3 ms·

> I really wish companies would start giving honest feedback even if it’s hard for the candidates to heard at first. It would be a much better way for candidate

by Aeolun 2y ago

> I really wish companies would start giving honest feedback even if it’s hard for the candidates to heard at first. It would be a much better way for candidates to improve themselves and we’re all adults here and can take the feedback. I’ve said it before, and I say it again. This isn’t true. When companies try to be helpful and give you well meaning feedback, you find out that their reasons for rejecting you are absolutely banal, and you’d have been better off not hearing anything.

tracerbulletx 2y ago
Going the other direction.. most of the time I've seen feedback given to a candidate, they freaked out about it and got defensive. Not worth the risk.
- petesergeant 2y ago
  And even in the case where the candidate is right to push back on the feedback, the process has usually moved on with another candidate already, so it's just awkward for everyone.
sfriskzo2005 2y ago
Another issue is that positions which are advertised are often already filled by some acquaintance, but we need to go thru the motions of posting the job, sifting thru resumes, interview questions, leetcodes, etc. and interview theatre before we go and hire the acquaintance. Sometimes, HR doesnt know and the interview panel may not know.
dilyevsky 2y ago
It’s banal because nobody is going to share the truth for fear of retaliation unless they’ve never done this before
Aurornis 2y ago
When I first become a hiring manager I thought I'd be the exception and provide everyone with detailed and honest feedback. I didn't last very long. Candidates would see the feedback as an invitation to prove me wrong or argue with my assessment. I got a few very angry e-mails from people who took their rejection very personally and made it clear that I was their enemy. One person (who was actually very unqualified) even went on a mini rampage across the internet, trying to "name and shame" my company and even my personally for the rejection. There were even threats of a discrimination lawsuit. So I stopped. It's back to something like "We've decided to proceed with other candidates"
- test1235 2y ago
  >>>we’re all adults here and can take the feedback yeah - I don't know why OP makes that sorta assumption. I'd expect angry replies with no benefits to the time wasted on my part.
- vrosas 2y ago
  I once interviewed for a job where they admitted I was the only person in the pipeline. I was then rejected with a canned "This was a highly competitive process and we've decided to proceed with other candidates" email. Did not feel great.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Do you think you would feel even worse if they explained, in detail, why you were rejected? I guess that you would feel even worse.
    - guenthert 2y ago
      That surely depends on things the company knows and sadly also on things the company doesn't know. Are the reasons things that the applicant can change (e.g. lack of relevant experience or poor presentation skill?) or things they can't change (too old, wrong gender), but also how sensitized is the applicant to rejection (due to recent experiences)?
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Here's another issue, the interviewer is sometimes wrong. Or, there was a miscommunication. At least twice in my career I missed an offer because the interviewer didn't think I had experience in something, but turns out I had decades of it. But, I don't brag. Heard thru the grapevine, "oh they said you didn't have database experience," hears me using databases since the late 80s. WTF? So I could imagine debating a point while being in the right.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > So I could imagine debating a point while being in the right. I absolutely can. Every single time I've gotten detailed rejection note it turns out to to be over pedantry (or rather, the fact that you didn't follow the letter of the instructions perfectly, god forbid you show some creativity). It's really hard to not send a point-by-point rebuttal of their nonsense, but it never leads to anything.
potato3732842 2y ago
If it's not BS it's stuff that should have been obvious from the interview. They were looking for a network engineer who could program a little and you're a programmer who knows a little about networks or something like that.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  I have a spreadsheet of my job hunts since 2008 across 8 times I was looking for a job. I was working at my first two jobs between 1996-2008 I’ve been rejected three times once I started the interview process. I have also always gotten interviews from companies where external or internal recruiters reached out to me and I submitted my resume. All three times I’ve gotten rejected was post mid 2023. It was clear from one within 10 minutes that I wasn’t what they were looking for. I’m not sure why I didn’t get hired for the second one after going through the rounds even though I have my suspicions. The third I got ghosted after the HR screen where the representative from the target company’s investor interviewed me.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Only three interview misses in 15 years?
