Tell candidates why and how they failed

Have you ever gone through an entire interview process, wrap your final stage interviews, open your inbox and see an email with a generic rejection?

If you hate the fact you didn’t get any feedback on what to improve or change, you’re not alone. I hate it too. That’s why I always offer candidates that have gone through my interview process a feedback call at the end.

Note

I’ve written this out of a LinkedIn post about this topic and then getting a bunch of DMs asking me how I approach the conversation.

I will never get tired of getting messages like the two below:

Hi Norberto, Just wanted to send a quick thank you for the time you spent with me after the interview.

After your feedback, and the simple way you suggested thinking about system design interviews, my next interview went brilliantly; it just clicked and I have now signed a new contract.

You didn’t have to do that and I appreciate it immensely, so thank you.

Hey Norberto, I saw your latest post about someone thanking you and I had to thank you again. I made it to the tech test at Incident late last year following us speaking as far back as April of last year and I’ve carried our conversation ever since.

You might not fully remember it (or at all) but we spoke about what it looked like to step up into a mid-level engineer and I’m just really grateful to share that our conversation helped guide me to the point now where I just got feedback from my team that they see me as a strong mid-level and gearing towards a senior level in the not too distant future.

Just wanted to thank you for such a thoughtful call we had well over a year ago and thought to let you know that how you carried it with intentionality is having a net lift on the engineering community in its own way, inside and outside Incident!

Spending time with candidates at the end of interviewing processes and helping them understand why they were rejected is time well spent.[1]

When I discuss this with other hiring managers, most, in my opinion, over emphasise repercussions of having a call with candidates. Either out of fear of being sued, or candidates giving them a hard time, or simply the potential for conflict.

Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll have a guide on how to approach this kind of conversation too, without any fear of doing so.

Interview processes

Interview processes are very leaky processes, no matter how big or small your company is, how much structure it has, or how long or short those processes are. I don’t care how good your process is, I guarantee that whether you know it or not, you will have false positives and false negatives. Someone amazing will not be captured by your interview process. And on the other hand, you will hire someone that you should never have hired and will fail in your organisation.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t try to improve or fine tune your processes. For all that is sacred, do that.

From a candidate perspective, things aren’t so rosy either. A candidate will have to build a mental model of multiple different companies and their processes. They will then go through one or multiple of those processes, endure whatever you thought was an amazing approach to interviewing (and let’s assume they do enjoy it), and then if they’re lucky they’ll end up with a few offers.

Even if a candidate ends with multiple offers, they will also be rejected. Sometimes that rejection is from the company that was their top preference. That sucks.

Ending with a generic rejection email stings that much more and gives the candidate no ability to improve for any other processes they still have ongoing, nor gives them the opportunity to understand how they could do better next time and get the job.

If you go through my interview process, and you get a rejection at the end, you also get an invite for a feedback conversation with me. This is important because it:

  • means there are no surprises coming into the call

  • allows the candidate an opportunity to say no to the feedback call

  • provides a buffer for the candidate to process the rejection

Let’s take a look below on how to approach the conversation.

The conversation

Framing

Over time, I’ve found that starting by framing the conversation works best. Here’s a rough breakdown:

  1. Acknowledge that interview processes are imperfect and leaky

  2. Be explicit and tell the candidate there isn’t a way to reverse the decision

  3. Tell the candidate they don’t need to justify themselves on any of the feedback; this is what we saw or didn’t see, or what we didn’t like, but because interviews are imperfect, this isn’t a reflection on them

  4. Reiterate that the candidate can stop the call at any time - they’re in control of what happens at this stage

  5. Give the candidate a short agenda:

    1. What went well: this makes sure they don’t need to obsess where they did well or not

    2. What didn’t go well: this makes sure they know what they missed, or we didn’t get to see, and how we came to the decision

    3. Offer some advice: only if they want! Don’t ever force your advice on anyone.

What went well

The reason I like to go over what went well, or what we saw that we really liked, is that it makes people not wonder if we saw any of the good stuff. Yes, I will tell the candidate where they did well despite the outcome.

It’s important that candidates know what superpowers they have that come through in an interview. That way they can amplify them, or at least not worry about how they’re coming across in specific areas.

I believe that gives people the best chance of success.

Some folks have been incredible communicators but thought they failed because of their communication style. Yeah, it can get that crazy.

What didn’t go well

When I go into this part, I do my best to explain that this is no reflection on them as individuals. Interviews can end in an outcome like this and not all companies are made for all individuals and vice versa.

I cover the following points, usually in this order:

  1. What we didn’t hear that we wanted to hear

  2. What we heard that didn’t fit with the company culture or ways of working

  3. What we heard that didn’t resonate with us

    1. Often times this is because the candidate has a very strong opinion that runs counter to our own opinion and we didn’t get them to adjust even in the slightest.

  4. What we saw that didn’t align with our expectations

    1. This can be pace, quality, approaches to problems (big bag, I know)

I also give them enough space, and explicitly ask them if they have questions at this stage. It’s very important they can dig into any of the points if something isn’t clear.

Ask if they’d like advice

Once I’ve covered what went well and what didn’t go well, I simply ask them if they’d like any advice on the feedback they just heard.

If they say no, it’s all good.

If they say yes, then I tend to give pointers and discuss approaches I’ve seen work in the past. I always come prepared with a few suggestions. I’m also explicit that, as obvious as it may seem, they don’t need to act on any of it. That’s their decision.

Once the above is done, I thank them for all the time they’ve put into the process, wish them best of luck and that’s that.

As a candidate…​

Do

  • Take notes if you so wish

  • Ask questions if any of the feedback doesn’t resonate

  • Tell me if you ever get a job out of my feedback, I love hearing that I helped in some way

  • Ping me if you want to re-apply (assuming you’ve taken the feedback and made improvements over 6-9 months)

Don’t

  • Don’t fight back the feedback (although it is totally ok to say "I disagree but I appreciate this call and this isn’t the time or place to argue over it")

  • Don’t complain about the interviewers

  • Don’t complain about the process

  • Don’t try to reverse the decision

If you have feedback about the process or the interviewers, I do want to have it so we always encourage people to tell us where we could do better. And we do send a feedback form as well, which I do read. Every single one of those forms!

Conclusion

Doing these feedback calls can be tiring and also burn a lot of time of a hiring manager, even if only 15 minutes per candidate. I think that time is worth spending.

Basically, what goes around comes around. If I have the power to make something that sucks, suck less, why wouldn’t I?

And from a purely egotistical point of view…​

There are people I know I can hire in a different company.

There are people I have high confidence can improve on a few areas over the course of 6-9 months and then have another chat and potentially hire them.

I’m rooting for all of them.

P.S: I’m hiring: incident.io careers.

1. If you ask most leaders building incredible companies, they’ll tell you hiring is the most important aspect of anyone’s role. I’m certainly in that camp. There is nothing more important than being able to pick whoever is going to work next to you. What most leaders don’t realise is that their process usually ends with a generic reply to candidates. These candidates don’t deserve that, when they have spent upwards of 10 hours (or more, especially if you include preparation) of their life in the process.
~ fin ~
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