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+1 on this. The company has nothing to gain in delivering more feedback other than a thumbs up/down, and a lot more to lose.

Nuzzerino 7y ago
What are they losing in this case? I don't see how a company is actually harmed by someone complaining about an interview. Unless you're trying to attract people who subscribe to cancel culture, I don't see a problem.
- kenhwang 7y ago
  Employee hours. Someone has to collect, document, sanitize, and explain the feedback. Then respond to the response to the feedback. In the time it takes our recruiter to provide feedback to a candidate, they could have sourced 20 more candidates. edit: I'll argue instant feedback is even more expensive and risky. It's not coordinated, potentially duplicative, may impact/contaminate later rounds, and may not be complete or representative of the interview as a whole. Engineers aren't known for being naturally HR/legal-compliant, and having multiple expensive engineers spend time doing things not in their typical skillset that's typically done by a single resource that specializes in said skillset doesn't sound cheaper at all.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    The article recommends instant feedback, presumably much less costly.
  - eropple 7y ago
    They've only disrupted their day to talk to you, in many cases having done these increasingly-prevalent and always-bullshit 4+-hour "exercises", and they have way less time to be allocating than you do. That's all they've done. Their time isn't deserving of respect and it's just downright ridiculous to think that it's the decent thing to do to tell them something that might, just might, not make it a waste for them to have spent it. ...Or, you know. Don't be that guy. Candidate, candidate, candidate--depersonalizing language for depersonalized processes. How about person? These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your recruiter's cattle-call throughput, each and every one of them. Have some empathy, my dude. Or at least some enlightened self-interest, for someday will be your day in the barrel.
    - kenhwang 7y ago
      Interviewing is a business transaction, not social services. They'll min-max their time just like you'll mix-max your compensation. I'll happily give advice, feedback, mock interviews, and other sorts of help on my own time in more appropriate environments. When it's company time, it's just business.
      - eropple 7y ago
        You can rationalize how you'd like, but it's never "just business." These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your company does. Be decent.
        kenhwang 7y ago
        They're getting a prompt, professional, inoffensive response in exchange for their time. That is decency. You can't expect a business to feed the hungry, cure the sick, and house the poor out of the goodness of their hearts because these are people that spent a couple hours of their day with you. There are more appropriate institutions for charity.
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Perhaps the easiest business-oriented solution to this mess is to simply comp applicants for investing their time in interviews with a company. At least then there isn’t the sentiment of having wasted time.
        eropple 7y ago
        This is an excellent suggestion that treats people as people and as professionals whose time is valuable. It would, of course, never happen, because those same employers fear of what might happen if they granted the same respect they demand, but I admire your lateral thinking.
        eropple 7y ago
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    On the other hand, by giving good feedback, your company engenders goodwill and brownie points ratings on Glassdoor and elsewhere. Shouldn’t good PR be worth a little work from a company?
    - justforyou 7y ago
      Companies that are that concerned about PR spin their situation with actual PR.
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        Word of mouth is also a thing.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    > Someone has to collect, document, sanitize, and explain the feedback. Either something like this is being up collected and articulated up through the decision points in the hiring process, or the decisions are being made on a fuzzy basis that can't even be explained internally, which presumably represents a risk that decisions couldn't be properly justified should a candidate suspect discrimination and pursue a claim. (This is especially true for any kind of exercises, btw. If an employer asks me to do some, I am going to screen them on whether they have (a) complete reference solutions with (b) numbers on how long it took to complete each and why they're confident those numbers are reliable(c) a written rubric for evaluating candidate solutions that (d) they'll agree to share with me when we're done.)
    - kenhwang 7y ago
      Considering most of the interview is evaluation of soft skills and unique backgrounds there's almost certainly fuzzy basis.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
cnst 7y ago
In my experience, they often like to give feedback on subsequent interviews about the past interviews. Google has some pretty detailed feedback on a interview I did years ago, which they were happy to reveal over the phone on a subsequent onsite invitation.
bumby 7y ago
I've always considered it just a professional courtesy, within reason. Just like it would be nice, but not required, for an applicant to say why they turned down a job offer. It can help us understand what's lacking to determine whether or not it's worth improving upon.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  Professional courtesy doesn't matter much when it's now the norm not to be curteous, and thought to be unprofitable (in all the ways benefit is measured, not just in monetary terms) if the company is curteous. There is no professionalism above the level requried to maintain an increasing rate of profit. Workers in all industries since the beginning of waged labour have learned this fact the hard way.
  - chrisweekly 7y ago