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      A little background for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42622893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42622893 So by 2008, I was 34, starting over and applying for enterprise CRUD jobs where I was competing against people with a lot less experience and maturity. I was cheap labor. That held true in 2008 and 2012 and I was digging my way out of the “expert beginner” years. It wasn’t until 2014 when I was actually starting to be recruited for strategic positions. In 2014, 2016 and 2018 I was an early strategic hire by a then new director/manager/CTO to lead major initiatives. My interviews were two adults talking about strategy. By 2014, I was 40 years old. 2020, a remote position at AWS Professional Services fell into my lap. I was 46 then. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 Now looking for a job in 2023 and 2024 targeting full time roles at cloud consulting companies, can you imagine how easy it is for a 50 year old who knows how to communicate decently, with 25+ years of development experience, 6 years of AWS experience including 3 at AWS to get a job at those companies? Now when you take AWS away from me, I am just another enterprise Dev with above average communication and project management skills. Two of my three rejections were at product companies even then the interviews were behavioral. It does concern me a little that I got rejected from product companies that were looking for “architects”. My title right now is “staff software architect” at a consulting company.
el_benhameen 2y ago
Got rejected after a take home, and the feedback from the recruiter was 1. a reviewer thought I used a library incorrectly (they actually misunderstood how the library worked) and 2. I didn’t implement something that the instructions had explicitly said not to implement. I didn’t argue with 1 because I figured it was pointless and it sounded like the recruiter was having a rough day. I politely pointed out 2 as a courtesy and he said “huh, the other guy yelled at me about that”. Although honestly, I left the process thinking “lol” instead of “I’m a dumbass” like I might have absent the feedback.
- defrost 2y ago
  > and he said “huh, the other guy yelled at me about that”. If this was SASR recruitment that'd be the pysch portion of the test, reject a candidate for a reason that makes no sense and watch their reaction ... The assessment never stops, everything's a meta test, and they push until you quit the recruitment merry go round. In the relatively normal world of software engineering .. that's a recruiter landed with a poor testing pachage and procedures.
cjohnson318 2y ago
True that. I just got some "honest feedback" that I didn't agree with at all. I'm all for criticizing myself, but this feedback totally missed the mark. I didn't have deep enough experience with "object oriented programming". What does that even mean? I've been creating and using objects every day since 2007. I literally... don't know what to do with that feedback. It's like the carpenter interview, "Have you ever built brown houses? Our client is very interested in brown houses."
- 6ak74rfy 2y ago
  > didn't have deep enough experience with "object oriented programming". What does that even mean? This could mean two things. "You aren't knowledgeable about OOP" or "you couldn't show us that you are knowledgeable in OOP". If it isn't the former, maybe it's the latter? Maybe the real+underlying feedback is that you couldn't convey your breadth of knowledge in your interview?
  - cjohnson318 2y ago
    We just talked about my development experience and management style. Gang of Four never came up, so the OOP thing was unexpected and confusing.
Ologn 2y ago
With regards to what they're saying, the first thing to do is reverse the perspective. The applicant is hearing a yes or no, so if it's a no they want to know what they did wrong to improve themselves. From the interviewer's perspective - we get someone who is average, then another person who is average, then someone who has trouble with basic questions, then we get this person who may be as average as the first two, then we get someone who answers every question correctly, and has a deep knowledge of the domain if you drill down, then you get an average person again. There's nothing really wrong with the person, they did as well as four other people. It's just that someone else came in who was a standard deviation above the majority of the people in the bell in the normally distributed Gaussian curve.
higeorge13 2y ago
Being from both sides, I would say it depends. But especially after a take home assignment, feedback should be given 100% and face to face. It's almost embarrassing to spend X hours/days of your (spare) time only to be rejected with an email and usually some random reasons, without having the chance to explain why you built this toy project that way, how much time you spent and what would you do with more time or in production or even showcase some live coding on top of what you did. But everything has become really inhumane, no-one cares. That's why AI is dominating and ruining the field.
slothtrop 2y ago
> their reasons for rejecting you are absolutely banal, and you’d have been better off not hearing anything. If it's banal, I'd like to know. Otherwise you're still left wondering whether it's anything that hinders you in the longrun.
ycombinatrix 2y ago
The feedback is useful to me about 50% of the time. It is rare though.

