back
69 comments
I have the exact opposite experience. I think giving unsolicited feedback to candidates is unwise:

  * Sometimes the candidate just isn't good at what they
    do. Telling people that, even in the most constructive way
    possible, can generate lots of negative emotions. You don't
    know who you're talking to, and if they'll take it well.
  * Sometimes the candidate is pretty good, but doesn't quite
    clear your bar. It's rediculously hard to communicate that
    without hurting people's egos.
  * Sometimes it's a matter of taste -- the person is good, but
    you know the delta between what you want to accomplish and
    what they want to accomplish is too great. Some people won't
    understand that and will interpret it as you not hiring them
    because you're an egocentric asshole.
  * Sometimes they're really smart, but you know they'll spend
    time futzing around with different technologies for
    technology's sake and will not be productive. Most people
    like that won't hear what you're telling them.
  * Sometimes something just rubs you the wrong way. What if the
    candidate seems to be jumping to conclusions too quickly and
    doesn't seem thoughtful enough? What if it feels very nuanced
    and any given example seems petty, but you just feel off in
    aggregate? It's extremely hard to communicate that to people,
    and will likely open up lots of emotions you don't want to be
    dealing with.
I agree that it's a good idea to give honest feedback if people follow up and ask for it, and agree with not using form letters. A simple personal note can go a long way:

  Hi Bob, it's Jim at CompanyX. I discussed the interview with the
  team, and decided this isn't a good fit. Thanks for taking the
  time to interview with us, and good luck!
Hmm, did you actually encounter those bad behaviors, or are these hypothetical? I gave feedback to nearly everyone we interviewed onsite, and only dealt with one person who became defensive. I thought it'd be a problem but most people are actually very decent.

For all of your examples, I think you can communicate the feedback in a specific, helpful, and gracious way. For example, for the candidate that you're worried would futz around with technology for technology's sake, why not say something like:

"Hi X,

Thanks for interviewing with us yesterday! Everybody on the team enjoyed meeting you.

Unfortunately, I don't have great news for you: after a lot of discussion, we decided we can't make an offer.

We thought you seemed really smart, and you did great on all of our algorithms and system design questions. What worried us is that, during the pair programming exercise, you spent a lot of time configuring your custom-built editor and trying to use a combination of the D and Brainfuck programming languages running within an Amiga emulator, when C compiled to x86 would have been a more practical choice. Since we're an early-stage startup with only six engineers and limited funding, everything we do has to directly relate to making our customers happy, and so we're especially sensitive about pragmatism at this stage. We know it's entirely possible we're making a mistake, but given our company's small size, we just have to be very cautious, even paranoid, with every single hire.

Thanks again for taking the time to talk with us. We really appreciate it. And sorry again that things didn't work out this time. Best of luck with your other interviews, and please let me know if there's anything I can ever do to help!"

(I'm making up details, but you get the point. I've sent lots of feedback of this type and rarely had a problem.)

This is a nice and polite email and I can't see anyone getting offended by it. The problem however is if they respond disagreeing with your conclusion.

Say, in your example above, the person responds with "I used D and Brainfuck in my custom-built editor to show that I am interested in new technologies and pick them up really quickly, and that I customize my workflow for maximum productivity. Aren't these great attributes in an early engineer? I had no idea you guys just wanted C to x86 - you should've asked!"

And now you're stuck. Do you respond to this as well, and if so, how long would you keep the chain going? What if the person was actually correct? Would you now go back to your team and reverse the decision?

What's the problem just telling it straight -

  Hi Bob,
  It's Jim at CompanyX. I discussed the interview with the
  team. It's difficult for me to say this and I don't know 
  how to say it properly, but we think you're pretty good but 
  doesn't quite clear the bar for us.
  We'd like someone who has more experience in X, Y, Z, but    
  in our interview, we thought A, B, C. I know our interview
  probably is no where near perfect and may not have 
  presented the entirety of your skills, but unfortunately 
  this is our interview process and we will have to abide by 
  it. 
  You're certainly welcome to try apply for jobs at our  
  company in the future.. XYZABC... Thanks for taking the
  time to interview with us, and good luck!
'Good fit' tells nothing to the candidate what they can improve, and deters them from applying at your company in the future when they further develop their skills and attitude.
Because my experience says that when you do the above, a good percentage of the candidates will disagree and debate with you about your assessment of them. Then when you just ignore them, you just look like a douche, not to mention there are candidates who will never give up and go to any lengths to express their disagreement with you. If you were only hiring one position for the year, you could may be do this. But when you are constantly hiring, this does not scale and can easily bog down down recruitment.

