4 ms·

The lack of feedback is crippling. I interviewed at a similar company and I thought the interview went GREAT. I'm usually a great judge of whether or not some

The lack of feedback is crippling. I interviewed at a similar company and I thought the interview went GREAT. I'm usually a great judge of whether or not someone likes me, I pay attention that kind of thing, I got all the answers to their satisfaction while explaining, in detail and concisely, my thought process. Didn't get the job. I didn't make one mistake and I thought they liked me. I have zero clues as to why. I'm not really upset about it, it was just a very frustrating experience. All the more reason to do your own thing :-)

gcheong 16y ago
A good time to elicit feedback is right at the end of the interview, in a casual manner along the lines of "well, so how do you think I did?". You don't want to push it if they try to avoid the issue, but I find I generally get better feedback than when trying to get it after a rejection.
- cletus 16y ago
  I'd read stories about people doing this and being told they're not supposed to. I'm usually a fairly good judge of this sort of this so I usually don't need to ask. Eliciting a response may not give an accurate response (eg putting someone on the spot when their view is negative could be somewhat confronting). Practically speaking however, time constraints tended to prohibit such chit-chat anyway.
- gaius 16y ago
  Having been interviewing candidates for over a decade, I've noticed that in the vast majority of cases, this question is only asked by people who've done very badly. With a good candidate it doesn't feel like an interview at all, it feels like getting to know someone who's just joined your team.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    I've been interviewing people for 15+ years and I've only had one person ask that question and he was by far the worst candidate I've every interviewed for a developer job.
btilly 16y ago
I agree it sucks, but it is also necessary. Google started in the USA. In the USA if you give feedback, no matter how well-intentioned or apparently harmless it may be, that can be used to sue you. Even if those lawsuits are unlikely to go anywhere, they are a distraction. So no US company will give you feedback. And that's become standardized in Google's procedures.
- guelo 16y ago
  bah, this is the lazy HR manager's excuse for everything. Unless they say "we didn't hire you because you're black" no one's going to sue anyone.
  - seshagiric 16y ago
    I think the danger with getting sued is even one single successful claim will cost the company in millions, not to mention the publicity.
    - rdl 16y ago
      Even an unsuccessful claim could cost tens or hundreds of thousands to defend.
    - Arun2009 16y ago
      Plus the fact that the upside (if any) to revealing the reason for no-fire is negligible.
  - btilly 16y ago
    The problem is that a certain fraction of applicants will become convinced, rightly or wrongly, that they were hard done by, and were blackballed for whatever reason. Any hard information you give them can be used against you. And unfortunately not just obvious stuff like "we didn't hire you because you're black". You can say something innocuous like, "your grasp of algorithms didn't seem strong enough" and the candidate will flash to a particular interviewer who asked an algorithm question they didn't get, and become convinced that that was who blackballed them. And can further become convinced that that person actually had it out for them for unrelated reason X. This might be unlikely to wind up in court, but it happens often enough that it shows up in nasty blogs, rumors, etc that every large company has learned that you just don't want to go there. And none of them do.
nostrademons 16y ago
I actually came out of my Google interview thinking I'd blown it. I was making contingency plans in my head on the plane ride back, of what business I'd start next, since I apparently wouldn't get the job. Then the recruiter woke me up the next morning (I had a red-eye back) and told me the interview feedback looked great and they were fast-tracking me through the hiring committee. The lack of feedback does suck, but I wonder if it says more about our own ability to judge our competence than about the interview process itself. As btilly points out, companies in the U.S. are almost required to not say what you did wrong, for fear of lawsuits. Plus, the hire/no-hire decision usually comes down to a visceral reaction, so the decision-makers may not even know why they decided one way or another. Also - if you think the lack of feedback for interviews sucks, it's ten times worse when you're doing your own thing. I was an entrepreneur before Google, and we launched like 4 websites before I threw in the towel and got a job. Each one of them was met with a resounding...silence. Nobody saying we were bad, but nobody saying we were good either. We were just irrelevant. That's the way most startups go: if you're successful people will just quietly use your product and never acknowledge you, and if you're unsuccessful, people will just quietly not use your product and never acknowledge you. The only startups that get masses of haters are the ones where the founders were previously famous but royally fucked up (eg. Cuil), and the only ones that get massive acclaim are the ones that solve a hair-on-fire problem in a particularly spectacular way (eg. Google).
- bd 16y ago
  If the interview is adaptive (increasing difficulty till you can't handle it anymore), strongest candidates may end up feeling it went terrible, while weak candidates may feel it went very well (not being aware they were culled out early).
nihilocrat 16y ago
This is pretty much why I hate the idea of applying for a job. Supposing I get the interview, based on my past experience there's at least a 80% chance I won't get the job. I never got feedback for any of my "no hires" so I just have to assume they will all turn out that way. The lack of feedback makes me just assume every interview is a crapshoot and there's nothing I can do to try and improve.
- msg 16y ago
  You're playing the wrong game.
- russell 16y ago
  As a consultant, I got to do lots of interviews. I found that questions and programming problems go in fads or cycles. I often get the same programming problem at more than one company. After an interview, I go over the problems to see if I can tighten up the code, or to see what the nut is. If I am weak or unsure about one of my answers, I immediately go over the literature to understand the domain. The same question is sure to come up again. A couple of years ago it was the new java concurrency. This yea, not a single question about Java concurrency. But I did get FizzBuzz. :-)
city41 16y ago
I was contacted by Google Pittsburgh about 4 years ago. So I went through their phone interview process. I got through 3 interviews and really thought I did pretty well. All three interviews were entirely about solving problems that are heavily algorithm based. After interview three, bam!, they said they didn't want me. I looked over my notes and thoroughly researched the algorithms in question, I had come up with rather optimal solutions. I honestly have no idea what went wrong. But then maybe that just means I'm not smart enough to work at Google. Entirely possible. This experience bugged me for a while. Man what I would have given to see that guy's notes about me :)
- drcobg 16y ago
  You did three different phone interviews? Doesn't sound like Google to me; they usually do just one phone screen before the onsite.