by Aeolun 2y ago

tracerbulletx 2y ago

Going the other direction.. most of the time I've seen feedback given to a candidate, they freaked out about it and got defensive. Not worth the risk.

petesergeant 2y ago
And even in the case where the candidate is right to push back on the feedback, the process has usually moved on with another candidate already, so it's just awkward for everyone.

sfriskzo2005 2y ago

Another issue is that positions which are advertised are often already filled by some acquaintance, but we need to go thru the motions of posting the job, sifting thru resumes, interview questions, leetcodes, etc. and interview theatre before we go and hire the acquaintance. Sometimes, HR doesnt know and the interview panel may not know.

dilyevsky 2y ago

It’s banal because nobody is going to share the truth for fear of retaliation unless they’ve never done this before

Aurornis 2y ago

When I first become a hiring manager I thought I'd be the exception and provide everyone with detailed and honest feedback. I didn't last very long. Candidates would see the feedback as an invitation to prove me wrong or argue with my assessment. I got a few very angry e-mails from people who took their rejection very personally and made it clear that I was their enemy. One person (who was actually very unqualified) even went on a mini rampage across the internet, trying to "name and shame" my company and even my personally for the rejection. There were even threats of a discrimination lawsuit. So I stopped. It's back to something like "We've decided to proceed with other candidates"

test1235 2y ago
>>>we’re all adults here and can take the feedback yeah - I don't know why OP makes that sorta assumption. I'd expect angry replies with no benefits to the time wasted on my part.
vrosas 2y ago
I once interviewed for a job where they admitted I was the only person in the pipeline. I was then rejected with a canned "This was a highly competitive process and we've decided to proceed with other candidates" email. Did not feel great.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Do you think you would feel even worse if they explained, in detail, why you were rejected? I guess that you would feel even worse.
  - guenthert 2y ago
    That surely depends on things the company knows and sadly also on things the company doesn't know. Are the reasons things that the applicant can change (e.g. lack of relevant experience or poor presentation skill?) or things they can't change (too old, wrong gender), but also how sensitized is the applicant to rejection (due to recent experiences)?
mixmastamyk 2y ago
Here's another issue, the interviewer is sometimes wrong. Or, there was a miscommunication. At least twice in my career I missed an offer because the interviewer didn't think I had experience in something, but turns out I had decades of it. But, I don't brag. Heard thru the grapevine, "oh they said you didn't have database experience," hears me using databases since the late 80s. WTF? So I could imagine debating a point while being in the right.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  > So I could imagine debating a point while being in the right. I absolutely can. Every single time I've gotten detailed rejection note it turns out to to be over pedantry (or rather, the fact that you didn't follow the letter of the instructions perfectly, god forbid you show some creativity). It's really hard to not send a point-by-point rebuttal of their nonsense, but it never leads to anything.

potato3732842 2y ago

If it's not BS it's stuff that should have been obvious from the interview. They were looking for a network engineer who could program a little and you're a programmer who knows a little about networks or something like that.

