Ask HN: Why do companies not list your weaknesses in rejection emails?
I applied for a SWE role with Gitlab. I received a standard rejection template post 48 hours. I wish if they have listed key reasons on why they rejected me. It could have helped me work on my weaknesses. I feel awful when rejections are void.
121 comments
[ 1017 ms ] story [ 484 ms ] thread- there's no incentive for them to do it - it's a rejection, they don't have a reason to please you
- the less information they give, the less exposed they are to liabilities like being accused of hiring discrimination
Oh, my gosh. The sheer quantity of candidates I reject. I have a complicated puzzle that is poorly described by the Job Description. In the interview, I try to see how you fit I to the existing puzzle. If you don't fit, then you "don't fit". As simple as that. Don't take it personal. Don't re think your life. Just... keep looking.
No wonder i didnt get the job, but rejection email said they thought I am a good engineer. I replied if they can tell me where I can improve. They did so politely.
Few months down the road, I improved and applied again. I got the job
If the interviewer says "I think you're a good engineer", the next sentence should be "we would like to make you an offer".
If I could hire people by reading their mind and understanding their ability, without requiring an ounce of preparation, I would do that.
It’s entirely possible that the candidate was just off their game that day, or they weren’t “warmed up”. I get noticeably better at interviewing after the first few. It happens, but the interviewer has the information they got, and it’s not possible to totally control for that kind of variance.
What hiring managers should be actively minimizing, that most hiring managers I’ve seen do not, is variance that their interview process introduces by, for example, not standardizing and training their interviewers.
Even with the most perfectly defined job description, you might have many candidates who "fit" that description, so you have to weigh a lot of other factors which run a huge gamut. Many, many times I've had multiple candidates that are more-or-less the same in terms of experience, technical competence, ability to learn, get shit done, etc - so you start looking at other factors and it can get down to things like communication, personal hygiene, general awkwardness, etc.
Just want to point out that this really depends on your location - here in Switzerland, the talent pool is vastly smaller compared to the number of companies and open positions.
I have in fact, reapplied to companies before that had a very honest and feedback-rich hiring process and simply rejected me because they found a better fit with another candidate.
(For full disclosure: I reapplied at that company, was hired, and fired after three months for office political reasons. So do take this story with a generous pinch of salt.)
Even so, lot of companies are deficient in explaining to their employees that certain kinds of discrimination are illegal, coz it still happens plenty - almost always during interviews. Remarks about pregnancy do happen.
It is more work to provide feedback (which I think is mainly what people hate) but it's better for your hiring reputation, provided the feedback isnt routinely nonsensical - in which case staying quiet probably is better.
Plus, if a company is worried that revealing their reason for rejecting is legally risky, then maybe they should stop rejecting candidates for legally risky reasons. If they are worried about a lawsuit, they might want to consider that their evaluation process could be either overtly discriminatory, or reliant on people’s personal biases (conscious or unconscious). For example if they reject based simply on some gut feeling, or whether or not they like the person, or the classic bias: “cultural fit”. Basically, reasons they would not want to have to articulate in front of a judge.
Also if they give reasons, I suppose it's also an invitation to the candidate to rules lawyer why those reasons aren't actually accurate and they should still get the job, which would be even more work for someone to deal with.
I have to imagine that something else in the "number of factors" matters much more than "high applicant volumes".
[1]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/interviewing/#rejec... > Everyone who interviews a candidate must complete a scorecard and are required to input pros and cons as well as an overall recommendation.
That sounds like the exception, but ok, what happens when it is not possible?
Like you know, send a message "Dear candidate, unfortunately the talent acquisiton team did not manage to provide decline feedback because of xxxxxxx[0] , sorry."
Or "nothing"?
And in how many cases does this happen?
Like 1%, 5%, 35% or 99%?
IMHO it would be much simpler to directly write in your handbook something like:
"No decline feedback will be provided. No exceptions."
This way the candidate won't be expecting it.
[0] Examples:
my dog ate the feedback
the feedback was stored in a cabinet that got flooded
the hard disk where the feedback was stored failed before a backup was made
From an interviewer perspective, I suspect it's mostly a time/volume thing. Last time I did it, I put out a req for a position, I'll get 10-20 resumes trickle in over the next week or four. I pick the ones that are the best of the lot and schedule interviews until I find someone that I think has the best chance of being successful. Some of it is the way the resume reads, some of it is how well the skills match what we need, some of it is just gut. I certainly don't have the time to go through all the ones that I didn't pick and give a detailed (re: useful) explanation on why. Most of them I could't really offer much advice other than there were better matching resumes. It's usually someone has more years experience, or were better able to articulate their experience, or had more skills that matched what we need, or had more experience in my particular industry.
Also, for most smaller shops, it's the devs that are doing the interviewing and filtering. Typically, we should have hired someone months ago, but companies usually hire later than they should, so I'm buried in work and I have the additional task of filtering resumes and interviewing on top of my already overburdened workload.
