One of the worst things about technical interviews is that it's a black box. Candidates are only told whether they have progressed to the next stage, without any details as to why this happened.
The lack of feedback or constructive feedback doesn't just frustrate candidates. It's bad for business too. We conducted a whole study on the topic of feedback and it turned out that many candidates constantly underestimate or overestimate their skill level during interviews. Like that:
As statistics have shown, there is a natural relationship between how confident a person is in the success of the interview and whether he wants to continue working with you. In other words, in each interview cycle, a portion of the applicants lose interest in working for the company simply because they believe they did poorly, even if in fact everything was great. This plays a cruel joke: if a person is nervous and suspects that he has not coped with a task, he is prone to self-flagellation and, in order to get out of this unpleasant state, begins to rationalize and convince himself that anyway, I didn’t particularly strive to get a job there.
Practically speaking, timely feedback from successful candidates can work wonders in dramatically increasing the number of vacancies filled.
Also, in addition to increasing the chance of getting successful candidates on your team now, feedback is crucial in relationships with candidates whom you are not ready to hire right now, but perhaps in six months this very employee will fill a burning vacancy. The results of technical interviews are extremely mixed. According to our data, only about 25% of those seeking employment consistently go through all stages from interview to interview. Why is it important? Yes, because if the results are ambiguous, there is a high probability that the candidate you did not accept today will become a valuable addition to the team later and therefore now it is in your interests to establish a good relationship with him, form his professional portrait and avoid many difficulties the next time you hire him.
I think this tweet perfectly sums up how I feel about this.
Great teams treat candidate rejections with the same consideration as they do approvals. It's crazy to see people make fatal mistakes, especially with young talent. Why? You have no idea how these guys will grow in 18 months. Just so you know, you just benched Michael Jordan in high school.
So, despite the obvious benefits of detailed feedback after an interview, why do most companies choose to delay it or not give it at all? To understand why anyone who's ever trained to be an interviewer has been strongly advised not to give feedback, I surveyed company founders, HR managers, recruiters, and employment lawyers (and also asked a few related questions on the Twitterverse).
As it turns out, feedback is devalued primarily because many companies are afraid of lawsuits on this basis... And because employees conducting interviews are afraid of an aggressive defensive reaction from potential candidates. Sometimes feedback is neglected because companies simply consider it unimportant and unimportant.
The sad truth is that hiring practices are out of step with today's market realities. The recruiting approaches we take for granted today have emerged in a world with too many candidates and a significant shortage of jobs. This affects every aspect of the process, from candidates taking unreasonably long time to complete test tasks to poorly written job descriptions for positions. Of course, post-interview feedback is no exception. How Gail Laakman McDowell, author of Cracking the Coding Interview on Quora:
Companies are not trying to create the most perfect process for you. They are trying to hire - ideally efficiently, cheaper, and effectively. This is about their goals, not yours. Maybe when it's easy they'll help you too, but really this whole process is about them… Companies do not believe it helps them to give candidates feedback. Frankly, all they see is downside.
Translation: “Companies are not trying to create a convenient process for you. They are trying to hire employees as efficiently, cheaply and effectively as possible. It's about their goals and convenience, not yours. Maybe if it doesn't cost them anything, they'll help you too, but really this whole process is about them... Companies don't believe that feedback will help them in any way.”
By the way, I once did the same. Here is a rejection letter I wrote while working as a technical recruiting manager at TrialPay. Looking at him, I want to go back to the past and warn myself against future mistakes.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking the time to work with TrialPay. Unfortunately, we do not currently have an opening that matches your current skills. We will take note of your candidacy and contact you if anything suitable becomes available. Thank you again for your time and we wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
In my opinion, such a written refusal (which is undoubtedly better than remaining silent and leaving the person in limbo) can only be justified if you have an endless stream of disposable candidates. And it is completely out of place in today's new world, where candidates have as much leverage as companies. But still, since HR in a company has the main task of reducing risks and reducing spending money (and not increasing profits, where the task is, for example, to improve the quality of services), and also because technical specialists often have a lot of other tasks besides their official ones responsibilities, we continue to move forward on autopilot, perpetuating outdated and harmful habits like this.
In this hiring climate, companies need to move toward new approaches that give candidates a new, better interview experience. Is the fear of litigation and the attendant discomfort justified enough to make companies reluctant to provide feedback? Does it make sense to optimize spending in this way, out of fear and the impact of a few bad cases, in the face of a severe shortage of qualified technical specialists? Let's figure it out.
Is there any point in being afraid of potential litigation?
In researching this issue, and wanting to know how often constructive feedback from a company following an interview (i.e., not “hey, we didn’t hire you because you’re a woman”) to a rejected candidate resulted in litigation, I spoke with several lawyers. on labor issues and looked up information in Lexis Nexis.
You know what? NOTHING! SUCH CASES HAVE NEVER HAPPENED. NEVER.
As several of my legal contacts have noted, many cases are resolved outside of court and statistics on them are much more difficult to obtain. However, in this market, giving a candidate a bad impression of a company simply to hedge against something that is unlikely to happen seems irrational at best and destructive at worst.
What about the candidates' reactions?
At some point, I stopped writing banal rejection letters like the one above, but still adhered to my employer's rules regarding written reviews. Also, as an experiment, I tried giving verbal feedback to candidates over the phone.
By the way, I had an unusual, hybrid role at TrialPay. Although the position of “Head of Technical Recruiting Department” implied quite normal responsibilities for this field, I had to perform another non-standard task. Since I was previously a software developer, in order to reduce the burden on our long-suffering team of programmers, I took the position of the first line of defense in technical interviews and conducted about five hundred of them last year alone.