scarface_74 2y ago
I have a spreadsheet of my job hunts since 2008 across 8 times I was looking for a job. I was working at my first two jobs between 1996-2008 I’ve been rejected three times once I started the interview process. I have also always gotten interviews from companies where external or internal recruiters reached out to me and I submitted my resume. All three times I’ve gotten rejected was post mid 2023. It was clear from one within 10 minutes that I wasn’t what they were looking for. I’m not sure why I didn’t get hired for the second one after going through the rounds even though I have my suspicions. The third I got ghosted after the HR screen where the representative from the target company’s investor interviewed me.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Only three interview misses in 15 years?
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    A little background for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42622893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42622893 So by 2008, I was 34, starting over and applying for enterprise CRUD jobs where I was competing against people with a lot less experience and maturity. I was cheap labor. That held true in 2008 and 2012 and I was digging my way out of the “expert beginner” years. It wasn’t until 2014 when I was actually starting to be recruited for strategic positions. In 2014, 2016 and 2018 I was an early strategic hire by a then new director/manager/CTO to lead major initiatives. My interviews were two adults talking about strategy. By 2014, I was 40 years old. 2020, a remote position at AWS Professional Services fell into my lap. I was 46 then. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 Now looking for a job in 2023 and 2024 targeting full time roles at cloud consulting companies, can you imagine how easy it is for a 50 year old who knows how to communicate decently, with 25+ years of development experience, 6 years of AWS experience including 3 at AWS to get a job at those companies? Now when you take AWS away from me, I am just another enterprise Dev with above average communication and project management skills. Two of my three rejections were at product companies even then the interviews were behavioral. It does concern me a little that I got rejected from product companies that were looking for “architects”. My title right now is “staff software architect” at a consulting company.

el_benhameen 2y ago

Got rejected after a take home, and the feedback from the recruiter was 1. a reviewer thought I used a library incorrectly (they actually misunderstood how the library worked) and 2. I didn’t implement something that the instructions had explicitly said not to implement. I didn’t argue with 1 because I figured it was pointless and it sounded like the recruiter was having a rough day. I politely pointed out 2 as a courtesy and he said “huh, the other guy yelled at me about that”. Although honestly, I left the process thinking “lol” instead of “I’m a dumbass” like I might have absent the feedback.

defrost 2y ago
> and he said “huh, the other guy yelled at me about that”. If this was SASR recruitment that'd be the pysch portion of the test, reject a candidate for a reason that makes no sense and watch their reaction ... The assessment never stops, everything's a meta test, and they push until you quit the recruitment merry go round. In the relatively normal world of software engineering .. that's a recruiter landed with a poor testing pachage and procedures.

cjohnson318 2y ago

True that. I just got some "honest feedback" that I didn't agree with at all. I'm all for criticizing myself, but this feedback totally missed the mark. I didn't have deep enough experience with "object oriented programming". What does that even mean? I've been creating and using objects every day since 2007. I literally... don't know what to do with that feedback. It's like the carpenter interview, "Have you ever built brown houses? Our client is very interested in brown houses."

6ak74rfy 2y ago
> didn't have deep enough experience with "object oriented programming". What does that even mean? This could mean two things. "You aren't knowledgeable about OOP" or "you couldn't show us that you are knowledgeable in OOP". If it isn't the former, maybe it's the latter? Maybe the real+underlying feedback is that you couldn't convey your breadth of knowledge in your interview?
- cjohnson318 2y ago
  We just talked about my development experience and management style. Gang of Four never came up, so the OOP thing was unexpected and confusing.

Ologn 2y ago

With regards to what they're saying, the first thing to do is reverse the perspective. The applicant is hearing a yes or no, so if it's a no they want to know what they did wrong to improve themselves. From the interviewer's perspective - we get someone who is average, then another person who is average, then someone who has trouble with basic questions, then we get this person who may be as average as the first two, then we get someone who answers every question correctly, and has a deep knowledge of the domain if you drill down, then you get an average person again. There's nothing really wrong with the person, they did as well as four other people. It's just that someone else came in who was a standard deviation above the majority of the people in the bell in the normally distributed Gaussian curve.

higeorge13 2y ago

Being from both sides, I would say it depends. But especially after a take home assignment, feedback should be given 100% and face to face. It's almost embarrassing to spend X hours/days of your (spare) time only to be rejected with an email and usually some random reasons, without having the chance to explain why you built this toy project that way, how much time you spent and what would you do with more time or in production or even showcase some live coding on top of what you did. But everything has become really inhumane, no-one cares. That's why AI is dominating and ruining the field.

slothtrop 2y ago

> their reasons for rejecting you are absolutely banal, and you’d have been better off not hearing anything. If it's banal, I'd like to know. Otherwise you're still left wondering whether it's anything that hinders you in the longrun.

ycombinatrix 2y ago

The feedback is useful to me about 50% of the time. It is rare though.