    Strong disagree. Eroding standards of civility are no excuse for lowering the bar on how you behave. I'd urge you to set an example, honor yourself and contribute to the solution, rather than compounding the problem by sinking to the lowest common denominator.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      I do think we should be curteous, far from it (and employers doubly so); I'm not excusing their beahviour, but I am saying it many cases it pays to not be curteous (note, not being curteous isn't the same as being definitely uncurteous). It is the sort of behaviour interviewees have grown to expect. The pursuit of protit over courteousness is bound to happen when positive courteousness has a negligible and potentially negative impact on profit.
wolco 7y ago
If you want the candidate to be more likely to reapply feedback would help. In fairness I received feedback I didn't get the position because I was too chatty from a hr person who told me to act more chatty because qualified candidates on paper were failing for being too quiet. I kinda wished they didn't provide feedback because I have an opinion on the internal culture that would make me avoid them in the future.
- scrooched_moose 7y ago
  > If you want the candidate to be more likely to reapply feedback would help. I'd be so happy simply hearing feedback on whether I should bother with the company again. "You were barely beat out by another candidate, we hope you apply again next time!" "You are not a fit for this company, don't try again"
  - vosper 7y ago
    > "You were barely beat out by another candidate, we hope you apply again next time!" If this is true and if the company is half competent they'll be reaching out to you proactively next time, not hoping you might see the position and think to apply :)
- dahfizz 7y ago
  > If you want the candidate to be more likely to reapply feedback would help. Do companies really want that? Presumably they didn't hire the candidate because they believe better candidates exist. Why invest in someone if there are better candidates readily available?
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    Google, Facebook, and Amazon have made a sport of shoving people through their interview pipeline multiple times.
  - cle 7y ago
    They do want it. A strong signal is when a weak candidate comes back a year later and kicks ass.
benjaminjosephw 7y ago
If a candidate has given my company their time and energy to interview with us I think we owe them a chance to understand why we didn't hire them. We're not obliged to but, if requested, offering feedback is quite clearly beneficial. There's an obvious benefit for the candidate and the subsequent companies they interview with. There's also an indirect benefit to my company - if everyone else behaves like this it means that we'd be much more likely to find our next hire. I suppose if you're thinking exclusively about a short-term benefit to the company alone without considering the impact to the candidate, the wider ecosystem and culture in general then it wouldn't make sense to take the risk.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  When I've been on the other side of this -- ie, as a candidate rejecting a decent offer -- I've made a point of writing a personal non-boilerplate "letter" (email, but tone and format of a traditional letter) -- thanking those on the hiring side and giving some context for my decision. Relationship-building and mutual respect are only ever full of win.
Thriptic 7y ago
I disagree with this. I've had two companies contact me and offer legitimate feedback after interviews, and I always left feeling happy and with good feelings about them. I applied to one company and got a response back which was effectively "we really like you as a candidate, but it doesn't seem like you would be the right fit for this job / it doesn't seem like the interests you expressed in your interviews [which they correctly restated] matched up well with the duties we would have you perform. We will likely have jobs opening up which would align with what you like and you will be on the shortlist of candidates if you apply for those". Was it truthful? Who knows, but it left me feeling happy about how things went and I would consider applying there again. Similarly, earlier on in my career after taking a few CS classes I applied for a different job, and the response was effectively "You are smart but you don't have the skills we require yet which are [x, y, z]. Come back when you do". What they said was true and I appreciated the feedback. Contrast that with the myriad companies I applied to and never heard a response back from or didn't get a response back for many months from. I will never apply to these places again because it is clear that they don't respect prospective employees enough to even send a perfunctory email. Boiler plate rejections aren't as irritating but they are definitely still irritating. If you don't provide reasons for not hiring then employees will construct their own reasons, and they may not be true and / or favorable towards your company.
- vosper 7y ago
  So what exactly did these companies gain? They didn't hire you now, but might be able to hire you in the future because you would maybe apply again (assuming you get passed the "we already didn't hire this person" filter)? With all the risk, that doesn't seem like much of a payoff to the company, to me. (Though I am glad you got feedback you considered valuable, and I think it's cool that the companies did that)
  - Thriptic 7y ago
    They gain the goodwill of a prospective employee who might cycle back and be a great fit later on in their career (and who has more skills then). It's also about what they don't lose, which is not only me but potentially other prospective candidates. Know what happens when someone mentions they are considering applying to a place that never got back to me? I tell them don't apply there, they waste your time / they don't care about candidates / their interview process sucks. How many people does that person then go tell? I've absolutely punted on applying to places which my friends have said similar things about. Reputation matters a lot.

