How much feedback should you get after a job interview?

A major graduate recruiter recently told me that every applicant who makes it to interview stage at his firm is offered feedback about why they didn't get the job if they don't win a place. From a candidate's point of view this is supposed to be good news because she can learn from that feedback, remedy any weaknesses in her CV or presentation and generally do much better next time.

But just how useful is that feedback? Plenty of employers are so constrained by the thought that a misinterpreted phrase could give rise to legal action that they avoid saying anything - or at least anything interesting - at all. A short, sharp, "thank you but on this occasion the position was offered to someone more suitable" is not terribly useful feedback, although it is at least a clear rejection. Once I was turned down with such a torrent of praise that at first I half-thought that the person I was speaking to was going to quit his job just so the company could make room for me as well as the paragon of excellence who, despite my all-round brilliance, was somehow even better suited to the position. The gushing didn't make missing out any easier and certainly didn't do anything to help me re-shape my next job application.

I've only come across two instances where interviewers offered anything approaching a frank answer to the "why didn't you pick me?" question. One of these, who was at the time my boss, was happy to answer sensible questions with sensible and honest answers. Interestingly, most of the responses that I heard her give to unsuccessful candidates related not to qualifications but to questions of personality and behaviour. The second was on one of my unsuccessful employment forays, when I was told that I had all the qualifications the organisation was looking for and that they were confident that I could do the job but that they weren't going to hire me because they thought I'd get bored and leave quite quickly. Unemployed and cranky, this irritated me. Maybe if I'd been the bolshie type I'd have made a bit of a fuss about it. Not long after - having found a much more interesting job - I realised the recruiter was completely right.

By the time people make it to an interview, employers have generally screened out anyone who doesn't have at least the basic capability needed to do the job and are looking instead for much more subtle signs that the person will work well with the existing team, add to the organisation's long-term development and fit with its ethos. But even with honest, open feedback it can be hard for rejected applicants to do much with this information - even if they could change their personality to fit a corporate mould that's hardly the recipe for long-term happiness in a job. Perhaps the best way for candidates to look at such rejections, then, is simply to take comfort in the knowledge that they had the right qualifications but that the potential employer didn't have the right culture to let it take advantage of them.

Comments

[InA]

I totally agree with your view.
Feedback is useful but sometimes it only points out what you already knew to be your wekaness. The difficulty is to overcome something which is such a part of your human essence. Personality issues do not always change when you attept to behave differently because it is so dependent upon the way you reason things, so sometimes you just have to hope to land an interview with people who are more accomodating of your personality - at the very least you will be comfortable eith the people!