How hard can it be to show some basic decency and courtesy?
I've been related several times about people that wanted explicit reasons of why they've been rejected, and ending up mad at the (perceived as dishonest) hard truths they've been told, and anything said delicately can be dismissed, seen as cryptic or even displayed as hypocrisy.
Courtesy is hard, and all are not well equipped to see it when it's given.
I managed a hiring process last year (my first) and from the outset I wanted to make sure I let every applicant that we talked to know if we had decided to pass. It was a lot easier said/thought than done.
That email is horrible to send. My stomach dropped out every time I hit “send”, for exactly the reasons you stated. I dreaded the replies which often included some kind of “Why?” question.
I completely understand where the candidates are coming from. They want to know what they did wrong and how they can improve. On the surface this seems like an easy thing to do, but in my experience, it’s more like opening a can of worms. How do you tell someone “I’m sorry, you’re too junior, try again in a few years” or “your entire personality was off-putting/rude” or “you spent an inordinate amount of time in the interview tying to convince me I was wrong about tabs vs spaces and even sent me a follow up email citing more reasons” or “You told me you worked with PHP 6 when I asked you what version you had used” [0], or “you couldn’t remember if you used Angular 1 or 2+” [1], or “you told me you had a great memory then proceeded to say ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I don’t remember’ to 90% of my questions”…. The list goes on
When sending a rejection letter the best case scenario is that they say “thank you” and move on (or don’t reply at all). Worst case scenario, they start asking follow-up questions which I feel obligated to respond to, they get irate, and/or they attempt some kind of bargaining/arguing. I’m not going to say I’d never do any of these things myself (however unproductive) but it shocks me that some people think they can change your mind by arguing about why you passed on them.
It’s all very uncomfortable and feels like you are navigating a field of land mines.
[0] PHP 6 never was released, it went from 5->7, though you can find books on “PHP 6” because they were printed before it was clear the version was going to be skipped.
[1] Angular 1 vs 2+ is essentially a completely different framework. Anyone working in web tech should be aware of that fact.
How else can you improve or be mindful of things in the future if you don't even know what happened or what went wrong?
I sort of feel like the people who don't give honest feedback or ghost aren't trying to protect anyone's feelings or are avoiding conflict. They themselves have something going on internally that bothers them when it comes to giving or receiving feedback. They are maybe letting unrelated previous experiences dictate their current life and decisions.
So now you have 2 types of people. People who want honest feedback and people who never give it. You can't force either one to do the other thing so we're always left with 1 side feeling unhappy.
It doesn't make sense to me that this is how most folks are ok with operating.