I think giving feedback to rejected applicants is very useful psychologically, but is very hard to do well. Not only would it be time consuming but the key issue for me is that, at least in the United States, organizations take on considerable legal risk when explaining to applicants why they were rejected. (For example, the statement “we were looking for someone with more energy” has initiated an age discrimination suit in the US.) Even short of potential lawsuits, you also open yourself to the applicant arguing with you and asking you to reconsider their application.
If someone does give feedback to applicants, I suggest you keep it very factual and focused on specific skills. Or talk about what an ideal candidate would have had and let them infer from there where they may have fallen short. Definitely don’t make opinon-based, emotion-based claims, or statements about something the candidate cannot change.
I think the best thing for applicants to keep in mind is that organizations they apply to are often looking for specific things. You may feel like organizations are trying to hire for “best researcher” but not see that they actually are hiring for “researcher who we think best fits our particular research agenda at this particular time, as evaluated by whatever hiring and selection tools we have” which is very different… it’s not a indication of your overall skill or worth, just an indication of your fit at an organization. I know many people who have been rejected by one organization go on and do very well after they are hired by a very similar organization.
(Note that this entire comment of mine is heavily adapted from views shared to me by Abraham Rowe.)
We’ve discussed this internally, but I want to register that I continue to think that while there are considerable costs and risks to organizations for giving feedback, there are also considerable benefits to individuals for precise, actionable feedback as well, and the case has not been adequately made that the revealed preferences of orgs is anywhere close to altruistically optimal.
In particular, I also have not seeing much evidence that the legal risks are actually considerable in EV terms compared to either the org time costs of giving feedback or the individual practical benefits of receiving feedback.
Hiya—EA lawyer here. While the US legal system is generally a mess and you can find examples of people suing for all sorts of stuff, I think the risk of giving honest feedback (especially when presented with ordinary sensitivity to people you believe to be average-or-better-intentioned) is minimal. I’d be very surprised if it contributed significantly to the bottom-line evaluation here, and would be interested to speak to any lawyer who disagreed about their reasons for doing so.
Yeah we can discuss this a bit more, in particular if it looks like we studied it and it’s actually too time-consuming/risky or if it’s too expensive or time-consuming to do the legal research to figure out whether it’s too risky, I’m happy to continue to abide by the current policy! Just want to make sure the policy is evidence-based or at least based on evidence that being evidence-based is too hard!
Insurance seems like a fairly poor tool here, since there’s a significant moral hazard effect (insurance makes people less careful about taking steps to minimize exposure), which could lead to dynamics where the price goes really high and then only the people who are most likely to attract lawsuits still take the insurance …
Actually if there were a market in this I’d expect the insurers as condition of cover to demand legible steps to reduce exposure … like not giving feedback to unsuccessful applicants.
The moral hazard effect might be reduced if insurance is approved for one proposed hiring methodology, rather than without conditions.
I’m also not thinking of it as a general market, but rather as an intervention that a deep-pocketed organization (realistically OpenPhil) could offer smaller (and thus perhaps more risk-averse) organizations.
The standard two arguments for the asymmetric risks of offering insurance are adverse selection and moral hazard. Note that these claims risk being a fully-general argument, as this will all else equal be a good argument against all insurance (and indeed is taught that way in econ textbooks), but insurance companies can just increase rates to adjust for this.
I’m sure this is also covered in the literature, but having an organization with deep pockets cover the insurance also makes your org a juicier target for lawsuits than usual, in addition to the standard arguments.
Hmm, insurance is only a good solution if the expected costs are low relative to the benefits but the variance is high and you don’t want to be exposed to that risk. Insurance is not a good solution if the expected costs are sufficiently high.
Though that said, one issue is that orgs are insufficiently capable of individually assessing risks, so if a centralized body can estimate the relevant risks and price them accordingly, orgs can decide for themselves whether it’s worth it.
