My experience has been the reason that I (and my peers) say nothing is because of a disconnect between knowledge and authority. I've interviewed thousands of c

My experience has been the reason that I (and my peers) say nothing is because of a disconnect between knowledge and authority. I've interviewed thousands of candidates in my career and I almost always know before I finish up the interview whether or not we are going to bring that person in for another interview (at which point the team votes if we offer). More than anything else, the number one reason that an otherwise good candidate doesn't get to continue is because of a disconnect around what the word "Senior" means. Every company has a different bar set for what qualifies as "Senior", but in most places I've been that bar is relatively high, so if we advertise for that position externally it means we don't have someone internal who's met the bar for promotion yet. We can't in good conscious hire someone in as a "Senior" that is not at least as qualified as the people we already have who didn't make the cut for promotion. Title inflation hurts because what happens is you might have been "Senior" at your last three employers but you don't make the bar for "Senior" or sometimes even "Mid" where you're applying. As the interviewer there's very little I can actionably provide you that addresses the above without getting into a conversation about the possibility of hire at a lower level, which I don't have the authority to offer since I'm not the hiring manager. Additionally, I try to do everything I can to respect the candidate and preserve their dignity during the interview process. If they're bombing it, I don't want them to feel like they're bombing it. It's not possible to both do that and tell them at the end that they aren't good enough to cross the threshold for the role. This is especially difficult for me and many of my peers because we're engineers and not really "people persons", so we err on the side of saying nothing vs risk saying something that crushes someone.