On my team, I inherited an interview process with 7 steps. It's a long one for sure, and it's not a process I can change. But as a hiring manager I mitigate issues brought up in this article by doing a few really easy things:
1. On my first chat with a candidate, I layout the entire interview process. I acknowledge that it is long and I preemptively thank them for going through the process and say that we value their time. I make sure our recruiters can reiterate the process as clearly as I can.
2. I let the candidate know that at any time if they want to pull out, that is a-ok, and that they are welcome to apply again in the future in good standing. I also tell them that during our coding assignment, we really mean it when we say it's ok to ask for more time, and that we don't judge them negatively.
3. I tell the candidate that if at any point we decide to decline, that I will send them a written letter of feedback so as to make the process worth their time. This isn't always easy, but it's always been appreciated. Sometimes it is hard to write these letters, how do you tell someone multiple interviewers didn't like them? I do it by pressing our interviewers to state clearly what didn't come across well, and then I relay those things to the candidate. Sometimes even still the letters probably aren't super satisfying to the declined candidates, but I do my best and hope everyone realizes that job hunting in general is rarely satisfying.
Basically, transparency, honesty and specifically thanking them have gone a long way for me. I fully understand that an underfunded/understaffed startup might balk at the feedback part, especially when lawyers can get involved. But offering up items #1 and #2 to candidates should just be table stakes of your hiring process.
I liked that. I was a manager for 25 years. I think I did OK with my decisions (for the most part).
One thing that I noticed at my company:
When I first got hired (in 1990), it was made clear that I was a desired and valued employee. They were a very picky company, and might well have rejected me, but I felt respected and valued, from my first interview (I was flown out to the West Coast, and interviewed by two managers at a trade show).
As the years have gone by, I noticed that our HR department started to have a very different posture. They had to be the ones in charge. Applicants were supplicants. The company was doing them a favor, by considering them for this position.
Also, the HR department started to project this attitude to current employees, to a visibly increasing degree, over the 27 years that I was at that company. By the time I left, the HR posture was that employees were little more than serfs. There was no illusion that employment was a two-way relationship. They started to impose some really draconian policies on employees, with "termination of employment" as the only choice, if the new policy was not acceptable. No negotiations.
I think that this is an attitude that has become a standard in HR, these days, and that part of the reason for this interview process, is to filter for people that won't talk back to HR, and are willing to abase themselves for the company.
I like your approach and I think it really makes the process much better. However, this one thing stands out to me:
> I acknowledge that it is long [...] and say that we value their time.
I dislike this communication style. Maybe it's a cultural difference. I've heard several times from an American speaker that they "value my time/comfort/satisfaction". At the same time their act clearly showed that they valued something else much more.
For me, your sentence would sound much more personal if you just omitted this last part and kept only the explanation.
I'll keep that in mind. My original comment didn't quite clarify, but when I say those things I make an effort to not come across as insincere or like I'm reading a canned statement. Also, I try and clearly say what I value-- which is both of us learning more about each other and figuring out if them joining us is a good fit. And I encourage them to assess if we're a good fit for them too. I often talk to candidates before making an offer about the trade-offs of taking our role over roles at differently-sized companies.
Nice, I like the way you think about it. And take my comment with a grain of salt, please. It's impossible to judge the full context over an internet discussion with a stranger. :-)
Just a rejection letter is something, and in a reasonable amount of time. Many times I would just hear nothing. No response at all. Just a simple 'no thank you' is better than what many get from most companies. It is amazing how many companies do not do this one thing. They just leave people hanging. I had one dude who thought to finally send a 'no' letter. It was 2 years later. That should have been closed out ages ago.
Thank you for doing that sort of thing. It really helps.
I'd really appreciate a letter with feedback after a lengthy interviewing process, I think that's really valuable.
However, I don't think I'd value it after more than 3 interviews. Candidates are applying after work hours and there's a time / energy limit to how many processes they can take at a time. After a given point, you're wasting not hours but possibly months of their life.
That's a fair concern. We really try and avoid advancing anyone when we suspect might be rejected in the middle or end of our process. It has only happened once since I've been here. Again though, I have to lean back on that everyone should be aware that job hunting isn't an ideal process. Occasionally someone can really ace one part of an interview and really not be a fit in a different part. It's unfortunate when it happens, and that's when I lean on my principles of offering constructive feedback.
I didn't really realise it until I was on the other end, but if you don't get any feedback you can totally ask for it and there's a decent chance you'll get some.
But I agree, it's usually pretty obvious if you just weren't good enough, or you had a bad day, or they just didn't like you for some random reason.
Any response is better than nothing and it is sad that is the line to be above. But I know I appreciate letters actually explaining why I was declined, if they are informative it can actually be helpful for me to improve.
Especially if there is an assignment with the interviews I really think that feedback should be required. I spent about a week on an assignment like this with 3 interviews and just got back a "nope, sorry". And it wasn't even from anyone I had interviewed with, just the original recruiter.
1. On my first chat with a candidate, I layout the entire interview process. I acknowledge that it is long and I preemptively thank them for going through the process and say that we value their time. I make sure our recruiters can reiterate the process as clearly as I can.
2. I let the candidate know that at any time if they want to pull out, that is a-ok, and that they are welcome to apply again in the future in good standing. I also tell them that during our coding assignment, we really mean it when we say it's ok to ask for more time, and that we don't judge them negatively.
3. I tell the candidate that if at any point we decide to decline, that I will send them a written letter of feedback so as to make the process worth their time. This isn't always easy, but it's always been appreciated. Sometimes it is hard to write these letters, how do you tell someone multiple interviewers didn't like them? I do it by pressing our interviewers to state clearly what didn't come across well, and then I relay those things to the candidate. Sometimes even still the letters probably aren't super satisfying to the declined candidates, but I do my best and hope everyone realizes that job hunting in general is rarely satisfying.
Basically, transparency, honesty and specifically thanking them have gone a long way for me. I fully understand that an underfunded/understaffed startup might balk at the feedback part, especially when lawyers can get involved. But offering up items #1 and #2 to candidates should just be table stakes of your hiring process.