Startups: stop using generic form letters when you tell a candidate 'no'
brandonb.cc
brandonb.cc
* 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.
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! 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!
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.
"Thanks for letting me know; sorry to hear we won't be working together at this time.
"If you have any suggestions to give for additions to my skills and portfolio that might make for a more competitive application at some point in the future, I'd love to hear them!"
Would you take the time to give any hints then?
I occasionally send a note to this effect when I miss out on a job that I wanted enough I'd love to be able to reapply later for a similar position.
But I've received a reply precisely once.
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.
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.
For example, my reactions to:
'Unfortunately this is our interview process and we have to abide by it'?
That's not misfortune, that's you dodging what responsibility's rightfully yours. You're a startup, you could not abide by it if you wanted to.
'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.'
Don't quite clear the bar? You're potentially making an absolute measure of someone's ability there as not good enough. They may very well have good skills in some areas not relevant to you, or just interview poorly - or you might be a cruddy interviewer. Stay away from making absolute statements about people as unified individuals. We can accept, sometimes, some unlovely facts about ourselves - it's difficult to accept that as an entire person we're not good enough.
#
I suppose I might write a similar letter as something like -
-----------------------
Dear X
Thank you for spending the time to interview with us on DAY. On this occasion there was a more qualified candidate. However, if you further developed X Y Z, your skills would be a better fit for the hiring profile.
If you'd like to be kept aware of our vacancies in the future please sign up for our hiring list ....
Yours sincerely,
Ms First-name Second-name
-----------------------
Again though, you probably feel differently about a lot of that than I would.
Telling someone their faults can be either a nice thing to do or a nasty thing to do, but it's difficult to do it either way without the risk of hurting someone.
Some of that's in how you phrase it - 'you fail here' is generally worse than 'you could do better here.' Cloaking it in apologies, even when they're true, rarely goes well though IME. Someone who's just been hurt is rarely going to care that much that you're sorry unless they care a lot about you. (Might give them a target though if you're admitting fault.) They're gonna be caring about themselves, that's where their attention's just been directed after all. So, talk about that if you want to be nice. What's in it for them? How can you make them feel better about the whole thing?
Tricky to know how to do that without knowing the person fairly well.
Generally, I wouldn't give feedback unless asked for it. It feels too presumptuous on such a fragile relationship.
With a letter like that you've just burned that bridge.
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 also think the generic approach is best; in my experience also, giving specifics can open up a can of worms.
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.)
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?
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 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
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.
Let's blame email system (spam).
I don't mean this as any disrespect to you, and companies should make efforts to make applicants feel comfortable and valued, but you are probably making more of a point for not sending specific feedback by your reaction. The sour grapes stuff is probably the most common reaction to the problem, and detailed or generic rejections can have that same negative result.
I did send n email back and asked to clarify the "you had an interview with us" part nicely.
Let's not kid ourselves that there is not a hierarchy of importance. It's based on merit and contribution (or potential contribution in the case of an applicant), and it's a bit naive to think that applicants for internships will always be given the same level of respect as experienced professionals.
When I post jobs, I try to reply to all moderately qualified applicants. And sometimes I'll get an applicant with no industry experience or education who applies to a senior dev spot. Should I spend the time to write a detailed reply to someone who is entirely unqualified and clearly just sent their résumé indiscriminately to my ads (sometimes more than once)? I don't feel obliged to respond to people that are clearly wasting everyone's time.
This is not the case here, and in a perfect world every applicant is flown in, wined and dined, and given a full battery of interviews - but that isn't realistic. Somewhere between an automated response and the wine and dine is the appropriate response. A respectful rejection for two candidates is a small investment, but for thousands it may be unfair to expect.
If you want an example of this, send a wedding invitation to the president. You'll get a reply saying he can't attend and wishes you the best, and it's signed (not by his hand). I'm sure he'd love to give every American the decency of a handwritten and personalized response ("Sorry, in London that day"), but for an American citizen to expect that reply is not realistic.
I will agree that in reality senior folks are generally more valuable than interns are. Experience for one is something most interns usually don't have.
But let me clarify one thing: interns are not all undergraduates fresh out of high school. A lot of interns are in master or PhD program and some have a fair amount of technical experience before returning back to school. We keep hearing how awesome some interns are from time to time, so there are superstar interns. It's unfair to say interns are less important. In what sense is a senior person more important or useful than an intern?
Technically? Maybe. You can have a stubborn 15 years coder who believes in some obsolete way of coding and writing protocol and there is a great intern who can deliver the project on time and build a viral, interesting side project during internship. Who is more capable? Who is more useful in the long run? You can spend 10 years at a local firm writing the most horrible Java code and pass interviews at RedHat and becomes a senior engineer. That's possible. Now comes a 20 years old college junior with a pretty resume and he or she passes the same interview.
I suppose no company out there makes a big distinction between senior hire and junior hire unless the position is special or the applicant is an internal referral. For big companies like redhat, the fact above means most applicants, regardless of their years of experience, applications will sit in the queue for few weeks or few months.
Go to glassdoor and read how many 10+ years people complain about sitting in a job queue for weeks. So in general, senior people isn't all that special from a recruiter point of views.
Also, from a company's point of view, an intern could in fact work on a secret project (think Google glass?) and they will work with senior people with super high security clearance. So they are equally important. You can be short of one intern and delay delivery by two weeks.
The thought of "I have 10 years knowledge in this domain so I am more important" will fail because tomorrow another senior hire will have 20 years in your domain and you are now a rookie to him. Your idea will be crushed and thrown away even though they are useful and actually really useful and profitable. If seniority overruns a team, that's a red flag. It is a sign of a plague. It is a sign of destruction.
In some way we have to appreciate interns. They are there only for 12 weeks but most of them are self-motivated and they will get work done in their free time. If you think about interns, they are probably the most passionate people you will find around your office for 12 weeks or so. Your senior folks come and go. Interns leave because they have to leave. So interns could be seen a contractor hired for 12 weeks or so. They are full time during those twelves weeks, carrying same mission as you senior folks do. They are just as important as you. Most of them can deliver the product as a team with you, and you don't have to solve every problem. They deserve the same respect as you senior folks do too.
Are interns important? Sure, they can contribute. Are intern 'applicants' important to Red Hat as a company?
I'm not condoning the sending of generic rejections. But again, if you expect your rejection as an internship applicant to be the same as the person who interviewed for the CTO position, it's a naive thought. I'm not saying it's correct or just, but it is naive.
There would be hundreds or thousands of applicants for internships, and in a perfect world the HR of a company will spend 1 hour reading each résumé, speaking to every candidate, and then writing a very personalized and sympathetic letter to each rejected candidate.
You are comparing the importance of interns with employees. The discussion, as it started, was about rejected intern applicants. We got way off track here.
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.
(This would still leave them with the option to sue based on how they were treated in general during the interview.)
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.
[1] Yes, you could say that I enjoy finding interesting-looking companies and send them my CV even if they are not actively looking for someone.
I disagree that said feedback is provided during a rejection letter.
I suggest to you as a candidate, to ask for feedback when they ask you if you have any questions for them... At that point, they can say you did well in this area, not so hot in another, etc. But its up to you to ask.
I, however, reply with a more personal tone.
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.
What do you tell them that is constructive and not legally risky?
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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".
If they pick their hires randomly like that then you don't want to work with such a team, do you?
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.