I also feel that I am not in a position to give advice or feedback to someone I've barely known. Just because I didn't hire the guy does not mean that I was correct in not hiring him. At some level, we'll never know. So it's pretty hard to even have feedback that I can be 100% confident about.

I used to do that. Some people took it really well and thanked me, others got really defensive, upset, even angry. I'm happy to put in the time if people ask, but I found it's just not worth dealing with the emotional fallout of some percentage of the rejected candidates. (Unfortunately these folks ruin things for everyone else)
It would be nice if it was that simple, but if you accidentally word something the wrong way you can open yourself up to a mess of problems. Employment lawsuits and accusations of discrimination can be very nasty and costly.

If this wasn't a concern, I would gladly take the time out of my day to write a nice note like this. Even if they're not hired, many technical people will tell their friends about their good experience with you and help improve your reputation in the tech community.

To really tell it straight would be:

Hi Bob, It's Jim at CompanyX. Hiring is complicated and needs many people to agree on a particular candidate. Often, we don't. Unfortunately, we couldn't all come to agree on hiring you. It's no reflection on you as a candidate and maybe only a reflection on our skills as interviewers and recruiters. We thank you for your time and wish you all the best. Certainly feel free to apply again, and many of us here, including me, may have been bad hires who will be fired soon.

Cheers, Jim

I'd much rather receive the shorter response without criticism. If I really want the job and am disappointed in the decision, I'd probably send a follow up e-mail and explicitly ask for feedback and what I could improve to work with the company. If I've got several opportunities and one of them doesn't think it'll be a fit, I don't need or want a paragraph explaining why I'm deficient.

Having been on the other side of the hiring coin the majority of my career, when a fit is bad it's usually just that -- the candidate isn't incompetent or a bad person it's just not quite what our particular company is looking for. There's no useful or relevant "advice" to give to the candidate other than explaining in great deal the idiosyncrasies of our team culture and hiring process... this isn't useful. It's not like we have the secret recipe to what makes for awesome programmers and have license to dispense that upon all who fail our review.

Sometimes a person not good enough to be an employee #10 is good enough to be an employee #100, when you can pair him up with a mentor that can guide them on personal growth.

With a letter like that you've just burned that bridge.

I think being specific is great and letting them know what they did well is good. Phrasing it more in line with we found someone with a bit more experience in XYZ can help and even making it seem like if they take some months to brush up on... lets say python... they could be a stronger fit down the road. Keep it honest, but avoid specifics.Too many people can nitpick rejection but if you imply there was someone just a better fit and give them some points on what makes someone (even if that someone isn't identified yet just an ideal profile) will help the candidate in the long run. Also, if you've gotten them deep in process like an on-site CALL THEM. 4 hour interviews and a technical challenge, you can spend some time giving them a ring. Especially Sr People don't make them feel like you wasted your time and sent a canned rejection.
My experience is that "fit" is almost always near the top of the list.
The alternative you offered is better but I would add 'if you'd like feedback let us know'.
This is a totally reasonable, fair-minded, and simultaneously terrible idea.

Just like when you turn someone down for a date, or break up with someone, anything more than "this just isn't the right thing for me, right now, but I wish you well" is often seen as an invitation for all sorts of exhausting pain that benefits no one.

And in the case of employment rejections, the potential legal issues are just overwhelming. Thank them for their time, wish them well, and walk away.

Candidates, like suitors, can get advice, feedback, and consolation from friends, coworkers, and peers. As much as it might seem "nice" to do more, it really isn't. Not for either party.

EDIT: I do strongly support a personal note saying the above, and of course believe that a prompt response after the interviews is an absolute requirement for professional courtesy.

I think either of the above is far better than how Microsoft handles their decline decisions.. which is just to not communicate with you any further.
Here is my experience with RedHat (and I don't care if they never considered me again - after this I think RedHat is not a place I want to work for anymore).

I submitted my application and the recruiter contacted me a few hours later over email. He said I am put into a candidate pool. I didn't get what that mean but I thought it was cool and it was fast. I was interestd in developing opens tack technology this year and thought it would be cool to work as an intern with RedHat developing openstack.

The recruiter told me to follow him on twitter. I asked him questions on twitter but he didn't respond to my questions on twitter. I thought it was my privacy setting. Okay, let's move on.

I finally got an email a few weeks later. It said something like this:

"After an interview with you we think you lack of the requirements we are looking for..."

(again that's just from my vague memory)

But I clearly remember it said "I HAD AN INTERVIEW".

What bullshit is that? I never had any interview with any redhat person. I was never contacted beyond just putitng me in a candidate pool.

I sent an email back and asked what he meant by interview. He never responded.

Well. Fuck you. That kind of generic response pisses me off and has crushed my dream working on openstack (and anything have to do with redhat in general).

