5 ms·

I've been a FAANG hiring manager and those rules were not rigidly enforced. There are other deterrents, however. As a younger manager I was keen to respond to

I've been a FAANG hiring manager and those rules were not rigidly enforced. There are other deterrents, however. As a younger manager I was keen to respond to such requests, but a significant proportion of unsuccessful candidates would then argue, sometimes quite vehemently, about the validity of the feedback. This curtailed my enthusiasm, and I've been rather selective since.

javajosh 6y ago
Interesting. I'm curious: roughly how often did the candidate promise they'd take your feedback constructively, calmly and then argue with you anyway? (I'd hope it would be close to 0, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was much higher.)
- jldl805 6y ago
  I'm a recruiter and candidates argue 95% of the time. Maybe higher. I only give feedback in very, very selective situations and even then I almost always regret it due to the response. Most people are not calm, rational, dispassionate receptors of critical feedback... especially when there is money and ego at stake.
  - p0sixlang 6y ago
    Who do you recruit for? I'm soon to be a new grad, looking for a job, and if you reject me.. you could literally berate me for things I didn't actually do and I wouldn't find it appropriate or productive to argue with you about it. Let's set up an interview, you can record my reaction to the rejection and send it to those who argue for reference on how not to be a moron.
    - jldl805 6y ago
      I don't recruit new grads so it would never happen. Similar to OP's post, it's almost always a situation where it's painfully obvious to everyone else involved why the person isn't getting hired, but it would be awkward or a waste of time to try to tell the person. It's also virtually always social skill related... if you weren't up to the task technically, you wouldn't have been asked to interview. The in person interview is normally to decide "do I want to see this person 40+ hours a week for the next 5 years" rather than "can they do the job." Lots of exceptions obviously but mostly true across the board.
      - macksd 6y ago
        For what it's worth, that's definitely not my experience. I've interviewed or phone-screened at least 200 people over the last few years, and yes, there's been a handful of rejections where the major concern was social skills: abrasive, over-confident, poor communication or lacking the appearance of motivation. But I've had far more people who simply couldn't perform well enough on the technical problem or who had obviously over-stated their qualifications and knowledge on their resume. I actually distinctly remember several interviews lately where I really liked the candidate as a person and had a very enjoyable chat with them, but I just didn't think they would do the job well. There are a lot of flaws in the way interviews are done in our industry that make it more subjective than it should be, but I still wouldn't consider the latter set of problems to be social skill related.
        jldl805 6y ago
        The only thing this tells me is you have an error in your hiring process that is leading you to interviewing people in person that cannot do the job. This should never happen.
        macksd 6y ago
        Do you know of a way to screen out people who inflate their expertise on a resume or who fail to demonstrate competency in those areas during an interview, without actually interviewing them? Because if you do I'd love to hear it. But I thought that was the point of interviewing them. I don't expect recruiters and HR people who focus exclusively on hiring to have more than a shallow knowledge of what we're hiring for. I definitely don't encounter those more qualified to evaluate qualifications on LinkedIn, that's for sure. And LeetCode isn't nearly that good at eliminating crappy candidates. Plenty of people do it and then seem to lack those same skills when they show up. That's why we have discussions like this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/. If validating their technical qualifications is not the point of the interview, are you really only interviewing candidates to see if people like their social skills? That sounds legally shady for most cases, and honestly for extreme cases where there's a valid concern that IS the kind of thing I'd expect to be filtered out by an introductory call with a manager or something.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Or just need to blow off steam: accept defeat AND also rant :-))
davedx 6y ago
My experience too, it’s good to give a sentence or two out of courtesy but the arguing and sheer bullshit you get back sometimes, made me shake my head.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The other things is that far more commonly than sirens and alarm bells going off about something specific, is that someone just didn't wow me and I thought we could do better. When we meet after an interview round "meh" is a much more common collective reaction than "run away now."

javajosh 6y ago

Interesting. I'm curious: roughly how often did the candidate promise they'd take your feedback constructively, calmly and then argue with you anyway? (I'd hope it would be close to 0, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was much higher.)

jldl805 6y ago
I'm a recruiter and candidates argue 95% of the time. Maybe higher. I only give feedback in very, very selective situations and even then I almost always regret it due to the response. Most people are not calm, rational, dispassionate receptors of critical feedback... especially when there is money and ego at stake.
- p0sixlang 6y ago
  Who do you recruit for? I'm soon to be a new grad, looking for a job, and if you reject me.. you could literally berate me for things I didn't actually do and I wouldn't find it appropriate or productive to argue with you about it. Let's set up an interview, you can record my reaction to the rejection and send it to those who argue for reference on how not to be a moron.
  - jldl805 6y ago
    I don't recruit new grads so it would never happen. Similar to OP's post, it's almost always a situation where it's painfully obvious to everyone else involved why the person isn't getting hired, but it would be awkward or a waste of time to try to tell the person. It's also virtually always social skill related... if you weren't up to the task technically, you wouldn't have been asked to interview. The in person interview is normally to decide "do I want to see this person 40+ hours a week for the next 5 years" rather than "can they do the job." Lots of exceptions obviously but mostly true across the board.
    - macksd 6y ago
      For what it's worth, that's definitely not my experience. I've interviewed or phone-screened at least 200 people over the last few years, and yes, there's been a handful of rejections where the major concern was social skills: abrasive, over-confident, poor communication or lacking the appearance of motivation. But I've had far more people who simply couldn't perform well enough on the technical problem or who had obviously over-stated their qualifications and knowledge on their resume. I actually distinctly remember several interviews lately where I really liked the candidate as a person and had a very enjoyable chat with them, but I just didn't think they would do the job well. There are a lot of flaws in the way interviews are done in our industry that make it more subjective than it should be, but I still wouldn't consider the latter set of problems to be social skill related.
      - jldl805 6y ago
        The only thing this tells me is you have an error in your hiring process that is leading you to interviewing people in person that cannot do the job. This should never happen.
        macksd 6y ago
        Do you know of a way to screen out people who inflate their expertise on a resume or who fail to demonstrate competency in those areas during an interview, without actually interviewing them? Because if you do I'd love to hear it. But I thought that was the point of interviewing them. I don't expect recruiters and HR people who focus exclusively on hiring to have more than a shallow knowledge of what we're hiring for. I definitely don't encounter those more qualified to evaluate qualifications on LinkedIn, that's for sure. And LeetCode isn't nearly that good at eliminating crappy candidates. Plenty of people do it and then seem to lack those same skills when they show up. That's why we have discussions like this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/. If validating their technical qualifications is not the point of the interview, are you really only interviewing candidates to see if people like their social skills? That sounds legally shady for most cases, and honestly for extreme cases where there's a valid concern that IS the kind of thing I'd expect to be filtered out by an introductory call with a manager or something.
- oblio 6y ago
  Or just need to blow off steam: accept defeat AND also rant :-))

davedx 6y ago

My experience too, it’s good to give a sentence or two out of courtesy but the arguing and sheer bullshit you get back sometimes, made me shake my head.

ghaff 6y ago
The other things is that far more commonly than sirens and alarm bells going off about something specific, is that someone just didn't wow me and I thought we could do better. When we meet after an interview round "meh" is a much more common collective reaction than "run away now."