Source
r/jobs•
HZ9517

How do you reason about not being given any feedback at all as to why a company doesn’t want to move forward with you?

Post-interview

FYI, this can also be answered by people who interview candidates and are involved in the hiring process.

Let me provide some context! I’m a software engineer that’s been in the field for somewhere around 3-5 years. Recently I’ve been looking around for a different challenge and I’ve been in contact with different companies.

So far, I’ve had live coding interviews with a few companies. In the interviews, I’ve felt good once the interview has ended and I’ve even gotten positive comments from the interviewer. However, each time I’ve gotten an email the next day letting me know that the company will not be moving forward with me.

Now, I have no issues with rejection. I embrace it even. The bizarre part for me is that when I ask for any kind of feedback so that I can learn where I went wrong and improve, neither company has replied at all. Furthermore their initial email has given me no indication whatsoever where I fell short. Not having any takeaway at all is what drives me crazy.

I’m a programmer, so I’ve been operating under the “there’s a problem, find a solution” methodology. But with situations like these, I feel completely lost because I don’t know the problem. What am I supposed to improve? What problem am I supposed to solve?

Let me also just mention that these aren’t huge companies that I’m applying to. So it’s not like there’s hundreds and thousands of people applying for these spots. I do not understand - wouldn’t the company want to inform me of where I went wrong so that I can improve upon these areas and maybe even reapply in the future with the skill set they require? I also want to mention that I’m not bombing these coding challenges, I’m able to solve them, talk about improvements/performance improvements and come to a decent conclusion collectively.

So I guess my question is, and this can also be the TLDR, has anyone been able to figure out why they failed an interview where they thought they did well? Has anyone else experienced absolutely no feedback from a company with whom you felt the interview went okay? How do you come out with any takeaways from that? Or is this just how the world operates, where you just have to suck it up and move on, or figure out yourself where you went wrong (which runs the risk of you coming out with a completely incorrect takeaway)? 🤷‍♂️

Even a one liner just mentioning the general area where you fell short would do wonders for the world imo

Posted Aug 24, 2022, 10:51 AM UTC

17
-MACHO-MAN-•

You just move on. Virtually no places do and the ones that do give watered down safe stuff to say.

I try to think about it objectively for a short time and that’s it.

2
HZ9517OP•

That’s the difficult part for me - the ability to move on no mull over what you did wrong. Maybe with more failed interviews I can get to a point where it’s second nature for me to not obsess over what I may have done wrong.

1
AutoModeratorMOD•

Hello, thank you for posting to r/Jobs!

We just wanted to let you know that we have a new discord server, come join the chat!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1
haydevrz•

1- Sometimes if they don't think you could be a good fit for the team in terms of personality it's very difficult to say you have the right skills but they don't see themselves working with you 2- Several times when I've I'm given feedback candidates reply saying they don't agree and they still think they should get hired and say the process was stupid and does not objectively evaluate their potential 3- Depending on the country or state you are in, companies don't want to risk getting sued for discrimination if the wording they use in the rejection gets misinterpreted or they proceed in bad faith. Having said that, email the recruiter or even the interviewer saying you'd appreciate the feedback to improve an potentially apply again in the future once you are ready and have filled the current gaps, offer a videocall if it's better than an email for them so there is nothing in writing, Maybe with this approach works better.

1
HZ9517OP•

Thank you. This was very helpful and gave me really good insight into other factors that play into this.

It’s a ruthless system but ultimately such is the system.

1
mickeyflinn•

First and foremost I think you are giving the hiring officials more credit than they deserve. I have worked with morons at every level of my professional life.

What makes you think that these hiring officials made the right decision by not taking you?

Why do you think the hiring official has any clue what they are doing?

To give the hiring officials some credit. Outside of very mature career fields that have very well defined licensure requirements, hiring people is more art than science. To continue with that analogy, what one hiring official sees as quality art another probably won't.

Sooo.

How do you reason about not being given any feedback

I think you mean, how do I accept it.

I accept not getting feedback, mostly because I don't see much value in the feedback a given hiring official will provide. Also I have been a hiring official and a number of times I had to pick between a number of well qualified candidates. In those cases one person got picked and the others didn't. If asked I could have provided some elaborate reason why, but it would have been bullshit.

1
HZ9517OP•

Thank you for this insight. It has given me some peace in trying to move on.

I’m still trying to learn the art of accepting a rejection without any feedback but I hope to get better at it as I go. One of the problems is that i invested so much into preparing for these interviews along with carrying the load of my current job, and then to have good interviews (in my opinion) but get rejected without any feedback has been a sucker punch

1