Andrew MacAskill (SocialTalent) describes how poor or absent interview feedback harms candidates, illustrated by a case study of Doug — an experienced job seeker who went through lengthy interviews only to receive no usable feedback. MacAskill diagnoses common problems (ghosting, vague reasons, feedback about known constraints) and attributes causes to manager fear, laziness, or lack of training. He proposes a simple ABC framework for better feedback: make it Actionable, Balanced, and Compassionate, and advises giving three things the candidate did well and three things to work on.
Chapters
As the LinkedIn change maker for careers in unemployment, I simply had to address the issues we face with candidates getting fair interview feedback for context, the career coaching client who really brought this home for me was Doug. So Doug was a highly experienced individual who'd been out of work for six months during the pandemic and was starting to feel the pinch. Like many from a financial perspective, but full of optimism, Doug went up through five interview stages with a listed company and through two long, expensive trips up the other side of the country, only to miss out to an internal candidate. Ouch. He was such a good fit too. So that was hard for Doug to take. And next, despite all the emotional, financial and time invested, Doug was given zero interview feedback. I mean, zilch, nada. Nothing we could work on together to help him in the future at all. And I was completely incandescent with rage at the treatment he'd received and couldn't really fathom how companies thought that this was okay. I For years I've consoled frustrated job seekers up and down the country when they've missed out on their ideal job. And that's fine. It's a tough blow to take, particularly when you're out of work and you need the income. But it's part of the course. Of course you can't win them all. But you know what makes it worse? Not really knowing why you were unsuccessful at interview. I mean, ghosting used to be a practice confined to the dating world, but in recent years it's permeated the hiring market too. The idea that candidates can invest their time researching, preparing and attending interviews, often at great expense, and never hear back seems unthinkable. Yet it's more common than you might think, and it's very, very damaging indeed. The uncertainty ghosting causes means that job seekers can have them second guessing themselves, holding on to false hope or suffering a confidence crisis at a time when they can ill afford one. What is perhaps even more common than ghosting is candidates getting feedback after an interview with which they simply can't do anything with. Some of them are the classics that include you were pipped at the post or other candidates were a better fit to our requirement, which, you know, whilst being one step better than ghosting, doesn't really offer them anything other than confirmation of the outcome. Finally, it's also not unusual for interview feedback to come back which relates to something that the interviewer knew ahead of time, such as we wanted someone with industry experience. Again, this is a source of huge frustration, and as it feels like the interview is A waste of time for both parties. So, in summary, a lack of interview feedback or poor interview feedback is a huge problem. Back to our friend Doug. He booked some time with us to talk through interview techniques and within 10 minutes, I could see the problem. Doug was a waffler. Like many other intelligent people, Doug was airing his knowledge and trying to give as much detail as possible, which is causing him to lose engagement and gravitas in his communications. The issue was that in over 25 interviews, nobody ever told him. So we did and he worked on it and he got hired and he's thriving. But so much heartache, cost and stress could have been avoided if somebody had just felt able to give Doug the gift of honest interview feedback. He actually didn't need any coaching from us at all. Once she understood what was wrong, it was yet more proof that actually the best candidates for the role aren't always the best interviewers and companies are missing a trick. So why is this happening? Well, some line managers are probably scared of giving feedback to avoid a difficult candidate reaction. Others are just lazy and many probably don't have the training or a reliable framework to lean on. As leaders, we need to get better at this. I've always felt that great feedback is actually as simple as abc. So the right interview feedback is actionable, it's balanced, and it's compassionate. You can stand out a mile and avoid being a cautionary tale in the hiring market by simply committing to feeding back three things the unsuccessful candidate did well and three things they can work on for next time so that they can get to work before their next interview.
