You're absolutely right. I'm querying a novel to literary agents right now, and it's the same way. The official channels provide absolutely no feedback. That's

You're absolutely right. I'm querying a novel to literary agents right now, and it's the same way. The official channels provide absolutely no feedback. That's exactly what's frustrating about it. You need to look for feedback elsewhere. There's a risk of getting bad feedback if the person isn't actually involved with making decisions, but it's better than just talking to friends (or not talking to anyone at all). And if you're willing to iterate and experiment, you can figure out (at least indirectly) how good the feedback is by the results you achieve when you put it into practice. I personally provide mentoring to junior members of my community (as a researcher in HPC) through conferences I attend. In my writing life, I look for feedback at writers conferences. I'm not sure what the equivalents would be in other parts of the job market, but something similar might help.