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The asymmetry is actually pretty funny if you think about what happens when a candidate declines an offer or ghosts a company. If you ghost, they’re likely goi
by awinder 7y ago
The asymmetry is actually pretty funny if you think about what happens when a candidate declines an offer or ghosts a company.
If you ghost, they’re likely going to continue to contact over multiple channels. Because they want an answer so that they can take next steps. Same as a candidate.
If you say thanks but no thanks, they’re going to want to know why, is there anything they could have done differently, or try to convince you that you have it wrong.
There’s basic human reasons for these very common reactions, we just put a construct in front of one of those groups and tried to explain it away as being acceptable.
- Jagat 7y agoYeah, but it's not likely they're going to sue you regardless of what reason you give for not accepting their offer. There's asymmetry from the other side too.
- zymhan 7y agoCan people just drop "fear of being sued" as a catch-all reason for any behavior? It is incredibly expensive and time consuming to file a lawsuit. The average person doesn't go around suing other folks regularly.
- Jagat 7y agoFiling a lawsuit can be quite profitable for the lawyers involved. What's preventing someone from trying to extract $3M in settlement money from a rich company that doesn't want its reputation tarnished in a long running discrimination lawsuit? And $3M is a lot of money that lawyers would eagerly represent someone that has an evidence of discrimination.
- awinder 7y agoThe time it would take out of your life (just because you hire lawyers doesn’t mean you’re spending no time on the lawsuit). And once you file that lawsuit it’s going to become public record that you sued a company you interviewed for, so there’s a lot of downside risk for the rest of your career. I understand the fear but I don’t think there’s realistically a lot of downside risk for employers to responsibly share some feedback. And certainly there’s no legal risk to just letting candidates know they went in a different direction.
- tuananh 7y agothey don't want the hassle of getting drag into one?
- adamredwoods 7y agoNot asymmetrical, in my opinion. Companies are holding all the cards, otherwise I wouldn't be looking for a job in the first place. I believe that someday there will be too few jobs for all the people on this planet.
- HarryHirsch 7y agosomeday there will be too few jobs for all the people on this planet There are too few jobs now. Paul Krugman called it a "savings glut". There are no opportunities to invest the cash you are holding productively, consequently interest rates are low and the best thing you can do is buy back your own stock.
- 1123581321 7y agoInvestors who sell to a buyback deploy the money elsewhere, including new issues and private investment, which leads to hiring.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoNot completely true. You're holding some cards too if they're desperately needing a position filled.
- draw_down 7y agoSo make them be the ones to say no. “No” is more like, raise your asking price to what you’d need to feel comfortable working there. If they don’t want to pay it then that’s their decision.