Nuzzerino 7y ago

What are they losing in this case? I don't see how a company is actually harmed by someone complaining about an interview. Unless you're trying to attract people who subscribe to cancel culture, I don't see a problem.

kenhwang 7y ago
Employee hours. Someone has to collect, document, sanitize, and explain the feedback. Then respond to the response to the feedback. In the time it takes our recruiter to provide feedback to a candidate, they could have sourced 20 more candidates. edit: I'll argue instant feedback is even more expensive and risky. It's not coordinated, potentially duplicative, may impact/contaminate later rounds, and may not be complete or representative of the interview as a whole. Engineers aren't known for being naturally HR/legal-compliant, and having multiple expensive engineers spend time doing things not in their typical skillset that's typically done by a single resource that specializes in said skillset doesn't sound cheaper at all.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  The article recommends instant feedback, presumably much less costly.
- eropple 7y ago
  They've only disrupted their day to talk to you, in many cases having done these increasingly-prevalent and always-bullshit 4+-hour "exercises", and they have way less time to be allocating than you do. That's all they've done. Their time isn't deserving of respect and it's just downright ridiculous to think that it's the decent thing to do to tell them something that might, just might, not make it a waste for them to have spent it. ...Or, you know. Don't be that guy. Candidate, candidate, candidate--depersonalizing language for depersonalized processes. How about person? These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your recruiter's cattle-call throughput, each and every one of them. Have some empathy, my dude. Or at least some enlightened self-interest, for someday will be your day in the barrel.
  - kenhwang 7y ago
    Interviewing is a business transaction, not social services. They'll min-max their time just like you'll mix-max your compensation. I'll happily give advice, feedback, mock interviews, and other sorts of help on my own time in more appropriate environments. When it's company time, it's just business.
    - eropple 7y ago
      You can rationalize how you'd like, but it's never "just business." These are people you're talking about. They matter more than your company does. Be decent.
      - kenhwang 7y ago
        They're getting a prompt, professional, inoffensive response in exchange for their time. That is decency. You can't expect a business to feed the hungry, cure the sick, and house the poor out of the goodness of their hearts because these are people that spent a couple hours of their day with you. There are more appropriate institutions for charity.
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Perhaps the easiest business-oriented solution to this mess is to simply comp applicants for investing their time in interviews with a company. At least then there isn’t the sentiment of having wasted time.
        eropple 7y ago
        This is an excellent suggestion that treats people as people and as professionals whose time is valuable. It would, of course, never happen, because those same employers fear of what might happen if they granted the same respect they demand, but I admire your lateral thinking.
        eropple 7y ago
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  On the other hand, by giving good feedback, your company engenders goodwill and brownie points ratings on Glassdoor and elsewhere. Shouldn’t good PR be worth a little work from a company?
  - justforyou 7y ago
    Companies that are that concerned about PR spin their situation with actual PR.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      Word of mouth is also a thing.
- wwweston 7y ago
  > Someone has to collect, document, sanitize, and explain the feedback. Either something like this is being up collected and articulated up through the decision points in the hiring process, or the decisions are being made on a fuzzy basis that can't even be explained internally, which presumably represents a risk that decisions couldn't be properly justified should a candidate suspect discrimination and pursue a claim. (This is especially true for any kind of exercises, btw. If an employer asks me to do some, I am going to screen them on whether they have (a) complete reference solutions with (b) numbers on how long it took to complete each and why they're confident those numbers are reliable(c) a written rubric for evaluating candidate solutions that (d) they'll agree to share with me when we're done.)
  - kenhwang 7y ago
    Considering most of the interview is evaluation of soft skills and unique backgrounds there's almost certainly fuzzy basis.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

cnst 7y ago

In my experience, they often like to give feedback on subsequent interviews about the past interviews. Google has some pretty detailed feedback on a interview I did years ago, which they were happy to reveal over the phone on a subsequent onsite invitation.

bumby 7y ago

I've always considered it just a professional courtesy, within reason. Just like it would be nice, but not required, for an applicant to say why they turned down a job offer. It can help us understand what's lacking to determine whether or not it's worth improving upon.