So even for well-established companies, please stop sending generic emails like that. If you have to, please select an appropriate one. In my case say "we have filled up the role. Sorry!"

Find a human to be a recruiter. That recruiter is a damn machine acting like a real human.

after that I was lucky to get an offer from another company. Well. I am so damn happy that I didn't get into RedHat. Totally worth it. It's like I will never work for LinkedIn anyway

Large companies like RedHat have thousands of candidates, and managing a process like that well is really, really hard. Someone was probably going through a batch of resumes in their internal system and accidentally checked the wrong box.

Your comment is actually a wonderful example why sending unsolicited feedback to candidates is a bad idea. If I take half an hour after a long hard day to write thoughtful feedback for you, I really don't want to deal with "what bullshit is that?/fuck you!/I'll tell everyone I know your company sucks" because I accidentally phrase things poorly or confuse an aspect of your interview with five other interviews I did that day.

Well, I do understand that part. Hence I didn't emailed him for the first few weeks. I normally wait a month (for my summer intern I waited two months to send an email on status). But it seems like I wasn't important. If it were a mistake, my email back to him should be visible.

Let's blame email system (spam).

I'd be wary not to open yourself up to debate, arguement, or even (!!) lawsuits. On one hand, a positive person may take this as points of possible self-improvement, but another may take issue with your assessment as unfair, unrepresentative or biased.
It's hard to imagine not getting sued at some point if you make a policy of expanding on rejections.
I think the piece does a decent job of laying out the advantages of being responsive in this way: you're creating an opening for referrals, you're increasing the chances of your rejection pool transforming into a future hiring pool, and you're building a positive reputation. I also suspect that there might be some positive effect on the actual hiring process -- someone who knows they're going to have articulate their decision might be more thorough in the process of making it. I don't know if it's a decisive advantage, but it seems reasonable enough.

The part I'm curious about at this point is if anyone has actually gotten good at eliciting this kind of feedback during/after the interview process.

Usually, it's better to just move on to the next opportunity, but as I've said elsewhere in this discussion[0], I occasionally come across a job that I know I'd like to be able to apply for again if I don't get it, and in those cases, I try to send follow up notes asking for suggestions to become a more competitive applicant.

My response rate is 1 out of about a dozen or so.

It's possible this is actually pretty good considering the facts on the ground (people are busy/time is scarce, that's why they're hiring, and nobody wants to open themselves to legal threats).

I'm just wondering if anyone has learned to do considerably better.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6524750

This feels a little like entitlement. Like the candidate is saying "You owe me an explanation". They already gave you a big chunk of their time. You gave them a chunk of yours. Nobody owes anyone anything.
If you want to speak in such terms, that would be the case if the prospective employer visited the prospective employee for the interview. When (99.9999% of the time) it's the opposite, I can say that you could give them some feedback to appreciate their...commuting, let's say?
FWIW, I'm the OP and I've spent most of my time on the hiring side (and spent time writing emails with feedback).
Is it possible to avoid the problem of potential lawsuits by asking candidates to sign an agreement in advance saying that they will not sue you based on any feedback letter sent after the interviews?

(This would still leave them with the option to sue based on how they were treated in general during the interview.)

I don't think you can legally waive your right to protection under the Civil Rights Act.
This would yield even worse results.
I'm the OP -- curious if anybody else here has given personalized feedback to candidates and has positive or negative experiences.
Recruiter here that has worked with quite a few startups as well as large companies (agency recruiter, not internal). Some clients are great about giving candidates actionable advice after interviews ("your database skills were not up to speed"), but generally the personalized feedback is only given when it is pretty clear that the feedback will be agreed to by the failed candidate. If he/she missed all the database questions, this feedback will not be a surprise.

You start to hear the generic code words like "not a fit" when there is something more to it, like we just didn't like you, or something perhaps bordering on illegal.

I have clients that deliver me very personalized rejections for some candidates and very generic rejections for others, at which point it becomes fairly obvious that personality and other things that a candidate would be sensitive to are often the issue. It's much easier to hear "your DB skills weren't up to snuff, bone up on those and you'll get somewhere" than "we didn't like you, change".

Fear of offending candidates, or being sued, are the root of the problem - and 'not a fit' is such a bland response that it generally just creates more questions from candidates.

I used to do it all the time. Then HR told me it introduced legal risks (and backed it up with real-life examples), so I reluctantly stopped.
I can speak from the other end of this communication - that of the candidate - and say that I would really appreciate some kind of feedback from the startups that have rejected me so far.

I am actually going to write a blog post about this during the weekend - will pingback!

EDIT: "But somebody who spent a day interviewing with you deserves more than a form letter."

