The hidden beauty of recruiting

http://blog.thinkful.com/post/42278275840/the-hidden-beauty-of-recruiting

by darrellsilver • 13 years ago

18 30 13 years ago

blog.thinkful.com

hcho3• 13 years ago

>If you talk to hiring managers you’ll hear that they wish there was a way to provide feedback to rejected job applicants

No, million times no. Providing feedback to a rejected applicant may open a huge can of worms. If these hiring managers really exist they are putting their employers in a very risky situation.

darrellsilver6• 13 years ago

Exactly! They wish there was a way to do it, but know doing so would open a huge can of worms.

Hirers want nothing more than increase the quality of candidates they interview, which is why providing a safe way to gather this feedback is so valuable.

MattRogish• 13 years ago

This! Yes, I'd love to give feedback on what wasn't there. But, legally/risk-wise, it's just not worth it. Who knows if the fact that they couldn't write a line of Ruby for a Ruby-on-Rails position could be some reason to sue? Not that they'd win but just the possibility keeps employers from giving even a peep of feedback. Never, ever gonna happen.

darrellsilver6• 13 years ago

Agreed. We hear this a lot. Maybe I should revise the post to be more clear on this point... everyone wants to give this feedback, but it's an HR minefield.

GotAnyMegadeth• 13 years ago

Wow, I never realised that feedback could be a case for a law suit... Is this just in the USA or in the UK as well?

Swizec2• 13 years ago

As a sometimes job seeker: Screw hiring managers who don't give feedback. I want to know what I did wrong so I can improve.

Not giving feedback when people fail is a sure-fire way to make the whole ecosystem worse. In any situation.

hcho3• 13 years ago

If the problem is technical, the candidates get their feedback immediately. Either they themselves know they botched up the question, or they are given the clue via absence of a follow up question. The best thing you could due to salvage such situations is to ask what the right answer is. That not only serves as feedback but also signals that you are willing to know.

The feedback you don't get, is almost always about personality. There's no litigation-safe way of saying "Man, you come across as a total douche, I'll pass"

colmvp• 13 years ago

Exactly. How is a rejected applicant supposed to improve if they don't have any feedback?

wahnfrieden• 13 years ago

Businesses have to worry about themselves before the ecosystem. It's for legal concerns that they don't give feedback.

droithomme4• 13 years ago

It's because you weren't a good fit for the position.

Want to know more? No, because then you will threaten to sue us. The legal action is frivolous and will lose in the end but it will cost money time and attention to deal with.

But forget all that, seriously now, what's the real reason, the applicant asks? For us, if we didn't make an offer it's either because the applicant is a jerk, a liar, or incompetent. One or more of these covers the situation with the majority of applicants. Salary is not an issue, we pay what it takes for the right people. I can't say the same for other companies, they often want to find someone cheap. Jerks don't change, the incompetent can't improve, and liars only use feedback to make their lies harder to detect. This means all feedback is either useless or counterproductive. There is one exception. The rare case they are a sweet genius with severe BO. In this case little can be gained from feedback since there's little chance one is not aware of it. If one suspects BO might be the reason, then it is and it should be fixed before the interview.

protonfish• 13 years ago

What can of worms are you talking about? The one where the hiring manager admits on record that he or she rejected a candidate for unethical or illegal reasons opening the company to a lawsuit? Or is it the one where your external recruiter uses that feedback to coach the next applicant to trick you into hiring an incompetent?

hcho3• 13 years ago

Former. The latter is quite easy to spot and deal with.

dfriedmn2• 13 years ago

Coaching is less likely to mask incompetence than reveal competence.

viscanti• 13 years ago

There's a difference between wishing and doing. They wish there was a way to give feedback while avoiding the trouble you're pointing out. Since there's not, they're just left wishing instead of doing.

Hiring managers work in a very human field. They often run into the same issues with candidates, and wish that they could just give a bit of human input, to help someone else. The candidate might not be a good fit for that job, but if he/she is unknowingly self-sabotaging in interviews, it would be great to be able to point that out. Since the potential trouble outweighs the benefits, they're left only wishing.

darrellsilver6• 13 years ago

Definitely – This is exactly what we're seeing. I think people are more open to feedback when working with Thinkful because we're educators not recruiters.

fecak3• 13 years ago

Recruiter here, came to say this. About 90% of hiring managers will tell recruiters 'good candidate but not a fit at this time' and nothing more, as any additional information could lead to all kinds of problems (cries of ageism is a current favorite). I'll always ask for more feedback from my clients, and most of them will go into more detail (I refuse to work with clients that are not willing to provide at least some info on rejections), but there is little incentive for hiring managers to provide full details on their reasoning.

arbuge• 13 years ago

"...hiring managers are by definition experts at hiring"

Ummm, I don't think so. Many if not most companies suck at hiring. If you get hiring right, you just nailed the most important factor* to building a great company, and great companies are the exception, not the rule.

*arguably, the only factor. The rest is what the people you hired do.

bunderbunder• 13 years ago

They may not be experts at making the best hiring decisions. Whether they are or not isn't really important.

What's important is that when it comes to knowing what hiring managers do and do not like to see in an applicant, they're it. And that's exactly what someone who's job hunting wants to know. They're not out to meet some Platonic ideal for the best possible candidate for XYZ position. They're just looking to get a job.

The hidden beauty of recruiting

Related Stories