The recruitment process encompasses testing candidates for various skills. It has multiple steps to be followed by increasing difficulty and higher subjectivity at each level. For most of the recruitments, be it academics or professional in nature, the last recruiting stage (where the candidates are finally selected) is the interviews.
An interview is an interaction between the candidate and the interviewer, wherein the recruiting individual or panel checks the job fit of the candidate through various conversations. There are hardly any roles that would not have an accompanying interview process. This stage gives you the most idea about the person than any other stage in the hiring process.
In this article, you will be introduced to the benefits, reasons, dos and don’ts as well as examples of interview feedback.
The following are some of the advantages of interviews.
Not all candidates who appear for an interview get the job. But it does not necessarily mean that the candidates who do not make it have anything less to offer. It could simply mean that they might be unable to express themselves clearly. Hence, it becomes important to offer feedback to the candidates. The following reasons show the importance of providing candidates with interview feedback.
Nobody really likes to know that they have not been selected for the job they have applied for. But uncertainty is far worse than a certain rejection. Hence, to avoid the uncertainty on the applicant’s part, it becomes important that the employers inform them about the decision made by the interviewer(s).
When a company informs the unsuccessful candidate about the decision taken by the company along with the feedback about why this happened, it shows that the company adopts a growth-oriented attitude rather than the more outdated perfection attitude. It also acts as a courtesy information service to the candidates who appeared for an interview by offering some closure.
This not only shows strong values based on an individual’s qualitative development but it also parts values to those involved in the interview process. The interviewers (essentially, employees of the organization) who believe in giving feedback actually strive to do better in their day-to-day tasks and do them more mindfully than working on autopilot mode.
2. Honours the dignity of the candidates
When a candidate applies to your company, they invest their cognitive resources on the application. It is, therefore, certain that they will be interested in hearing from the company. So, when the candidates are informed that they have not been selected and are given feedback on their interview, they get some insight into what did not work for them. This reflects the values of the organization: of honouring the dignity of individuals, irrespective of their recruitment status.
3. Feedback helps the candidates build the skills they lack
When the candidates are given feedback about the interview performance and the areas they can improve on, this actually becomes a point of introspection for them. They can look into what really could have gone wrong and what are their areas of improvement until the next interview.
The candidates can take interview feedback positively and come back stronger with polished skills in the future. Doing so offers them growth instead of just a dead end.
Offering feedback after interview promotes a lifelong learning attitude in an individual. It provides opportunities for the employees to improve and come back to take the reward for the same, another time, another place. These candidates may or may not come back to the same company for an interview in future. But the growth attitude that is embedded in them may stay with them for a long time and shape their career and lives in general as well.
4. Little efforts, longer impact
Informing the candidates that they are not selected and giving them feedback about their performance through the selection process is not as long an endeavour as it might sound. Giving the feedback actually takes very little time while the impact of this activity lasts forever. This increases the brand value of the company in the market.
While there are few other ways to increase the company’s face value, it is the word-of-mouth publicity of the organization as a workplace that honours the candidates and employees that goes far. It emphasizes the importance of personal growth and development well before anything else. This makes a company value what it believes in and tries to impart.
5. Candidate engagement
When informing the candidates that they have not been selected for a particular role, give them constructive feedback about how to make improvements and implement changes for the future. This increases engagement of that particular candidate with the company.
It is possible that these candidates will polish their skills and update their portfolio with the kind of experience that is expected by your organization and revert to you in the future to give it another go.
6. Reduced risk of communicating wrong messages
It is extremely possible that if the candidates do not get closure about their non-selection and are only informed that they have not been selected for a particular role in the company, this may create some confusion in the minds of the candidates. Without a direction to work and improve on, they might be lost and unhappy to receive this news. So, providing feedback automatically makes the conversations clear and direct between the two parties. It also helps in clarifying the expectations of the company to the resource pool that this and other candidates belong to.
7. Streamlining the hiring process by setting expectations
Since the constructive feedback provided to the candidates also includes areas that they can work on, they get a stepping stone to start their improvement. When the expectations of the organization are clarified by the management, it sieves the candidate pool, ensuring that only those whose expectations match remain.
Doing so clarifies the expectations of the company for the posts they are recruiting for and helps in shaping desirable candidates.
While providing feedback, we have to make sure that it is not sounding like a personal attack on the candidate. Hence, the feedback must be constructive. Following are a few guidelines for constructive feedback.
Having understood the importance of this type of feedback, here are 4 interview feedback examples to get you started:
Employers and recruiters must always keep in mind that while giving feedback is important, it can make or break someone’s self-image and confidence. So, be really careful when exercising it.
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