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Comment by justboxing | Hacker News Reader

> Interview feedback - Give interview feedback to your interviewer and get feedback back.

I'd be very surprised (and impressed) if any interviewer gives honest feedback on the interview, in writing (via the app), esp. in cases where candidate was rejected / didn't receive an offer.

Cos that would have a discrimination lawsuit written all over it. HR and/or Recruiters also never gives candid feedback for the same reason. Because if they do, someone will eventually sue the company for discrimination.

Ex: The most common cookie cutter response for rejection based on ageism is "We really loved you, but unfortunate there wasn't a cultural fit."

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I got clear feedback from Google, Box, and Clearbit about what they didn’t like about the on-sites in my last job search 2 months ago.

At google I did bad in one of the technical questions (they told me which), box said I didn’t seem excited about the company (true), and Clearbit said I wasn’t able to implement a simple solution to a complex problem (because I was forced to use ruby and was rusty).

That’s very suprising to me; I have given interviews at Google and Apple and they really drilled into my head that giving any feedback about performance was left to the recruiter, and any response no matter how germane it sounded could open up the company to lawsuits. That kind of answer was exactly what we were told we could not give.

I think when companies give feedback it is a recruiter or HR person doing it, and they are more aware of what could be lawsuit bait. I think companies want to avoid having engineers give the feedback, but are ok having HR do it.

When I interviewed at Clearbit I got more or less the same response for probably more or less the same reason.

The only thing I didn’t like about it is that the requirements never said they were looking for ‘simple solution’.

Ah well.

I'm seeing more companies do this, actually. For example Dropbox gave me very specific and helpful rejection feedback. I'm sure they have guidelines in place to make sure they don't invite lawsuit. It was all strictly about my performance on specific questions. Also they tend to do it over the phone, again I assume to reduce chance of lawsuits.

Several years ago I was on a job hunting expedition. I went through 10-15 interviews, both on-site and over the phone, and almost no one would tell me what I did "wrong". The most I ever got was something along the lines of "culture fit".

It was extremely frustrating to me as a candidate. How do you get better at something if know one helps you? Did I have lettuce in my teeth? Was I wet because it was raining and I forgot my umbrella? Am I truly a terrible programmer? Why did you reject my application!?

Only takes one physical threat from a rejected candidate with a bruised ego to never want to provide people with feedback again. The returns are just not there.

Seriously, there's zero upside for them providing feedback. Just potential liability. I don't understand why this got so many upvotes...

You would take it personally? I would just call the cops on the reject then move on with my life.

I think this is a very American perspective. This isn't a major concern in many parts of the world.

We use https://interviewing.io/ a lot, and there is ample opportunity to provide both structured and unstructured feedback from the candidate to the interviewer, and from the interviewer to the candidate. This seems like a better model than recruiters filtering the information.

>Cos that would have a discrimination lawsuit written all over it. HR and/or Recruiters also never gives candid feedback for the same reason. Because if they do, someone will eventually sue the company for discrimination.

Out of curiosity, is it just one of those inevitabilities or is it really easy to get in a bind with discrimination in rejecting (or firing I'd imagine) someone?

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