gcheong 16y ago

A good time to elicit feedback is right at the end of the interview, in a casual manner along the lines of "well, so how do you think I did?". You don't want to push it if they try to avoid the issue, but I find I generally get better feedback than when trying to get it after a rejection.

cletus 16y ago
I'd read stories about people doing this and being told they're not supposed to. I'm usually a fairly good judge of this sort of this so I usually don't need to ask. Eliciting a response may not give an accurate response (eg putting someone on the spot when their view is negative could be somewhat confronting). Practically speaking however, time constraints tended to prohibit such chit-chat anyway.
gaius 16y ago
Having been interviewing candidates for over a decade, I've noticed that in the vast majority of cases, this question is only asked by people who've done very badly. With a good candidate it doesn't feel like an interview at all, it feels like getting to know someone who's just joined your team.
- arethuza 16y ago
  I've been interviewing people for 15+ years and I've only had one person ask that question and he was by far the worst candidate I've every interviewed for a developer job.

btilly 16y ago

I agree it sucks, but it is also necessary. Google started in the USA. In the USA if you give feedback, no matter how well-intentioned or apparently harmless it may be, that can be used to sue you. Even if those lawsuits are unlikely to go anywhere, they are a distraction. So no US company will give you feedback. And that's become standardized in Google's procedures.

