There are serious legal risks to giving feedback of any kind, let alone feedback that is neither âconstructiveâ nor âeasy to understandâ. I found this book on U.S. employment law to be an accessible introduction to legal restrictions around hiring with good citations (though it is written in an alarmist, of-the-moment tone).
We might hope that candidates with an EA mindset wouldnât sue after getting feedback, but not all candidates will have strong EA ties, and even people with strong EA ties sometimes do surprising things.
Other difficulties with feedback include:
Making it harder to implement work tests in the future (Open Phil tells me I didnât do X on their test, so I do it next time and tell my friends to do it next time and everyoneâs natural ability is now a bit murkier)
Creating arguments with disgruntled candidates (âthatâs not enough justification for not hiring me, Iâm going to send you nasty emails nowâ; âyou told me I didnât have X, but I actually do and accidentally left it out of my resume, youâd better hire me nowâ)
Creating a sense of bias/âfavoritism (person A is a really strong candidate on the cusp of getting hired and gets detailed feedback; person B is a really weak candidate and would be much less useful to provide with feedback; person B hears that person A got feedback and is angry)
Personally, I love feedback, and I appreciate Ben West of Ought for giving the best feedback of any org I applied to in my last round of job-hunting, but I can understand why organizations often donât give out very much.
There are serious legal risks to giving feedback of any kind, let alone feedback that is neither âconstructiveâ nor âeasy to understandâ. I found this book on U.S. employment law to be an accessible introduction to legal restrictions around hiring with good citations (though it is written in an alarmist, of-the-moment tone).
We might hope that candidates with an EA mindset wouldnât sue after getting feedback, but not all candidates will have strong EA ties, and even people with strong EA ties sometimes do surprising things.
Other difficulties with feedback include:
Making it harder to implement work tests in the future (Open Phil tells me I didnât do X on their test, so I do it next time and tell my friends to do it next time and everyoneâs natural ability is now a bit murkier)
Creating arguments with disgruntled candidates (âthatâs not enough justification for not hiring me, Iâm going to send you nasty emails nowâ; âyou told me I didnât have X, but I actually do and accidentally left it out of my resume, youâd better hire me nowâ)
Creating a sense of bias/âfavoritism (person A is a really strong candidate on the cusp of getting hired and gets detailed feedback; person B is a really weak candidate and would be much less useful to provide with feedback; person B hears that person A got feedback and is angry)
Personally, I love feedback, and I appreciate Ben West of Ought for giving the best feedback of any org I applied to in my last round of job-hunting, but I can understand why organizations often donât give out very much.
+1 to Ought giving great job-search feedback.