This week I heard a story from a friend who is applying for jobs and getting a lot of rejections.
He’s getting a stock response that goes something like this:
“Thank you for your interest in (company name). After consideration, unfortunately we will not be going forward with your application. Due to the volume of candidates, we are unable to share more specific feedback at this time. We encourage you to apply again in the future.”
Can you spot the problem?
If you get no feedback on where you missed the mark, it’s incredibly short-sighted of the company to suggest applying again. Won’t they just reject this person, again?
This falls into the category of wasting people’s time, and it seems like the volume of candidates means the hiring manager doesn’t have time to respond. Ironically, by suggesting that a person reapplies, they risk creating an endless loop of rejections.
Now, let’s think about gathering feedback on your product.
It’s important to think why you’re looking for feedback. Having clear, specific questions is better than a generic “What do you think?” type of prompt. What will you do if you ask “What do you think?” and the answers come out like this:
- I like it – 50%
- I don’t like it – 30%
- I don’t know – 20%
Perhaps your company wants to hear that 50% of people voted that they like the product. But is that actionable? What will you do if senior stakeholders ask “how do we get to 60%”?
“Liking the product” is also highly subjective, and super broad. Instead, steering users to comment on specific parts of your product is better.
Some sites display a prompt saying “Did you find what you were looking for today?” That’s quite a good question, and could help e.g. an ecommerce site to see if it has problems with discoverability. If the user says No, having the option to say what they were unable to find can be helpful to know.
Giving specific feedback takes time, and users are more likely to submit comments if you steer them a bit, and make it easy for them.
I wonder if the recruiter from the start of this post might have been more inclined to share comments if they could do so via a few prompts – and if it was faster. Lots of feedback gets posted in recruitment platforms such as Lever, with scores and detailed comments. This may not be intended for the candidate to read verbatim, and is really used to see who the company wants to hire. But for the rejections, wouldn’t it be nice to have some brief but clear feedback that you maybe lacked a skill, or other candidates had more experience in the industry.
Feedback is important – whether sending or receiving it. Don’t overlook the importance of being clear what you’re asking for – and do try to give interview candidates proper feedback, no matter how brief.
Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