guelo 16y ago
bah, this is the lazy HR manager's excuse for everything. Unless they say "we didn't hire you because you're black" no one's going to sue anyone.
- seshagiric 16y ago
  I think the danger with getting sued is even one single successful claim will cost the company in millions, not to mention the publicity.
  - rdl 16y ago
    Even an unsuccessful claim could cost tens or hundreds of thousands to defend.
  - Arun2009 16y ago
    Plus the fact that the upside (if any) to revealing the reason for no-fire is negligible.
- btilly 16y ago
  The problem is that a certain fraction of applicants will become convinced, rightly or wrongly, that they were hard done by, and were blackballed for whatever reason. Any hard information you give them can be used against you. And unfortunately not just obvious stuff like "we didn't hire you because you're black". You can say something innocuous like, "your grasp of algorithms didn't seem strong enough" and the candidate will flash to a particular interviewer who asked an algorithm question they didn't get, and become convinced that that was who blackballed them. And can further become convinced that that person actually had it out for them for unrelated reason X. This might be unlikely to wind up in court, but it happens often enough that it shows up in nasty blogs, rumors, etc that every large company has learned that you just don't want to go there. And none of them do.

nostrademons 16y ago

I actually came out of my Google interview thinking I'd blown it. I was making contingency plans in my head on the plane ride back, of what business I'd start next, since I apparently wouldn't get the job. Then the recruiter woke me up the next morning (I had a red-eye back) and told me the interview feedback looked great and they were fast-tracking me through the hiring committee. The lack of feedback does suck, but I wonder if it says more about our own ability to judge our competence than about the interview process itself. As btilly points out, companies in the U.S. are almost required to not say what you did wrong, for fear of lawsuits. Plus, the hire/no-hire decision usually comes down to a visceral reaction, so the decision-makers may not even know why they decided one way or another. Also - if you think the lack of feedback for interviews sucks, it's ten times worse when you're doing your own thing. I was an entrepreneur before Google, and we launched like 4 websites before I threw in the towel and got a job. Each one of them was met with a resounding...silence. Nobody saying we were bad, but nobody saying we were good either. We were just irrelevant. That's the way most startups go: if you're successful people will just quietly use your product and never acknowledge you, and if you're unsuccessful, people will just quietly not use your product and never acknowledge you. The only startups that get masses of haters are the ones where the founders were previously famous but royally fucked up (eg. Cuil), and the only ones that get massive acclaim are the ones that solve a hair-on-fire problem in a particularly spectacular way (eg. Google).

bd 16y ago
If the interview is adaptive (increasing difficulty till you can't handle it anymore), strongest candidates may end up feeling it went terrible, while weak candidates may feel it went very well (not being aware they were culled out early).

nihilocrat 16y ago

This is pretty much why I hate the idea of applying for a job. Supposing I get the interview, based on my past experience there's at least a 80% chance I won't get the job. I never got feedback for any of my "no hires" so I just have to assume they will all turn out that way. The lack of feedback makes me just assume every interview is a crapshoot and there's nothing I can do to try and improve.

msg 16y ago
You're playing the wrong game.
russell 16y ago
As a consultant, I got to do lots of interviews. I found that questions and programming problems go in fads or cycles. I often get the same programming problem at more than one company. After an interview, I go over the problems to see if I can tighten up the code, or to see what the nut is. If I am weak or unsure about one of my answers, I immediately go over the literature to understand the domain. The same question is sure to come up again. A couple of years ago it was the new java concurrency. This yea, not a single question about Java concurrency. But I did get FizzBuzz. :-)

city41 16y ago

I was contacted by Google Pittsburgh about 4 years ago. So I went through their phone interview process. I got through 3 interviews and really thought I did pretty well. All three interviews were entirely about solving problems that are heavily algorithm based. After interview three, bam!, they said they didn't want me. I looked over my notes and thoroughly researched the algorithms in question, I had come up with rather optimal solutions. I honestly have no idea what went wrong. But then maybe that just means I'm not smart enough to work at Google. Entirely possible. This experience bugged me for a while. Man what I would have given to see that guy's notes about me :)

drcobg 16y ago
You did three different phone interviews? Doesn't sound like Google to me; they usually do just one phone screen before the onsite.