claudiawerner 7y ago
Professional courtesy doesn't matter much when it's now the norm not to be curteous, and thought to be unprofitable (in all the ways benefit is measured, not just in monetary terms) if the company is curteous. There is no professionalism above the level requried to maintain an increasing rate of profit. Workers in all industries since the beginning of waged labour have learned this fact the hard way.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  Strong disagree. Eroding standards of civility are no excuse for lowering the bar on how you behave. I'd urge you to set an example, honor yourself and contribute to the solution, rather than compounding the problem by sinking to the lowest common denominator.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    I do think we should be curteous, far from it (and employers doubly so); I'm not excusing their beahviour, but I am saying it many cases it pays to not be curteous (note, not being curteous isn't the same as being definitely uncurteous). It is the sort of behaviour interviewees have grown to expect. The pursuit of protit over courteousness is bound to happen when positive courteousness has a negligible and potentially negative impact on profit.

wolco 7y ago

If you want the candidate to be more likely to reapply feedback would help. In fairness I received feedback I didn't get the position because I was too chatty from a hr person who told me to act more chatty because qualified candidates on paper were failing for being too quiet. I kinda wished they didn't provide feedback because I have an opinion on the internal culture that would make me avoid them in the future.

scrooched_moose 7y ago
> If you want the candidate to be more likely to reapply feedback would help. I'd be so happy simply hearing feedback on whether I should bother with the company again. "You were barely beat out by another candidate, we hope you apply again next time!" "You are not a fit for this company, don't try again"
- vosper 7y ago
  > "You were barely beat out by another candidate, we hope you apply again next time!" If this is true and if the company is half competent they'll be reaching out to you proactively next time, not hoping you might see the position and think to apply :)
dahfizz 7y ago
> If you want the candidate to be more likely to reapply feedback would help. Do companies really want that? Presumably they didn't hire the candidate because they believe better candidates exist. Why invest in someone if there are better candidates readily available?
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  Google, Facebook, and Amazon have made a sport of shoving people through their interview pipeline multiple times.
- cle 7y ago
  They do want it. A strong signal is when a weak candidate comes back a year later and kicks ass.

benjaminjosephw 7y ago

If a candidate has given my company their time and energy to interview with us I think we owe them a chance to understand why we didn't hire them. We're not obliged to but, if requested, offering feedback is quite clearly beneficial. There's an obvious benefit for the candidate and the subsequent companies they interview with. There's also an indirect benefit to my company - if everyone else behaves like this it means that we'd be much more likely to find our next hire. I suppose if you're thinking exclusively about a short-term benefit to the company alone without considering the impact to the candidate, the wider ecosystem and culture in general then it wouldn't make sense to take the risk.

chrisweekly 7y ago
When I've been on the other side of this -- ie, as a candidate rejecting a decent offer -- I've made a point of writing a personal non-boilerplate "letter" (email, but tone and format of a traditional letter) -- thanking those on the hiring side and giving some context for my decision. Relationship-building and mutual respect are only ever full of win.

Thriptic 7y ago

I disagree with this. I've had two companies contact me and offer legitimate feedback after interviews, and I always left feeling happy and with good feelings about them. I applied to one company and got a response back which was effectively "we really like you as a candidate, but it doesn't seem like you would be the right fit for this job / it doesn't seem like the interests you expressed in your interviews [which they correctly restated] matched up well with the duties we would have you perform. We will likely have jobs opening up which would align with what you like and you will be on the shortlist of candidates if you apply for those". Was it truthful? Who knows, but it left me feeling happy about how things went and I would consider applying there again. Similarly, earlier on in my career after taking a few CS classes I applied for a different job, and the response was effectively "You are smart but you don't have the skills we require yet which are [x, y, z]. Come back when you do". What they said was true and I appreciated the feedback. Contrast that with the myriad companies I applied to and never heard a response back from or didn't get a response back for many months from. I will never apply to these places again because it is clear that they don't respect prospective employees enough to even send a perfunctory email. Boiler plate rejections aren't as irritating but they are definitely still irritating. If you don't provide reasons for not hiring then employees will construct their own reasons, and they may not be true and / or favorable towards your company.

vosper 7y ago
So what exactly did these companies gain? They didn't hire you now, but might be able to hire you in the future because you would maybe apply again (assuming you get passed the "we already didn't hire this person" filter)? With all the risk, that doesn't seem like much of a payoff to the company, to me. (Though I am glad you got feedback you considered valuable, and I think it's cool that the companies did that)
- Thriptic 7y ago
  They gain the goodwill of a prospective employee who might cycle back and be a great fit later on in their career (and who has more skills then). It's also about what they don't lose, which is not only me but potentially other prospective candidates. Know what happens when someone mentions they are considering applying to a place that never got back to me? I tell them don't apply there, they waste your time / they don't care about candidates / their interview process sucks. How many people does that person then go tell? I've absolutely punted on applying to places which my friends have said similar things about. Reputation matters a lot.