrote: post #52
ams6110 wrote: post #3

The reason many places don't do this is not so much to avoid feeling like an a-hole but to avoid accidental liability. There are so many things you can't say or ask in an interview, that a lot of companies that are big enough to have an HR person or department will require a very generic rejection letter just to be sure they don't provide grounds for a lawsuit.

This is indeed true, and I'll never fault anyone for it. Though rarely have I encountered a rejection in which I didn't feel the same way -- actually, if I have a sense that something is amiss I prod around for it rather deliberately to see what sort of answers I can get out of folks. Sometimes you get the obvious red flags you were looking for, complete with obvious body language and visible frustration. Recently I…

A very interesting and useful post. It sounds like this guy wanted to keep some sort of reputation since he was so famous.

But it was confusing to read because it took me a long time and a lot of puzzling to figure out all the antecedents. It might be more accessible if you made up names for people instead of saying "this individual" and so on. Also, I would be interested in quotes or paraphrases from this guy's Twitter comments about you - do you remember any of them?

Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#77

Post by spacemanaki »

desigooner wrote: post #63

I think the most frequent complaint of mine is unprofessionalism on the end of the company in getting back to the candidates. It's pretty much being an asshole to not get back to the candidate who takes the time to come and interview with them. I understand that they may have many a people applying for positions and this and that but there are some common courtesies. And I'm not even talking about a hyper competitive…

Unfortunately, I think that this is all too common, especially in other (non-software) fields. There's almost no excuse for it (short of "the company went bankrupt the day of the interview and all hands were laid off")

Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#78

Post by kahawe »

tjr wrote: post #13

One time I got a rejection letter from a company that included a list of reasons that people are usually rejected. One of the reasons was spelling or grammar errors in their cover letter or resume. As it happened, this letter that they sent out contained both a spelling error and a grammatical error. In retrospect, this was perhaps a little too snarky, but I wrote back to them and pointed this out. They contacted me…

Ahhh the elusive position of CSNO? Chief Spelling Nazi Officer.

Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#79

Post by bgruber »

Frankly, just doing the actual rejection makes you less of an asshole than pretty much everyone else. I've applied for a handful of positions over the last few years, and the fraction of people who actually bothered to tell me I was rejected is 0. The only exception was the supreme asshole who hired me one day, then called me the next day to tell me that I wasn't hired after all. He didn't really have a choice.

Re: How to reject a job candidate without being an asshole

#80

Post by ctkrohn »

btilly wrote: post #36
ctkrohn wrote: post #14

Many of the comments below talk about potential legal liability from rejecting a candidate in an inappropriate way. Would someone care to clarify the sort of problems that can arise?

There are a lot of problems that can happen. For instance if you complain about hygiene and the person has a medical condition that causes them to stink (don't laugh, this happens), you can be sued for discrimination. If the person had a thick accent and you didn't want to hire because of the communication issue (I've seen candidates rejected for this reason), they could decide that you're racist and sue you. If the…

Great answer, thanks.
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