This. Exactly this.

I've done a fair bit of interviews with our own asynchronous video interview tool (Interactly), and I always offer people feedback on why I decided not to proceed with them.

Only about 20% of people actually want to hear feedback. One of the challenges of giving feedback is that you want the decision to be final, but if you give points to improve upon then they are inclined to start negotiating with you.

With asynchronous interviews it gave me a very clear record of how they responded, which made it easy for the candidate to also look back at their own input.

One sales manager we interviewed had a significant background, previously having worked at high level positions with large companies.

However, when I saw his interview he was incoherent in his story, made vague statements, made several statements diminishing the challenges of the job without backing those statements up, and most of all his style of presenting himself showed he would be overly aggressive for the intended audience.

I gave him the feedback and instructed him to look at his own video with this in mind, and he really appreciated it.

The thing is, people need detailed feedback to improve. To stay safe on the legal side it would be easy to just give binary responses, but if we're really looking at what would improve the world, it would be actually detailed responses that enable people to improve.

Legal issues are the real problem. With so many holes you can push yourself into without knowing, a disaster is practically unavoidable in the long term.

I, however, reply with a more personal tone.

I've been on both sides of this - still am - as an employer and a candidate. There are two reasons not to give specific feedback, even if it is requested: (1) A good proportion of candidates will disagree, argue, and waste a lot of your time. Think about how many people you know in real life who don't want to accept the truth about some flaw they have. Probably all of us do this in some way. (2) In the US, any feedback beyond generic opens the employer up to creative lawsuits. Unfortunate but true.

In rare cases, where the issue is purely a technical skill, I could see telling someone: learn this, get this specific experience, then come back to us.

OK- I have had terrible terrible experiences in India, where to date I have ZERO(0!) responses from any company on 'NO'. This frustrating includes not only Indian companies but also several 'Great to Work' places(The likes of Amazon and even Google) This is frustrating and honestly interviewing is a pretty frustrating experience now. Anyone thought how to fix this? If you are a recruiter, for god fn sake do write a one liner to the candidate expressing your decision. P.S. This is the case with pretty much most people and Im not entirely an idiot
Almost no big companies will provide feedback since they interview thousands of candidates per year and become large targets for lawsuits. Startups have a little more flexibility, but, unfortunately, the likes of Google and Amazon usually have very firm policies against giving candidates any feedback.
> Out of 100+ candidates, only one person has tried to argue with the result.

Did the author ever consider that the reason for this is often that candidates were not thrilled about the job post-interview?

Far too many startups don't seem to recognize that the interview process is a two-way street. After all candidates are put through (phone interviews, on-site interviews, FizzBuzz, etc.), the likelihood that a candidate will choose not to accept an offer (if one is made) is probably just as high as the employer choosing not to extend an offer.

Most candidates who received an offer accepted it, and multiple people who didn't receive an offer referred others, so I suspect that wasn't the problem. Of course, there's no real way to measure it, but the signals all point in the same direction.
> We sent a long message explaining our reasoning, and, surprisingly enough, the student said he understood our reasoning, but thought his roommate would be a perfect fit.

Pay it back. Next time you interview somebody great that isn't right for you, direct them to a company that they seem just right for. :)

Good idea. We've definitely tried to pay it back in other contexts, e.g., helping a person to whom we didn't make an offer fundraise for their own startup. (In that case, I sure regretted not making the offer. :) )
Interesting that Brandon no longer appears to be at SiftScience, of which he was a co-founder. I recently received a rejection after an interview at SiftScience that was precisely of the form that he criticizes in his post ("sorry, not the best fit right now").
Giving personalized feedback seems to be a potentially good idea when telling a candidate 'yes' as well. People interview at multiple companies and sometimes a more personal connection to a company that gave out an offer can be enticing.
I just got an email saying they have to pass because they just hired someone with my skill set.

To me this is far more hurtful and depressing than the generic "We do not feel like you are the best fit at this time".

The very best interview processes produce at best an inaccurate melange of first-impressions, stress-related (or otherwise 'artificial') missteps (by the candidate) (or, worse, a candidates' misrepresentation of his own abilities/achievements), and a glut of grab-ass frequently misinterpreted/misrepresented by the interviewer(s) as High-Minded, Thoughtful, Rigorous Questioning To Make Sure We Only Hire The Best (tm).

Chances are if "they just hired someone with [your] skill set" it was random and doesn't reflect poorly on you (and possibly not them). Don't take it personally.

Shouldn't be - and I don't want to sound cocky here.

If they pick their hires randomly like that then you don't want to work with such a team, do you?

I'll take the generic form letter over just never speaking to me again.