Flunking my Anthropic interview again

Building on that: There's a few reasons why a company won't explain why they reject a candidate.

One of the reasons is that they don't want candidates to "game" the system, because it makes it hard to screen for the people they want to hire.

Another reason is that often rejections are highly subjective, and telling a candidate that "we didn't hire you because of X" could be highly insulting.

Finally, quite often candidates are rejected because the people hiring ultimately are looking for people they will get along with. It doesn't matter how smart someone is, if something about the working relationship causes friction, the team dynamic can quickly devolve. (And to be quite frank, in these situations the candidate will probably have a better job working elsewhere.) These kinds of rejections are highly subjective, so no one really wants to give a candidate feedback.

If they've written down notes or a stance/defence in a talent management system, all they need to do is regurgitate that in my opinion. I wrote about it upthread but having done a data request under my country's privacy act, I was able to get a raw dump of all the data (PII redacted). Recommend that as best course of action if they're unwilling to provide feedback.

If you don't say anything at all, the applicant has nothing to go on for a lawsuit against you.

If you say anything, and the applicant is a malicious litigant, you just became a potential paycheck via settlement.

If you're hiring a dozen people a year, you can probably ignore this. If you're hiring hundreds or thousands, and thus many times that number of applicants, you're going to step on that landmine eventually. Better then to have a company-wide policy "no feedback ever"

I could see if the feedback was "we wanted someone who better fit the culture," but giving a specific answer on a core hiring criteria doesn't seem like it would cause a problem.

In reality, I think the most likely reason is what others have mentioned, that candidates would argue the point.

I always tell people why they didn't pass the interview, or why we didn't select them. Usually in a reasonably detailed way.

A plurality of individuals have tried to argue with me, that I didn't understand them (which, if true, could be a communication issue and thus: still an issue). Some try to litigate the issue (not in a court of law, but to say things like "but you didn't say that on the ad" (knowing how TCP works shouldn't be on an ad), or "I can learn" etc). A minority of those will go out of their way to hound me on social media.

My "HR" person doesn't get any of that because she gives no reason.

I'll continue to do it, because I think it's the right thing to do: but there are people in the world who disincentivise it. And after all; you're rejecting someone for a reason, so there is a higher probability that you will interface with someone who is as described: as they might not be finding work and thus circulating more and you are rejecting them for a reason... which could be related to attitude.

I told her that I respected their opinion but that I disagreed that I wasn't ready for the more senior role, and so I wasn't interested, but appreciated their time nonetheless. And I was appreciative. Although I predicted as soon as the interview was over that I wasn't getting an offer and why, having confirmation helped me refine where I messed up in the interview.

Which just reinforces why a rejection transitions to "no contact" most of the time. I try to make sure candidates have no contact information for this specific reason.

Do you have examples? I know this is a real fear, but I've never heard any examples of lawsuits except for issues of discrimination due to age, gender, and ethnicity.

(Not that I give it when rejecting most candidates, because I don't want to deal with an argument. In practice, I only gave constructive feedback once, and then posted it on my blog: https://blog.andrewrondeau.com/software/careers/interviewing...)