No Interview Feedback Policy: ehh... just why
I thought we've already decided that giving back feedback after interviews is a good thing. People were talking about it a lot a few years back. Apparently it's still not a thing for quite a few companies out there. I have just gone through an interview process with A company. Let's describe A company.
- It's not huge, I believe < 100 people as of right now
- It has a clear mission, and a clear idea of how they achieve it (at the very least on paper)
- Plenty of money via funding
- The headcount is growing extremely fast
- On their careers page they say that they do not provide feedback for neither CVs nor interviews, huh
Their hiring process was quite a journey too. Even though they still are small, there's still quite a bit of competition (due to who they are, and what they do); hence the process is hugely inspired by FAANG and other big tech.
Application
There's an application form with your usual stuff like CV, links to relevant profiles, do you need a visa, etc. They do not require a cover letter, but they do include two open ended questions on your motivation and values (which they deem important as they say). So yeah, took some time to craft those
Screening
They seem proud to say they don't do leetcode. That's neat not gonna lie. They use Code Signal for screening, the Industrial Framework one ("here's a description of of system X, that should support this, this and that operation"). Honestly I liked the task. The time pressure is a bit high (I was 2-3 mins short to fix a thing a score the last points), I got a decent score – 95th percentile – and thought that should suffice. Nope, "we like your CV and the background, but would like a higher score on Code Signal. Retry?" Well, a bit weird if you ask me, but I've retried it and got 100%. That got me into the next step.
Interviews
Their next step was the Hiring Manager interview (even though I didn't have the recruiter call as I was supposed to according to their roadmap). It went well, but apparently their team was moving to a different country, so I was contacted by the recruiter to have a recruiter interview, and then redirected to another team. With which I had another Hiring Manager interview. So yeah, that added some delay and confusion. But I guess everyone was happy with me, so we scheduled the panel interviews. Although we couldn't schedule one before Christmas, so there was again a significant waiting time.
Panel interviews:
- One cultural interview
- Two coding interviews (again no leetcode, but real word-ish toy problems)
- A system design interview
I felt like I did pretty well on those (it doesn't happen to me every time). To my surprise I got a rejection letter one week after.
No feedback, sorry mate
Although we cannot provide more detailed feedback, I want you to know that this was a tough decision for us. Not many candidates make it so far in our process, and we’d love to keep in touch with you. If you're still interested in working with us, I encourage you to consider applying again in a year! If you have a few minutes, we would also really appreciate it if you could fill out our candidate experience survey.
A few thoughts here:
- To drop-off after two months of communication without any feedback frankly feels annoying. I have an idea of why companies do it, I just don't really agree with it.
- They encourage to apply again later, but how do I know that I'm a better fit now. There were many stages, which one didn't work out? Cultural misfit? Problems with system design? The coding bits? Maybe earlier stages? You never know, and without it it's hard to judge if you should apply again (maybe I've improved but not in the sense intended).
- As a side effect that would benefit A company too, 'cause they would get better candidate next year. Or they will not get applicants who are clearly not fit, and they were made aware of it last time. Win-win.
- They however want a feedback, huh. That's convenient.
No conclusion, I'm annoyed, the industry and A company can do better (they probably won't though)