6 ms·

He didn't get the decision he wanted, but he got it in a week and a half, which is a lot better than I've come to expect.

kafkaesq 10y ago
I have one, and only one, expectation from companies after an interview: Please respond by the time you say you will, more or less. It is amazing how many companies seem to be "unable" to come through on this very modest expectation.
- SoulMan 10y ago
  Right. I think its the problem with some (probably majority) of recruiters attitude. They will be after you for resumes and referrals but once you apply and don't get through or resume is not impressive the do not bother to inform you , even don't respond to your curious email. Even for internal referrals I have chased them for months just to get to know that resume was not "fitting"
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    Yeah - getting ghosted sucks in any context. But when they ghost you even after an internal referral? From someone you worked with previously? That's when you really have to wonder what is going through these people's heads.
    - SoulMan 10y ago
      The problem with internal referral is that your friend keeps texting you every day what happened to the resume he had sent and your company recruiter does not respond to the your emails/IMs.
      - kafkaesq 10y ago
        The recruiters are just doing what's expected of them. The real problems is that most companies just don't seem to care about candidate experience, period.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      What is "getting ghosted"?
      - kafkaesq 10y ago
        The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just "get the hint" and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghosting http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghosting
- kyrra 10y ago
  In Google's case there are a lot of people in the pipeline that all need to respond before you get an answer. All your interviewers need to get their feedback in. Any internal or external referrals need to provide feedback. And once that's all together, it needs to be presented to a hiring committee (and there are more steps after this that can take time). (Good) recruiters at Google strive to get their candidates answers as soon as possible, but the most they can do, at times, is hound the person that is holding up the process.
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    These companies can take all the time they want. The problem is that they continually bait candidates with promised turnaround times that very seldom have anything to do with reality.
    - khedoros 10y ago
      My second interview out of college with EMC led to about a month and a half of waiting, but resulted in an offer at higher pay than I had expected. A more recent interview with Google got me a "no" in about 4 business days. Whatever else I could say about the process, at least they stuck to their promised window.
- wallflower 10y ago
  In the olden days, companies would typically say it would take 2-3 weeks to give you a response. This was because they needed buffer time between extending an offer to their first-choice candidates, waiting for them to accept or turn down, time for salary negotiations (before the offer is final), extending an offer to their second-choice - and so on. Nowadays, I think it may be a breakdown of the hiring or communication process. If there is a recruiter (outside) involved, the recruiter will likely not get communications about the ongoing hiring process since they involve candidates that the outside recruiter does not handle. If it is an inside recruiter, the inside recruiter might not even get communications if there are other inside recruiters competing to fill a position (silos, darwinism, bonus pools). It would be nice if the hiring software platforms automatically sent a workflow-based notification based on where you were in the pipeline (e.g. 'did not pass go, did not collect $200'). However, I think that transparency into hiring processes advantages the candidates over the hiring company. The hiring company's advantage is that it (usually) has the power and controls information asymmetrically. There are most likely exceptions for exceptional candidates (think Google/Facebook AI team candidates) in which they don't play the hiring game but are simply trying to smooth the process. This is why having an internal advocate is essential for getting into a company's hiring pipeline and knowing where you are in that pipeline (did the pipeline break for you, were you discharged into an outflow pipe after the on-sites etc). Hiring is optimized for the employer's yield of quality employees, not for the non-accepted ("rejected") employees. Even though there are legal issues involved with specific reasons for non-hiring (e.g. worst case - discrimination lawsuits), it still benefits the company to be cautiously turtle slow with even black/white binary responses (no, yes - you are hired). Since some of the most egregious companies (e.g. Google) have some of the most talented software engineers, you can imagine it is more a function of the culture (e.g. false positives are bad - it is acceptable to have false negatives) than the software/communication platforms underlying the hiring process.

kafkaesq 10y ago

I have one, and only one, expectation from companies after an interview: Please respond by the time you say you will, more or less. It is amazing how many companies seem to be "unable" to come through on this very modest expectation.

SoulMan 10y ago
Right. I think its the problem with some (probably majority) of recruiters attitude. They will be after you for resumes and referrals but once you apply and don't get through or resume is not impressive the do not bother to inform you , even don't respond to your curious email. Even for internal referrals I have chased them for months just to get to know that resume was not "fitting"
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Yeah - getting ghosted sucks in any context. But when they ghost you even after an internal referral? From someone you worked with previously? That's when you really have to wonder what is going through these people's heads.
  - SoulMan 10y ago
    The problem with internal referral is that your friend keeps texting you every day what happened to the resume he had sent and your company recruiter does not respond to the your emails/IMs.
    - kafkaesq 10y ago
      The recruiters are just doing what's expected of them. The real problems is that most companies just don't seem to care about candidate experience, period.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    What is "getting ghosted"?
    - kafkaesq 10y ago
      The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just "get the hint" and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghosting http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghosting
kyrra 10y ago
In Google's case there are a lot of people in the pipeline that all need to respond before you get an answer. All your interviewers need to get their feedback in. Any internal or external referrals need to provide feedback. And once that's all together, it needs to be presented to a hiring committee (and there are more steps after this that can take time). (Good) recruiters at Google strive to get their candidates answers as soon as possible, but the most they can do, at times, is hound the person that is holding up the process.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  These companies can take all the time they want. The problem is that they continually bait candidates with promised turnaround times that very seldom have anything to do with reality.
  - khedoros 10y ago
    My second interview out of college with EMC led to about a month and a half of waiting, but resulted in an offer at higher pay than I had expected. A more recent interview with Google got me a "no" in about 4 business days. Whatever else I could say about the process, at least they stuck to their promised window.
wallflower 10y ago
In the olden days, companies would typically say it would take 2-3 weeks to give you a response. This was because they needed buffer time between extending an offer to their first-choice candidates, waiting for them to accept or turn down, time for salary negotiations (before the offer is final), extending an offer to their second-choice - and so on. Nowadays, I think it may be a breakdown of the hiring or communication process. If there is a recruiter (outside) involved, the recruiter will likely not get communications about the ongoing hiring process since they involve candidates that the outside recruiter does not handle. If it is an inside recruiter, the inside recruiter might not even get communications if there are other inside recruiters competing to fill a position (silos, darwinism, bonus pools). It would be nice if the hiring software platforms automatically sent a workflow-based notification based on where you were in the pipeline (e.g. 'did not pass go, did not collect $200'). However, I think that transparency into hiring processes advantages the candidates over the hiring company. The hiring company's advantage is that it (usually) has the power and controls information asymmetrically. There are most likely exceptions for exceptional candidates (think Google/Facebook AI team candidates) in which they don't play the hiring game but are simply trying to smooth the process. This is why having an internal advocate is essential for getting into a company's hiring pipeline and knowing where you are in that pipeline (did the pipeline break for you, were you discharged into an outflow pipe after the on-sites etc). Hiring is optimized for the employer's yield of quality employees, not for the non-accepted ("rejected") employees. Even though there are legal issues involved with specific reasons for non-hiring (e.g. worst case - discrimination lawsuits), it still benefits the company to be cautiously turtle slow with even black/white binary responses (no, yes - you are hired). Since some of the most egregious companies (e.g. Google) have some of the most talented software engineers, you can imagine it is more a function of the culture (e.g. false positives are bad - it is acceptable to have false negatives) than the software/communication platforms underlying the hiring process.