13 ms·

I've done a LOT of interviewing, recruiting and ultimately a lot of saying "no" to people. Over the years I've landed on a series of personal rules on how to d

• humanrebar 12y ago
  > Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve This is my inclination: "We liked your attitude, you seem intelligent, and well-spoken, but we have concerns about your knowledge of <some key area>, maybe start contributing to <open source project> or experiment in <technology> and reapply in a year or two." ...my concern is opening up my company for legal liabilities. Am I just being paranoid?
  • ghswa 12y ago
    If you're that worried why not cut it short to "We liked your attitude, you seem intelligent, and well-spoken, but we have concerns about your knowledge of <some key area>." There can't be any risk there, surely?
  • sekasi 12y ago
    I've never had any issues in years and years. I guess as long as you're being positive about it, and try to reinforce the shortcomings versus the positives it ends up being a good conversation. Always do it over the phone, email doesn't cut it.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  • fecak 12y ago
    Based on what you wrote, you're probably being paranoid. I deliver lots of 'No' answers as well, and I don't see any issues with what you wrote. Legal liability tends to be around the generic responses where candidates may assume the worst (race, gender/orientation, age, etc.). A specific response that points to a lack of experience in a certain area seems a safer bet than 'not a fit' in most cases.
    • sekasi 12y ago
      "Not a fit" is another way of saying "We don't like you" in a strange way. I stay far away from those sweeping personality statements personally.
      • jlees 12y ago
        "Not a fit" can get dangerously close to "You're not the same gender/race/orientation/age-range as our core team" (especially if that happens to be true).
        • daniel_iversen 12y ago
          Yes that is a super tricky one and especially since cultural fit is probably one of the most important things to consider in the hiring process!!
          • UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
            Can you elaborate on what you consider cultural fit and why it is so important?
            • JoshTriplett 12y ago
              "cultural fit" is a rather awful description of a hundred small factors, some legitimate and some not. Sometimes it refers to statements like "commit early, commit often" or "move fast and break things"; that's fine. Sometimes it refers to office interaction, such as whether you tolerate interruptions and social interaction: an introvert in an office full of extroverts or an extrovert in an office full of introverts; that's fine too, though at some point you'll scale large enough that you can't necessarily keep being that selective. On the other hand, sometimes it means "are you going to play foosball with us and drink with us", which is wrong. And sometimes it means "do you have exactly the same personality/likes/dislikes/ethnicity/gender/etc as us", which is wrong and illegal. In general, "cultural fit" is a dangerously vague excuse without a concrete reason. Say what you really mean, and if you can't bring yourself to say it, perhaps you shouldn't be using it as a hiring criteria.
  • electic 12y ago
    This happened at my last company. It does in fact open you up to legal liabilities. The company had to settle 18 cases where applicants "disagreed" with the reason of their rejection.
    • hluska 12y ago
      I think it is a shame when trying to help people opens you up to liability. If that's not a sign that our society is too litigious, I don't know what is.
      • WalterBright 12y ago
        It's also why companies do not apologize, except as part of a settlement. An apology is an admission of guilt, opening the company to liability.
        • acoleman616 12y ago
          Man, this country is really messed up sometimes...
          • click170 12y ago
            What's really messed up is that companies can lose a case in court, and then still not admit guilt or wrong doing. At that point, hasn't the court basically overruled them? They lost the court case. End of story (?)
            • WalterBright 12y ago
              Losing a civil case is not proof beyond reasonable doubt, but a 51% preponderance of evidence. A company can lose a case, and still not be guilty - why apologize for something you're not guilty of?
              • Thrymr 12y ago
  • gamblor956 12y ago
    It could, and you'll want to talk to labor lawyer for specifics about what is and isn't acceptable. For example, when you talk about the candidate "seeming intelligent" that could suggest that appearances may have played a role in the evaluation, especially if you can't narrow down more specific reasons. It's best to stick to objective factors such as the candidate's lack of experience in <some key area>.
  • curun1r 12y ago
    It is a concern. When we hire, all the "no"s are filtered through our in-house recruiters who have been through trainings on what they can and can't say to rejected applicants. The situation is very similar to giving former employees a reference when applying for a new job. You have to toe the line and be very sure that everything you say is verifiably factually correct or you can be held liable.
  • will_lam 12y ago
    Even if it's not an official response, there are ways to be able to get backchannel information.. only if you're able to leverage relationships you've already built for people working at the company you interviewed with.
