I think feedback on job applications is far too rare given its value, for reasons others have stated and the additional reason “everyone I’ve ever talked to about this has complained about how hard it is to get feedback”.
Here’s how I handled feedback for the one hiring process I’ve run at CEA:
Anyone I rejected in the first round got an offer from me to provide feedback on their application. Looking back, I see that I didn’t make this offer to second-round candidates; this seems really dumb, and I’m not sure why I didn’t, though I think I did share some verbal feedback when I interviewed those candidates.
When someone asked for feedback, I generally wrote a paragraph or two, very quickly, sometimes copying and pasting from other feedback emails (in cases where multiple people made the same mistake).
Because I was mostly providing feedback on a standardized work test, that part was very quick (though giving people advice on how to copyedit better probably wasn’t very valuable). My other feedback concerned unclear descriptions of their experience or confusing resumes — this seems more valuable.
People were very grateful for even this basic feedback. It helped that one of my most common notes was “this was above-average for all applications, but not in the top 10%, and I only took the top 10% for the second round”. This let me give people some amount of confidence/comfort while still being honest about the high standards for the position.
General lessons:
It seems much easier to give feedback when you have a standardized task to comment on.
Having “opt-in” feedback seems ideal; people who ask for it will value it more, and most people won’t ask (maybe 15% of the people who got my offer followed up to ask).
As an additional data point, I got very detailed feedback when I applied for a position at Ought in 2018: “You did X, which was good, but the best candidates did X and also Y, which was clearly better”. This was a good learning experience and left me feeling very positive about the organization.
This exactly chimes with my experience. I’ve been hiring for 10 years now, and the range in application volume has been 10-200 for a position.
In particular, I’ve been using an opt-in for feedback for years and my experience has also been that this is requested by a very low volume of people (I’d actually guess at 5% for early rejections, rising to 75% if they did an interview, at which point most people seem to want feedback).
For what it’s worth, I think this is a moral issue as well—we have a duty to the community to try to give useful feedback when we can; and to treat people with kindness.
I try to take it in good faith when people say “I’m too busy to give feedback” but I feel that this is often not literally true; and in the rare cases where it is (maybe someone running one of the big ‘legacy’ EA organisations and getting hundreds of applicants per position), the solutions in other comments are viable.
I think feedback on job applications is far too rare given its value, for reasons others have stated and the additional reason “everyone I’ve ever talked to about this has complained about how hard it is to get feedback”.
Here’s how I handled feedback for the one hiring process I’ve run at CEA:
Anyone I rejected in the first round got an offer from me to provide feedback on their application. Looking back, I see that I didn’t make this offer to second-round candidates; this seems really dumb, and I’m not sure why I didn’t, though I think I did share some verbal feedback when I interviewed those candidates.
When someone asked for feedback, I generally wrote a paragraph or two, very quickly, sometimes copying and pasting from other feedback emails (in cases where multiple people made the same mistake).
Because I was mostly providing feedback on a standardized work test, that part was very quick (though giving people advice on how to copyedit better probably wasn’t very valuable). My other feedback concerned unclear descriptions of their experience or confusing resumes — this seems more valuable.
People were very grateful for even this basic feedback. It helped that one of my most common notes was “this was above-average for all applications, but not in the top 10%, and I only took the top 10% for the second round”. This let me give people some amount of confidence/comfort while still being honest about the high standards for the position.
General lessons:
It seems much easier to give feedback when you have a standardized task to comment on.
Having “opt-in” feedback seems ideal; people who ask for it will value it more, and most people won’t ask (maybe 15% of the people who got my offer followed up to ask).
As an additional data point, I got very detailed feedback when I applied for a position at Ought in 2018: “You did X, which was good, but the best candidates did X and also Y, which was clearly better”. This was a good learning experience and left me feeling very positive about the organization.
This exactly chimes with my experience. I’ve been hiring for 10 years now, and the range in application volume has been 10-200 for a position.
In particular, I’ve been using an opt-in for feedback for years and my experience has also been that this is requested by a very low volume of people (I’d actually guess at 5% for early rejections, rising to 75% if they did an interview, at which point most people seem to want feedback).
For what it’s worth, I think this is a moral issue as well—we have a duty to the community to try to give useful feedback when we can; and to treat people with kindness.
I try to take it in good faith when people say “I’m too busy to give feedback” but I feel that this is often not literally true; and in the rare cases where it is (maybe someone running one of the big ‘legacy’ EA organisations and getting hundreds of applicants per position), the solutions in other comments are viable.