One of the more frustrating realities for many job seekers is when you hear,

"We're sorry, but we've decided not to move forward with you as a candidate."

What's worse is that it's usually accompanied by zero explanation. You ask for some specific feedback or reasons why, and you're met with the ultimate brush off.

As a recruiter, rejecting people is one of the absolute worst parts of our job. It's depressing. Trust me when I say we're dreading making the phone call as much as you're dreading receiving it. We too invested a lot of time into this process along with you.

While you will definitely encounter some companies or recruiters who will give you some specific details as to why you didn't fare so well during the interview, more often than not, you'll hear a canned answer -- or worse, receive an email with boilerplate language to the effect of,

"We're sorry, but we're not able to provide any additional details."

You've invested a lot of time, energy, and emotions in the interview process, and you are left with little insight or ways to improve. Sadly, this is not a senseless act. As with everything frustrating in the world, there are reasons.

Believe it or not, there are possible legal implications of offering someone a window into why they didn't get the job. In a litigious society, and particularly in the aftermath of many of the class action and civil lawsuits of the late 90s and early 00s, companies became hypersensitive in order to protect their interests. As such, many companies adopted a blanket approach to dealing with things like interview feedback for candidates by simply declining to give any details. If you've ever needed a professional reference from your previous company, you may be familiar with this strategy. Many companies don't want to do anything that potentially positions them negatively. Companies have blanket no-reference policies so that no ex-employees can blame (read: sue) them for why they didn't get the job. Companies have blanket "no interview feedback" policies so that candidates can't misconstrue and read into things incorrectly. You'd be surprised the allegations a disappointed individual can lodge based on something as simple (and egregious) as a recruiter saying, "The team felt you weren't a great culture fit."

I'll leave the discussion of why "culture fit" is in and of itself a terrible concept for another time.

The legal side is one very important element, but there's also another side to this, and that's the recruiter's side. For a recruiter, giving interview feedback is a slippery slope. Feedback can sometimes be incredibly subjective. Sure in say a coding or technical interview, there may be a more clear "right" or "wrong" answer, but even then I've found there to be a lot of grey areas in an individual's interpretation of what the correct solution may be. I've had candidates email me to argue with me about the outcome of their interview with pages of accompanying code -- code I've courteously forwarded to another software engineer to review only to give me the response of, "Nope. The answer is still wrong."

There are a lot of factors that go into why a person may not have been selected for the job, and they aren't always things that a candidate wants to hear. I've honestly found that 9 out of 10 times, when I give a candidate feedback on how they performed in an interview, they get very defensive and the conversation turns into them trying to justify to me why the feedback is wrong, or nitpicking and disagreeing with something that an interviewer pointed out. If you take one drawn out feedback conversation and multiply it by the many candidates we may be rejecting every week, you have a massive time suck.



I will say that when a candidate seems thoughtful, mature, and professional, we will often give them a little bit of feedback (with some discretion) because we know they can handle it. This is particularly true if we think someone has a chance to make some adjustments/improvements and come back stronger next time they interview. But sadly, many people cannot handle the feedback. Maybe this is a product of a culture that's given out too many trophies to the losing teams. Or perhaps our guilt-ridden parents stroked our egos too much. Or maybe people have seen "The Boiler Room" one time too many. Participating in daily debates with candidates on why the feedback is wrong just isn't a good use of time. In my industry (tech), it's gotten so bad that sometimes companies won't even give out the last names of the interviewers to the candidate because some candidates have been known to do things like repeatedly email the interviewers on LinkedIn, trying to argue with the outcome of their interview. In the age of Twitter ranting, Medium treatises, Glassdoor complaining, Reddit AMAs, and Quora missives, you never know what the tipping point might be for a candidate to air their opinions.



I understand the frustration level of people who genuinely want feedback on how they did during the interview process. Just know that a big part of the reason why you can't get insight into your interview performance is likely due to the loud, unprofessional, and often vocal minority who have pretty much ruined it for everyone else. So if you find yourself in the uncommon position of being able to actually receive feedback on how you could have improved, regardless of if you agree with the outcome or the feedback, my advice would be to take the meat and spit out the bones, and simply say, "Thank you for the feedback." Interviewing is an imperfect process.