The importance of giving meaningful interview feedback
Lack of constructive and meaningful feedback is certainly one of the biggest pet peeves for candidates who are unsuccessful during the recruitment process.
Unfortunately, it’s still far too common to be “ghosted” with feedback or to be fobbed off with something that is super generic such as “you weren’t quite the right fit”, “they went with another candidate” or sometimes as a recruiter I receive from a client lacklustre; “We will pass on “X” candidate”. This is very frustrating for candidates and recruiters alike.
Common excuses from the employer’s side include being too busy to provide feedback. Within the eCommerce space in general there is a shortage of talent and there are far more jobs than there are candidates on the market. This is what we call a candidate-driven market and this is why I feel it’s even more important to give feedback as these communities and you want to build relationships not burn them.
Enough of the moaning from me! I feel like it’s very important to highlight exactly why organisations should be giving meaningful feedback, and also to suggest some guidance on doing so.
Why it’s important to provide feedback
It protects your company’s brand – reputation is everything in today’s digital award and word and mouth can spread 1000x faster and so much more damaging. Think about how your brand is being impacted if you are constantly given little to no feedback.
You may ultimately lose out on the best candidates – a candidate may have been unsuccessful and a bit green at the time but applies for a role in the future. They are much more experienced now and they are a great fit this time around. They may tell the recruiter they don’t want to speak with your company. Don’t risk losing them to your competitor as they remember a bad experience with your organisation.
You owe it to the candidate – a good applicant has given you their own time, it’s two ways but out of basic courtesy giving them feedback doesn’t have to time consuming. If you want that candidate to work with you in the future, it’s a good idea.
It helps improve you as an interviewer – making feedback a “habit” is what I recommend. You may even see patterns that can help you improve your own interview technique and maybe even the process itself.
It helps the candidate – constructive feedback will ultimately help the candidate improve and leave them feeling motivated rather than frustrated. This can only be positive!
Guidance on providing interview feedback
Refer to your notes immediately after the interview – you won’t always be in a position to make a decision straight away, but attempt to start collating feedback and comments immediately, even if you use it later. This is much easier than trying to delve into the memory bank a week later when the interviews have become a blur and you have no concrete notes to refer to.
Be honest with feedback but frame it correctly – ultimately, I’m a believer in being very honest with providing feedback, even if it’s negative as long as it’s constructive, not offensive. Candidates will appreciate this in the long run and prefer things not to be sugar-coated. However, try to avoid a totally negative tone and try to frame things in the spirit of improvement, and try to include a couple of points of positive feedback even for the candidates who didn’t do great.
Be specific – you don’t need to address every question in the interview but aim to try to give a couple of specific answers that the candidate gave, and how they could have answered better. ‘The answer you gave was X, but what we were looking for was Y’. Also try to provide test scores and results if that was part of the process and highlight areas for improvement.
Break down feedback into sections – try to address the following areas in your feedback:
- Technical interview performance – did they demonstrate the technical competency to do the job and answer the questions correctly?
- Interview technique – did they answer the question being asked or go off on tangents? Did they stick to the time limit for the presentation?
- Research and enthusiasm – did they research the company well enough and convey a genuine interest in the role and organisation?
Don’t hide behind ‘team fit’ – step back and think what this means. This is generally used as a very lazy piece of feedback when people don’t want to spend the time to provide proper constructive feedback, and it is also often a cover for some unconscious bias or discrimination. The ‘fit’ feedback is vague enough not to incriminate but it is largely useless to candidates as there is nothing specific attached to it. Try to avoid this and focus on the more detailed interview feedback mentioned above.
It doesn’t really matter whether you are providing feedback verbally or in writing, directly to a candidate or via a recruiter but it is important that you take some time to provide some useful, useable feedback – for the benefit of the candidate and your organisation!
At Adapt Talent we specialize in eCommerce Recruitment and Magento Recruitment and, we have a range of vacancies currently open with companies ready to hire this month. We spend time with all candidates before an interview to ensure they get off to the best start, and we always push for feedback straight after an interview!
