With the proposed solution of giving people feedback—I’ve historically proposed this on various occasions, and from what I have heard, one reason for not giving feedback on the side of organizations is something like “feedback opens up space for complaints, drama on social media, or even litigation”. The problem looks very different from the side of the org: when evaluating hundreds of applications, it is basically certain some errors are made, some credentials misunderstood, experiences not counted as they should, etc. - but even if the error rate is low, some people will rightfully complain, making hiring processes even more costly. Other question is, what is the likelihood of someone from the hundreds of applicants you don’t know doing something bad with the feedback—ranging from “taking it too seriously” to “suing the org for discrimination”. (Where the problem is more likely to come from the non-EA applicants).
I’m not saying this is the right solution, but it seems like a reasonable consideration.
One practical workaround: if you really want feedback, and ideally know someone in the org, what sometimes works is asking informally +signaling you won’t have do anything very unreasonable with the feedback.
My vague understanding is that there’s likely no legal issues with giving feedback as long as it’s impartial. It’s instead one of those things where lawyers reasonably advise against doing anything not required since literally anything you do exposes you to risk. Of course you could give feedback that would obviously land you in trouble, e.g. “we didn’t hire you because you’re [ethnicity]/[gender]/[physical attribute]”, but I think most people are smart enough to give feedback of the form “we didn’t hire you because legible reason X”.
And it’s quickly becoming legally the case that you can request not just feedback but all notes people took about you during the hiring process! Many companies use digital systems to keep notes on candidates, and the data in those systems is covered by GDPR, so candidates can make requests for data potential employers have about them in those systems (or so is my understanding; see for example this article for corroboration). Doesn’t apply in the US, but does in the UK and EU.
There are a bunch of illegible factors involved in hiring the right person, though. If the reason for rejection is something like “we think you’d be a bad culture fit,” then it seems legally risky to be honest.
True, but what you can do is have explicit values that you publicize and then ask candidates questions that assess how much they support/embody those values. Then you can reasonably say “rejected candidate because they didn’t demonstrate value X” and have notes to back it up, or say “rejected because demonstrated ~X”. This is harder feedback for candidates to hear, especially if X is something positive that everyone thinks they are like “hard working”, but at the same time it should be made clear this isn’t about what’s true about the candidate, but what could be determined from their interview performance.
Yeah, this seems a hard problem to do well and safely from an organizational standpoint. I’m very sympathetic to the idea that it is an onerous cost on the organization’s side; what I’m uncertain about is whether it ends up being more beneficial to the community on net.
I mostly agree with the problem statement.
With the proposed solution of giving people feedback—I’ve historically proposed this on various occasions, and from what I have heard, one reason for not giving feedback on the side of organizations is something like “feedback opens up space for complaints, drama on social media, or even litigation”. The problem looks very different from the side of the org: when evaluating hundreds of applications, it is basically certain some errors are made, some credentials misunderstood, experiences not counted as they should, etc. - but even if the error rate is low, some people will rightfully complain, making hiring processes even more costly. Other question is, what is the likelihood of someone from the hundreds of applicants you don’t know doing something bad with the feedback—ranging from “taking it too seriously” to “suing the org for discrimination”. (Where the problem is more likely to come from the non-EA applicants).
I’m not saying this is the right solution, but it seems like a reasonable consideration.
One practical workaround: if you really want feedback, and ideally know someone in the org, what sometimes works is asking informally +signaling you won’t have do anything very unreasonable with the feedback.
My vague understanding is that there’s likely no legal issues with giving feedback as long as it’s impartial. It’s instead one of those things where lawyers reasonably advise against doing anything not required since literally anything you do exposes you to risk. Of course you could give feedback that would obviously land you in trouble, e.g. “we didn’t hire you because you’re [ethnicity]/[gender]/[physical attribute]”, but I think most people are smart enough to give feedback of the form “we didn’t hire you because legible reason X”.
And it’s quickly becoming legally the case that you can request not just feedback but all notes people took about you during the hiring process! Many companies use digital systems to keep notes on candidates, and the data in those systems is covered by GDPR, so candidates can make requests for data potential employers have about them in those systems (or so is my understanding; see for example this article for corroboration). Doesn’t apply in the US, but does in the UK and EU.
There are a bunch of illegible factors involved in hiring the right person, though. If the reason for rejection is something like “we think you’d be a bad culture fit,” then it seems legally risky to be honest.
True, but what you can do is have explicit values that you publicize and then ask candidates questions that assess how much they support/embody those values. Then you can reasonably say “rejected candidate because they didn’t demonstrate value X” and have notes to back it up, or say “rejected because demonstrated ~X”. This is harder feedback for candidates to hear, especially if X is something positive that everyone thinks they are like “hard working”, but at the same time it should be made clear this isn’t about what’s true about the candidate, but what could be determined from their interview performance.
Yeah, this seems a hard problem to do well and safely from an organizational standpoint. I’m very sympathetic to the idea that it is an onerous cost on the organization’s side; what I’m uncertain about is whether it ends up being more beneficial to the community on net.