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In some cases gut feeling can come into the decision, but nobody would ever dare leave it like that - that gut feeling would have to be backed up by something legally defensible. This is partly because obeying the law generally leads to the best decision (e.g. stopping you from discarding the best candidate because she's a woman), but also because somebody may question it, and challenge the legality of the decision made.
But despite trying scrupulously to stay within the law, I can very much relate to the reason @chrispy108 mentioned, that if someone challenges the decision then it can lead to a lot of time-consuming paperwork even when everything is legal and above board. The idea that "if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to worry about" is rather hopelessly naive. These things can chew up a lot of time if nothing else - I've spent a solid day and a half of the last week dealing with exactly that sort of complaint, when there was no wrong-doing at all, just an outcome that somebody wasn't happy with.
And yes, HR departments are generally despised, but from what I've seen, they're also generally massively under-staffed, so the HR folk are running round like headless chickens trying to do the essentials, and I'm afraid that feedback to candidates is not an absolute essential. Making sure the paperwork is there so feedback can be provided, and lawsuits defended against, is more important.
My experience is in public sector; I have no idea how similar it would be in private sector organisations.
After a week or so she hadn't heard anything so she logged in to an online account they'd given her and there was just a picture of a big green hand giving a thumbs down. Nothing else.
I've never seen anything like it.
Businesses must be looking for candidates to meet certain criteria and an objective assessment of an individual's ability to meet those given criteria is by no means a difficult thing.
If people want to read it, I'll copy and paste the board report given to me following my interview for the RAF as an example of how an objective feedback of a candidate is entirely achievable and highly valuable when done correctly?
I'm reluctant to post it here unless people ask for it but feel free to ask for it in a PM and Ill copy it to you. Don't want to be accused of boastfulness or false humility.
Vintage v400mh mahogany topped dreadnought acoustic FS - £100
Whatever the perceived legal 'risks' to employers, it seems to me that manners/politeness/decency/call it what you will - has been lost from the process.
There are few worse places to be in life than out of work - treating an applicant with any level of distain is an awful thing to do.
About 2 weeks later I'd heard nothing so assumed it was a no, and moved on.
6 further weeks passed and someone from KPMG's HR department rang me to ask why I hadn't got back in touch.
"Sorry?" I said, somewhat confused. "We offered you the job and you didn't reply - we wanted to know why"
"Er, no, I didn't get an offer at all..."
"Really?" Said the HR woman. "I'll go check on that.."
Anyway, 2 hours later I got a call back from her...
"Urm, we meant to send you an offer but the HR person dealing with the vacancy forgot, then went on holiday, then when they got back they 'filed' the offer and forgot about it. The department in question rang me up to find out when you were starting.. I don't suppose you still want it do you?"
Needless to say, I explained to her that if her HR department were that crap that the last thing I wanted to do was to work for them....
in reality the criteria are rarely so clear cut, and you may have one candidate who clearly meets one criteria but is borderline on another, and another candidate who is borderline on the first but meets the other. You could reject both, or make a judgement of which candidate is "closer" or which criterion is more important. All are in the subjective realm.
I'm really glad you felt the RAF recruitment process worked so well for you, but don't extrapolate too much from that.
In every interview process I've done this past year it's been hours of interviews followed by hours of painful argument among the committee as to who should be offered the job, and that's despite everybody working from a grading against the same criteria.
If these are jobs that are, in part, preparation for the 'real' job market then they might be trying to foster a proactive approach. As has been suggested a few times, asking for feedback is essential; keep an open mind and you might learn something that will be genuinely useful in your next interview (or 20).
Maybe you can't always say why exactly someone else was preferred, sometimes it's just chemistry, but it is surely possible and respectful for a competent interviewer to give some objective and useful feedback to someone who made the effort to come to an interview?
Do you know what feedback is? Are you just rude or actually ignorant of the things you're talking about AND rude?
The two points are a) if you're told you haven't gotten the job you know you need to keep looking - which to some might be important and b) feedback helps you improve for next time.
The department offers part time contracts for 1 year at a time, so at the beginning of each year they lose 11 part timers and are down to the 3 full time staff only to cover two floors ... given how desperate they are to cover I can't see them waiting very long. Emails were sent to the student email accounts on Friday. I know 3 of the 11 positions are filled for fact, I doubt they decided to let the other 8 stew for a bit
I am, sorry as I am to admit it, resigned to not having the job - still, I waited a year for this job, what's another two more.
They don't go for the cleverest, the best qualified, they went for who they felt would work best in that team.
As the whole team saw all the candidates waiting in reception, we all got to give our opinion on each one, and that made an impact.
Silly that is. I spent weeks preparing for my last interview, months even. Yet for certain positions simply the way you look/how you dress can instantly rule you out, before you have even said a word.
It isn't always that there was someone better than you, it might have been that there was someone who would have worked better in their team, someone who looked and sounded more like the people already there. Maybe they needed to make up their diversity quotas/already had the person in mind and they only had the interviews as it was part of the process that had to happen. In which case you never had a chance.
Regardless, I would call them up and ask what happened and why haven't you heard anything, ask why they picked someone else/why they didn't pick you.
Whenever I have to go to an interview I always send someone else in my place, do demonstrate my ability to delegate.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
It was for a supermarket who were having a recruitment drive, so various jobs were on offer, along with the warehouse job I was after. There was one of those group activity thing, and my "group" let me bomb, David Brent style, doing the presentation. The consensus was not to offer me a job but two guys convinced the rest of the interviewers that I was ( rightly ) ideal for counting stuff, moving heavy things and driving a fork lift truck.
Getting back on topic, if you haven't heard back, contact them
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But it often seems to happen that the panel already had someone in mind, and knows exactly how they'd fit the role. You'd have to be very strong to overcome that, especially if the role was custom created specifically for them.
I am not the interviewee's life coach, analyst or parent. It is not my job to nurture their career, give them guidance for their future, or provide emotional support for their disappointment. Unless they are an internal candidate of course - I've often followed up with training, coaching and mentoring because I do have an obligation to help their development.
Too many external candidates think that giving them the opportunity for an interview - something for which other applicants would be delighted to take their place - entitles them to detailed personal analysis and guidance. When the truth is, some one else beat them. The fact that you NEED feedback is probably connected to why you failed to get the job.
We often provide feedback & have said on occasion that another candidate simply "better at interview", we DO try to be constructive with it though and offer what advice we can.
On the other hand I'm job hunting at present & have had very variable experiences when looking for feedback.
One didn't know! "you look like a good candidate, but I guess there was someone stronger"
Another admitted there was an internal candidate for the job (& the advert was a box ticking exercise!)
The worst was the NHS who said it could be "up to 3 months before we get around to short listing the job- we're testing the market". So I COULD hear back eventually.
This is the university I'm paying near £10000 a year for an education in the world of IT employment... and you don't think there's a similar obligation for them to help my development? Words fail me that you cannot see that. You feel an obligation to someone paid to be there, but think somehow there's no obligation for someone who is PAYING to be there...
And feedback doesn't have to be a 50,000 word dissertation, a couple of sentences in an email at most would be enough. Given that 99.99999999999999% of uni students have no work experience in IT helpdesk support it seems highly f***ing unlikely that it's because anyone was more experienced, given that we're here to GET qualifications it's highly unlikely there were more qualified people... so just perhaps, it was something in my interview technique, body language etc that scuppered me - so perhaps it's something I NEED TO KNOW FOR THE FUTURE WHICH IS WHAT THE UNI IS FOR YOU FUCKING CRETIN. Is that clear enough as an explanation of what I might be thinking?