Getting Feedback from Interviews – Is it Worth It?
This week I have coached a
junior lawyer who came to see me for interview practice following a
series of interviews where she had been rejected.
She had been given feedback on
one occasion and the feedback had been that she was too timid and appeared to
lack confidence.
After interviewing her for 30
minutes, albeit in a practice scenario, it was pretty clear that this was not
someone who was timid or lacked confidence and in fact a very able
interviewee. She was clear, lucid, able
to answer complicated questions immediately without pause, come up with
examples for competency based interview scenarios (e.g. describe a situation
when …) and was not fazed by any rude or negative questions. In fact, in terms of the standard she was at
I would say she was more than competent as an interviewee and certainly did not
lack confidence or was timid.
However, she was a very slight
woman, fairly short and extremely softly spoken.
I was curious to know who the
interview was who provided this feedback, and guessed that it was a slightly or
extremely overweight middle-aged man with a deep voice. I was correct.
This feedback is completely
useless to the interviewee. All it does is demonstrate the interviewer’s
misconceptions and preconceived ideas that a woman who is fairly short and
slender is firstly timid and second because she is softly spoken lacks
confidence. Furthermore it damaged the interviewee's confidence unnecessarily.
So how useful is getting feedback from interviews?
Usually feedback supplied from
someone who is being honest can be very helpful and constructive. Unfortunately
the vast majority of feedback is neither.
HR Departments will often come up with some wishy washy response that is
concocted and bears no relevance at all to the reasons you were rejected for a
post. This is partly because they are
scared of being sued under employment legislation and secondly because very often they
can’t remember who you are after interview.
Similarly feedback from an interviewer
like the somewhat ignorant man in the example above can damage your confidence
and affect your future prospects, even though what they say may not be true.
Problems with Feedback
The difficulty with interview feedback is that very often the feedback does in fact run the risk of leaving the employer open to some form of litigation, whether this is sex discrimination or even race discrimination. There are so many times I have been told by an employer after we have sent a candidate for interview that the candidate was smelly, unkempt, likely to go off on maternity leave, had a difficult accent to follow and wasn’t sure how clients would cope, too short, too fat, too tall, too old, too young, female etc.
After they have given us this
feedback they then say but can you please make something up to say we’ve simply
rejected them.
Why bother getting feedback from job interviews?
So what is the point in getting
feedback? The answer to this is simple.
The more you stay in touch with an employer the more likely it is they will
offer you a job or an opening will come up and you will be in the right place
at the right time, even after they may have rejected you for a post.
There have been so many occasions over the
years I have been in recruitment where a candidate has pushed and pushed us to
chase for feedback and eventually after two or even three months firms got back
to say that they were impressed by the person’s tenacity and would like to offer
them a job.
Quite often companies and employers do not have any set in stone
recruitment procedure and it can be fairly fluid as to when they decide to
recruit somebody. Although they may have advertised in a certain month, it may
be that they change their mind and decide to not recruit for another couple of
months until work picks up again. You
may just happen to be in the right place at the right time when it comes to
that particular recruitment if you keep chasing for feedback from an interview
a few months before.
Summary
So in summary it is good to get
feedback from interviews even though most of the feedback you get will be
complete nonsense and not relate at all to you, BUT it does mean you stay in
touch with the employer and it increases your chances of success.
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