I recently contacted Jason Alba at JibberJobber asking him if he could put out the word to his (awesome) readership asking folks for their opinions as it relates to feedback from interviews. This is a topic that I think really deserves some spotlight as so many managers are confused as to best practice and/or what is appropriate.
I often get asked “What could I have done better?” or “Why wasn’t I chosen?” after turning down applicants. Heck, I’ve often wondered that myself if I didn’t end up getting chosen in an interview!. In today’s uber-vigilant HR world, where every action has to be guarded and closely monitored in order to avoid getting sued for discrimination or wrongful hiring practices, have we become so paranoid that we cannot help guide candidates along at all?
The general policy when folks ask for references is “Provide employment dates and confirm employment. Period.” While I fully understand corporations taking this stance and I realize that one cannot have hiring managers telling candidates “you should cut your hair, you look too nuts” to the right or left, I do feel that a manager could practice their best judgment and at least provide some high level comments on why they chose one competitor over another.
For instance, I would have loved to be able to tell a recent candidate that he/she had excellent skills in theory, yet had no actual real life examples or case studies to point to (where they had applied said theories). Unfortunately, I couldn’t. I’m sure it would have helped the candidate tremendously to dig deep and see where some of his or her ideas truly had been put into practice, if nothing else for future interviews where the candidate surely would be asked the same question.
One of my favorite personal comments was following an interview I had as a candidate many years ago; I was six months pregnant at the time. A day or two after the interview I received a thank you card in the mail with a business card attached. The note read: “Call us back in six months after your maternity leave ends. We will be interested”.
No, I didn’t sue but I did marvel at the sheer ignorance of the sender. Perhaps it isn’t such a good idea to have hiring managers practice best judgment after all? Are we too paranoid?
1 comment:
I have a little leeway as a recruiter, but I've always put the coaching in terms of "appearance" or "feel", as in, "The team didn't feel that you had the hands-on experience to do the job" or, "It didn't appear to the Hiring Manager that you had the specific technical skills that he was looking for".
This way, it takes away from the full-frontal assault of, "You have no skills." It is just an impression that was left with the hiring manager / team that *could* be wrong, but it's what they heard/saw/felt at the interview.
Hence, there's less direct conflict, less risk of lawsuit, and at least something that the candidate could work on.
On the other hand, I don't know how a candidate would deal with, "The team felt that you were about 6 months too pregnant..."
Dan
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