Why Recruiters Won’t Give You Feedback After Interviewing. How to Get Feedback. MUst REad!
Chris G. Laughter
VP Client Services at First Sun Consulting, LLC- Outplacement Services
Much has been?written ?about the parlous state of the post-pandemic job market, with (righteous) anger being directed at recruiters who are ghosting candidates in the middle of interview loops. The unfortunate truth is that recruiting teams were disproportionally impacted by the pandemic, and post-pandemic, layoff cycles. Meta alone went from having more than 9,000 recruiters to fewer than 1,000, and while that’s an extreme example, it’s a barometer of the profession as a whole. There are far fewer recruiters currently in-seat, and those that are gainfully employed are drowning.
The current discourse around candidate experience (or lack thereof) points to an uncomfortable underlying truth. Even at the best of times with fully staffed, and highly trained, recruiting teams, in the majority of cases (in the U.S. at least) you can expect an?outcome?from your interview loops, but not much more than that. That’s because in risk-averse corporate America, we’re not allowed to give you substantive feedback.
The net result of this risk-aversion are generic boilerplate feedback statements: “there were other candidates that more closely matched our requirements” that recruiters are required to deliver ad nauseam. I recognize that these are almost as infuriating to receive as they are for the recruiter to have to deliver.
Although it is disappointing not to receive actionable feedback after an interview loop, it’s better for your sanity to assume you’re not going to get any, and then be pleasantly surprised if you do. It is even better to accept that whether you receive any feedback or not, it doesn’t really make any difference.
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Our Friends In Compliance and Legal
Broadly speaking, most Fortune 500 recruiting teams have strict guidelines around what they can and cannot share with external candidates. Depending on the level of risk-aversion at the company, that embargo can also apply to internal candidates (yes, even employees). Put bluntly these policies originate with compliance and/or legal teams that decide there is too much risk involved, and that the trade-off for a better candidate experience is not worth the risk it poses. So although recruiters often want to give you feedback, there are usually strict guardrails in place preventing them from doing so.
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Context Is Everything
Even if recruiters (or hiring managers)?were?able to give feedback, the only thing they’d be giving feedback on is their assessment of your fit for a specific position, at a specific company, at a specific point in time, amongst a particular competitive set. Put another way, if a hiring manager at Alpha Company decides you’re not right for a Product Manager vacancy, it doesn’t mean that a hiring manager at Beta company will come to the same conclusion.
It is also perfectly possible to go through the same interview process, at the same company, multiple times and get different outcomes. That’s because even when companies control for subjectivity and have well-structured processes, the competitive set you’re up against is the variable factor. There are countless case studies on LinkedIn and Reddit of folks getting hired into their “dream” company on their fourth or fifth attempt.
At worst interviews are unstructured and highly subjective, and at their best they’re anchored to performance norms (competencies) that are specific to an organization. Passing an interview at AppleAAPL ?-0.3% ?does not mean you’ll automatically pass an interview at GoogleGOOG ?+0.5% .
High-quality feedback is critically important to career development, but that is not the same thing as getting feedback from an interview loop. The person interviewing you will be spending an average of 45 minutes with you, and even if the company uses robust interviewing tools, the interviewer may not have been trained on how to use them. All of this to say they are not in a position to provide you with anything substantive or actionable, no matter how much you might want them to.
How Can I Get Good Feedback?
Considering the source is crucial: Has the person giving you feedback spent sufficient time observing your work to be able to offer an objective assessment? Equally important, does the person giving you feedback consistently demonstrate the types of leadership traits you want to emulate? If they’re not the type of leader you’d like to be, there’s no need to internalize anything they offer up.
Lastly, don’t overlook the fact that actionable feedback can come from anyone that works closely with you, including peers and subordinates. Feedback from someone senior to you in the organization doesn’t make it any more valuable in the long term.
The surest way to get feedback is of course simply to ask for it, just remember to manage your expectations around who is in a position to comply with your request.
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Forbes.com | December 13, 2023 | James Hudson