• wyager 12y ago
  >Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve Many recruiters don't do this for legal reasons. Anti-discrimination laws make it very risky for companies to explain their hiring rationale, even if it's perfectly reasonable. It would be too expensive to have the lawyers check over every rejection.
  • sekasi 12y ago
    I work in Australia, not in the US. I don't know the intrinsic legal differences here, but I do know a few things about my local market. I feel really strongly about trying to help people improve, and it's really challenging to do that if you can't bring up the reasons for rejection. If you're being dicky about it "You're not good enough in memory management", that instantly makes people defensive. If you're trying to help them forward and give them useful tips for improving their portfolio and skillset, the conversation is almost exclusively positive and 9/10 times I get a thank you very much in the end.
    • wyager 12y ago
      >If you're trying to help them forward and give them useful tips for improving their portfolio and skillset, the conversation is almost exclusively positive and 9/10 times I get a thank you very much in the end. No doubt, and I know a lot of US recruiters wish very strongly that they could have these kind of interactions with potential hires. However, the difficulty of friendly, open interviewer-interviewee discussions like this is one of those unintentional side effects of otherwise well-intentioned anti-discrimination laws. It's a good example of why trying to legislate a problem away can sometimes make other problems pop up in its place.
      • eropple 12y ago
        It's a better example of people rationalizing away humanity under the guise of "preventing liability" regarding things that, in practice, will never happen. Bill S. Preston told you everything you need to know. People are not out to get you. Acting as if they are is toxic and inhumane.
• kohanz 12y ago
  I can see how you would do this for a technical shortcoming, but sometimes the choice of one candidate over another comes based on a personality judgement and who would fit better with the current team. How do you explain those types of decisions without sounding arbitrary?
  • sekasi 12y ago
    Second round interviews, after having passed a code test as well, I do exclusively with the team in question all present. It's less of an interview and more of a meet and greet, and we spend 30 minutes talking about anything under the sun. The team makes the decision from this point. I very rarely veto. Candidates know this is the process, because I tell them about it before hand. Does that make sense?
    • kohanz 12y ago
      So you would tell a candidate rejected in this stage that the team chose someone else? More or less detail than that?
• kazinator 12y ago
  Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring activity (but this news can't be made public yet: even the fact that there is such news). 2. Don't take it personally. 3. Never press people for more information: waste of time.
  • sliverstorm 12y ago
    1. Or even more simply, they are afraid to reveal what is almost certainly a perfectly acceptable reason for fear a jury will decide it wasn't acceptable after all, and take them to the cleaners for it.
    • daniel_iversen 12y ago
      That's a bit of an insult to a lot of us hiring managers! ;) sure there are legal considerations and you have to make sure you don't accidentally do something that could be (maliciously sometimes) used against you (or your company rather) but there are a lot of good people out there and to be honest I will always give a candidate feedback in an honest constructive way (and I'm not a very harsh person so I will also consider their feelings when I say things).
  • sekasi 12y ago
    Seems you've had some bad runs. I can pretty much debunk 1 and 3 personally. Good companies and people take hiring very seriously.
    • kazinator 12y ago
      That people sometimes do first, then afterward invent a rationalization for what they did, and then accept that as the reason they did it, cannot be easily debunked. E.g. woman buys new shoes on pure impulse. At home she finds they go really well with a certain purple dress. Why that's precisely why she got them, of course. Eight months later, that's all she remembers: I had that dress in mind when I saw those shoes.
• mathattack 12y ago
  Have you ever run into legal issues with #1 and #3? Every big company I've worked for has explicitly forbid this due to potential discrimination suits.
• JohnBooty 12y ago
  Thank you for this! I can't help but think that this benefits your company and your company's image in the long run as well. I had a very promising half-day interview several years ago with a company I really liked and got nothing at all. Not even a "you're not being hired." I sent the obligatory thank-you email the day after the interview and sent a polite "just checking in" email a couple weeks later. A few weeks after that I wrote and asked if he had any feedback or suggestions on things I might improve upon if I wanted to work for them in the future. Now obviously, the hiring lead's obligation is to his employer and not some guy looking for a job. Not his job to be my career mentor. But I'm an experienced developer, and I'm certain that I did well in all parts of the interview except one. With some additional experience in that area there's a very good chance I could have been a good contributor to their team - in a market that has a shortage of experienced developers. So, on my most recent job search, I didn't even think about re-applying to that company. In a region where companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to tech recruiters for anything even remotely resembling experienced developers, maybe it's worth spending (literally) a few minutes maintaining at least a cursory relationship with those you didn't hire - but might like to someday.