I think giving feedback to rejected applicants is very useful psychologically, but is very hard to do well. Not only would it be time consuming but the key issue for me is that, at least in the United States, organizations take on considerable legal risk when explaining to applicants why they were rejected. (For example, the statement “we were looking for someone with more energy” has initiated an age discrimination suit in the US.) Even short of potential lawsuits, you also open yourself to the applicant arguing with you and asking you to reconsider their application.
If someone does give feedback to applicants, I suggest you keep it very factual and focused on specific skills. Or talk about what an ideal candidate would have had and let them infer from there where they may have fallen short. Definitely don’t make opinon-based, emotion-based claims, or statements about something the candidate cannot change.
I think the best thing for applicants to keep in mind is that organizations they apply to are often looking for specific things. You may feel like organizations are trying to hire for “best researcher” but not see that they actually are hiring for “researcher who we think best fits our particular research agenda at this particular time, as evaluated by whatever hiring and selection tools we have” which is very different… it’s not a indication of your overall skill or worth, just an indication of your fit at an organization. I know many people who have been rejected by one organization go on and do very well after they are hired by a very similar organization.
(Note that this entire comment of mine is heavily adapted from views shared to me by Abraham Rowe.)
We’ve discussed this internally, but I want to register that I continue to think that while there are considerable costs and risks to organizations for giving feedback, there are also considerable benefits to individuals for precise, actionable feedback as well, and the case has not been adequately made that the revealed preferences of orgs is anywhere close to altruistically optimal.
In particular, I also have not seeing much evidence that the legal risks are actually considerable in EV terms compared to either the org time costs of giving feedback or the individual practical benefits of receiving feedback.
(all views my view, of course)
Hiya—EA lawyer here. While the US legal system is generally a mess and you can find examples of people suing for all sorts of stuff, I think the risk of giving honest feedback (especially when presented with ordinary sensitivity to people you believe to be average-or-better-intentioned) is minimal. I’d be very surprised if it contributed significantly to the bottom-line evaluation here, and would be interested to speak to any lawyer who disagreed about their reasons for doing so.
Yeah we can look into changing our policy
Really appreciate this!
Yeah we can discuss this a bit more, in particular if it looks like we studied it and it’s actually too time-consuming/risky or if it’s too expensive or time-consuming to do the legal research to figure out whether it’s too risky, I’m happy to continue to abide by the current policy! Just want to make sure the policy is evidence-based or at least based on evidence that being evidence-based is too hard!
Note that there is a mechanistic way of solving this by offering insurance in the case of being sued for discrimination.
Insurance seems like a fairly poor tool here, since there’s a significant moral hazard effect (insurance makes people less careful about taking steps to minimize exposure), which could lead to dynamics where the price goes really high and then only the people who are most likely to attract lawsuits still take the insurance …
Actually if there were a market in this I’d expect the insurers as condition of cover to demand legible steps to reduce exposure … like not giving feedback to unsuccessful applicants.
The moral hazard effect might be reduced if insurance is approved for one proposed hiring methodology, rather than without conditions.
I’m also not thinking of it as a general market, but rather as an intervention that a deep-pocketed organization (realistically OpenPhil) could offer smaller (and thus perhaps more risk-averse) organizations.
The standard two arguments for the asymmetric risks of offering insurance are adverse selection and moral hazard. Note that these claims risk being a fully-general argument, as this will all else equal be a good argument against all insurance (and indeed is taught that way in econ textbooks), but insurance companies can just increase rates to adjust for this.
I’m sure this is also covered in the literature, but having an organization with deep pockets cover the insurance also makes your org a juicier target for lawsuits than usual, in addition to the standard arguments.
Hmm, insurance is only a good solution if the expected costs are low relative to the benefits but the variance is high and you don’t want to be exposed to that risk. Insurance is not a good solution if the expected costs are sufficiently high.
Though that said, one issue is that orgs are insufficiently capable of individually assessing risks, so if a centralized body can estimate the relevant risks and price them accordingly, orgs can decide for themselves whether it’s worth it.