Hey Siobhan, totally makes sense that you feel individualized feedback would be the most useful thing for you. I’m sorry that we’re unlikely to provide that as part of this AMA! Fwiw, my personal reasoning for not responding to requests for feedback is:
It’s difficult to give useful, quick, and legible feedback on application materials / resumes to people I don’t know well. I usually need lots of interpersonal context and careful thought to do that.
I have limited free time to devote to the AMA, and I’d like to focus my time on answering other questions that I expect to be useful to both the question-asker and other readers.
Giving pre-application feedback to people who might apply to an organization where I work can create (and has created, in the past) awkward, unpleasant interpersonal/social dynamics. I’m not saying that would happen in your or any other particular case, just that it’s a type of risk that exists and that I’d prefer not to incur.
In general, I think it’s ~always ok to cold message individual people and ask for their advice. In fact, I’d encourage you to do that: cold messages are probably under-sent, and they’ve been very useful for my career journey. But, I don’t want to offer a blanket guarantee that I or others will respond to all requests for individualized feedback (regardless of whether the requests are made in private or public) because in some cases people will wish to decline the requests for valid personal reasons.
Notwithstanding the above, all of us are doing this AMA because we want to be helpful—so we really hope you’ll ask any other questions that would be useful!
Hey Siobhan, totally makes sense that you feel individualized feedback would be the most useful thing for you. I’m sorry that we’re unlikely to provide that as part of this AMA! Fwiw, my personal reasoning for not responding to requests for feedback is:
It’s difficult to give useful, quick, and legible feedback on application materials / resumes to people I don’t know well. I usually need lots of interpersonal context and careful thought to do that.
I have limited free time to devote to the AMA, and I’d like to focus my time on answering other questions that I expect to be useful to both the question-asker and other readers.
Giving pre-application feedback to people who might apply to an organization where I work can create (and has created, in the past) awkward, unpleasant interpersonal/social dynamics. I’m not saying that would happen in your or any other particular case, just that it’s a type of risk that exists and that I’d prefer not to incur.
In general, I think it’s ~always ok to cold message individual people and ask for their advice. In fact, I’d encourage you to do that: cold messages are probably under-sent, and they’ve been very useful for my career journey. But, I don’t want to offer a blanket guarantee that I or others will respond to all requests for individualized feedback (regardless of whether the requests are made in private or public) because in some cases people will wish to decline the requests for valid personal reasons.
Notwithstanding the above, all of us are doing this AMA because we want to be helpful—so we really hope you’ll ask any other questions that would be useful!
Hi Calum, yes I imagined the reasons were in that direction.