Simple laziness and wanting minimize reputational risk from feedback on the feedback seems a more plausible as a reason why.
I think if you were interviewed and even made it past a round or two, you should be entitled to some deliberate feedback.
They avoid doing so because of legal liability and other repercussions. I have always emailed them constantly until they get annoyed enough to reply with "something".
Especially companies located in places where phone call recording isn't legal.
It's all about not leaving a liability paper trail.
Keep applying and don't wait for any one company to give any feedback.
First, even if you perfectly know your suitability for the job, it's (perhaps unfortunately) true that interviewing itself is a skill you can improve at. Feedback is in general a great way to improve faster at things, so I think it's natural to want to know why you were rejected.
Second, if you were rejected for a reason out of your control that would inform what types of jobs you apply for in the future, so also useful knowledge.
I agree in the end that you should accept that you're not going to get much feedback, but it's totally reasonable to want it.
i would say in tech its fairly easy to establish hard skill competence during the interview. the remaining portion of why person gets hired is more fuzzy and is much like dating. they like you or they don't. asking why not rarely leads to any response or a meaningful response, because a lot of times they don't even know why, it might just be a gut feeling thing.
i wouldn't obsess about the outcome, as long as person is working on themselves in all areas and keeps trying, success will come.
- Time and volume: think of how many applicants they've been through and the time it would take to write this feedback for each of them
- A good chance that people will dispute the reasons, leading to more time, more effort and more chance of a lawsuit
If it's at the final or penultimate stage, I've known this to happen. I also find it more common coming through a recruiter (as the company will be speaking to the recruiter anyway and knows that they will shut down any disputes you have).
As long as there's a concrete rejection email rather than never hearing back, that's all you should expect.
Then you can take their feedback into consideration for your next application. Sometimes it'll be something you can't do much about quickly (e.g. if there was a candidate with more experience than you). Other times though you'll discover a quick win (e.g. your application didn't clearly state your relative skills or experience).
no one can give you a better answer about yourself than you.
they usually dont even know why they rejected you. its not a logical thing. its mostly emotional.
I said "You've just interviewed me, what do you think I need to improve?" That way it's really easy for the interviewer to give the feedback and you get round any corporate policies about not giving feedback.
I think the question as phrased is a good way to ask it, and more likely to make it land. It just also has the potential to leave things on a more sour note than they would have been if not done right.
i prob read it somewhere as advice.
The main idea at this point is less 'to learn' and more to 'address aspects of my skills/experience/etc. that did not come thru during the interview'.It's a disgusting practice tbh and should be dealt with properly by things like regulation but why bother I guess.
Think about online dating. You chat with someone, they seem interesting, but you notice something you hadn't paid enough attention to when you were too caught up in your earthly desires. Maybe they live 40 miles away from you, maybe they have bad teeth, maybe they could lose a few pounds. You, an outspoken and, in your mind, generous person, decide to tell them that they are perfectly fine, but that you prefer someone a little taller than they are, or someone of lighter build, because you have always been active and you are not sure you can share your lifestyle with them.
You expect them to appreciate your candor and helpful cooking tips, but instead they tell you that you are a loser and don't know what you are missing out.
What happens then is that whenever you next feel you are losing interest in the person you are chatting with, you simply delete their profile: "Oh, well."
Like they said the company hired 0 grads from Historically <Minority> Universities (HMUs) before they were hired, and they increased it to 300. And they said it was "a 300% increase". Their words, not mine.
When people from the co went to one HMU, and they hired a very low number of people, and the engineers wrote in their documents absolutely true things, like, "the grads have no idea about even the basic algorithms" (paraphrased). They cited that report and accused the engineers and the whole company of discriminatory practices.
Now, say, you start writing weaknesses, and write "lack of understanding basic arithmetic like GCD" for some of the candidates.
Now all it takes for your company and you to be accused of discriminatory practices is one zelous reporter from WaPo or NYT to get a sample of ~15 of these rejection mails and find your list of weaknesses. Then they just have to show that all of the ~15 people are from historically underrepresented communities.
This is the reason I am never going to do it.
Sounds like this happened to you.
As people mentioned, companies have no incentive of putting the extra effort just to get more liability, and lots of candidates that would contest that.
- reached out to me through a recruiter
- had me go through multiple interview rounds and a take home
only to ghost me afterwards entirely (even after my asking for feedback). Once a candidate has invested time, you would think common decency dictates keeping them in the loop properly. But even that appears to much to ask in the current climate.
There is also often a very high volume of candidates for particular positions, and it is a challenge to offer feedback, especially when they're not brought in for a live interview.
In my own process, interesting positions result in me searching for hiring managers at the company, sending a cover letter+resume that includes a table of their needs listed in the JD alongside my skills. This tends to get me closer to the interview table and provides an opportunity to exchange enough information for feedback purposes. It's also a bit of a differentiator in terms of resume structure (more than one interviewer has commented on it).