After multiple, daily interviews, I became much less embarrassed to end them early if it was clear to me that the candidate’s qualifications did not reach the required level. Do you think ending the interview early led to disappointment on the part of the candidate?
In my experience, more often than not, providing feedback after an interview has been perceived as an invitation to discussion, or worse, an argument. Everyone says they want feedback after an interview, but they really don't.
According to my observations, it is silence and reluctance to explain to the candidate what exactly led to the refusal that disappoints candidates much more and turns them against you than explaining what went wrong. Sure, some candidates will get defensive (in which case it's best to just end the conversation politely), but others will be willing to listen constructive feedback and in such cases it is necessary to make it clear what went wrong, recommend books, point out the candidate’s weak points and where to upgrade them, for example in LeetCode - and many will only be grateful. My personal experience with providing detailed feedback has been amazing. I enjoyed sending books to candidates and developed strong relationships with many of them, some of whom ended up becoming early users of interviewing.io several years later.
In any case, the best way to avoid negative reactions from candidates is constructive feedback. We'll talk about this further.
So, if feedback does not actually carry serious risks, but only benefits, how to do it correctly?
The launch of interviewing.io was the culmination of my experiments while working at TrialPay. I definitely understood that feedback evokes positive responses from candidates, and in the realities of this market, this means that it is also useful for companies. However, we still had to contend with potential client companies' (rather irrational) fears that most candidates show up for interviews with a voice recorder and a lawyer on speed dial.
To make the context clear, the interviewing.io portal is a labor exchange. Before moving on to direct contact with employers, professionals can try to interview anonymously and, if successful, unlock our job portal, where they, bypassing the usual red tape (applying online, talking to recruiters or “talent managers”, finding friends who can direct them) and book real interviews with companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Coinbase, Twitch and many others. Often the very next day.
The main advantage is that both mock and real interviews with employers take place within the interviewing.io ecosystem and now I will explain why this is important.
Before we began full-fledged work, we spent some time debugging our platform and conducting all the necessary tests.
For mock interviews, our feedback forms looked like this:
Feedback form to be completed by the interviewer.
After each mock interview, interviewers complete the form above. Candidates fill out a similar form with their interviewer's rating. When both parties fill out their forms, they can see each other's responses.
For anyone interested, I recommend taking a look at our . Here's a screenshot:
Involving employers, we offered them this format of post-interview feedback and asked them to leave feedback on candidates to help them improve and minimize the unpleasant impressions of unsuccessful interviews.
To our surprise and delight, employers left their reviews without any problems. Thanks to this, on our platform, specialists saw whether they passed or not and why exactly this happened, and most importantly, they received feedback literally a few minutes after the end of the interview, avoiding the usual anxiety of waiting and courses of self-flagellation after the interview. As I already wrote, this increases the likelihood of talented candidates accepting the offer.
Real, successful interview with a company on interviewing.io
Now, if a candidate failed an interview, he could see why and what he needed to work on. Perhaps for the first time in the history of interviews.
Real, unsuccessful interview with a company on interviewing.io
Anonymity makes feedback easier
On interviewing.io, interviews are anonymous: the employer knows nothing about the candidate before and during the interview (you can even turn on ). The identity of the applicant is revealed only after a successful interview and after feedback has been provided by the employer.
We insist on the importance of anonymity, because about 40% of the best applicants on our platform are not white, heterosexual men from Western Europe, and this leads to bias. Thanks to the anonymity of the interview, there is virtually no possibility of discriminating against a person based on age, gender or origin. We strive for maximum constructive feedback, that is, the only information required from the employer is how well the candidate copes with his responsibilities during the interview. In addition to the fact that anonymity gives a specialist an honest chance at an excellent vacancy, it also protects the employer - building a case of discrimination due to feedback is much more difficult if the candidate’s identity is unknown to the employer.
We've also seen time and again in the interview process how anonymity makes a person more sincere, relaxed and friendly, improving the quality of the interview for both candidates and employers.
Implementing a post-interview feedback practice in your company
Even if you do not use our service, based on the above facts, I highly recommend using this technique and giving constructive feedback by mail to every candidate, regardless of whether they pass the interview or not.
Here are some tips for giving constructive feedback:
- Tell the applicant clearly that the answer is “no” if the candidate fails the interview. Uncertainty, especially in a stressful situation, causes the most negative feelings. For example: Thank you for responding to our vacancy. Unfortunately, you did not pass the interview.
- After you've made it clear that the interview was a failure, say something encouraging. Highlight something you liked about the interview process—an answer that was given, or the way the interviewer analyzed a problem—and share it with the candidate. He will be much more receptive to your next words when he feels that you are on his side. For example: Even though it didn't work out this time, you did {a, b and c} really well and I believe you will do even better in the future. Here are a few things to work on.
- When pointing out mistakes, be specific and constructive. You should not tell the candidate that he did everything through his ass and that he should think about another profession. Point out specific things the person could work on. For example: “read about the big “O”. It just sounds scary, but it’s not a complicated thing and is often asked about in interviews like this.” Don’t say “you are stupid and your work experience is stupid and should be ashamed.”
- Recommend materials to study. Is there a book the candidate should read? If a specialist is promising, but lacks knowledge, it would be smarter for you to send him this book.
- If you see that the applicant is constantly developing and you see potential in him (especially if he takes advantage of your recommendations and advice!), offer to contact you again in a few months. This way you will build good relationships with people who, even if they do not become your employees in the future, will definitely speak positively about you. And if their professional level one day reaches the required level, you will become a priority employer for them.
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Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Do you provide detailed feedback after the interview?
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46,2%Yes6
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15,4%No2
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38,5%Only in rare cases5
13 users voted. 9 users abstained.
Source: habr.com