Interview Feedback — Why is it important??

Most of us take interviews every now and then and we select few candidates and we reject the others. Obviously those who take it definitely know the amount of time & effort it takes to find a good candidate.

I am sure most of us do not provide feedback (exceptions are always there) to the candidates whom we reject except for a 1 liner or an automated response from the system which says “We are sorry but you did not meet our requirements” or “After careful consideration we would like to inform you that we will be unable to process your application further”.

Even I was one of those who was not consistent with providing feedback. For few candidates who were rejected, I used to provide feedback if I had the time (read: if I had the mood) and for others I wouldn’t.

Recently I have been interviewing candidates and I saw more rejections than selections and saw some pattern especially with the Indian context. We read lot of articles about the massive cybersecurity skill gap and the ways to counter it through different ways, lot of training platforms where people can upskill, ed-tech companies/start-ups springing up trying to teach in a gamified fashion, MOOCs etc.,

I was doing some introspection and trying to figure out, despite all of this where are we failing to get good candidates. I don’t think I have completely figured it out but feels like feedback after the interview is not going back to the candidates. I think this is one of the critical aspects where organizations need to to improve from a process perspective.

I think this will not help only the candidate or that particular organization but the entire ecosystem. If the candidate doesn’t know on how he fared and what are the areas he needs to improve, we will be reeling with this problem for ever. The same candidate might be interviewed by different organizations and will be available in the market. If you are lucky enough you will be interviewing him once again only to realize that this candidate didn’t meet the requirement couple months back.

Now one might ask “Why should I take the time to provide feedback, its the HRs responsibility or its the candidates job to follow up” or “What’s in it for me?” Absolutely there are different perspectives on this and you can agree/disagree & debate on these responsibilities.

If you have come so far and your thought process is like “In the endddd.. it doesn’t matterrrrrr” (You are a LinkinPark fan) but that doesn’t help the community.

Past few months I have been providing feedback to the candidates who are rejected and few of them send a thank you note as well. If you are not providing feedback, start right away. By doing this you can bring a positive change in this process and help fellow members by providing genuine feedback (what they were good at and what areas they need to improve along with some resources if possible).

To conclude, we all need to collaborate in the larger interest of making the cyber security community stronger and the interview process of finding the elusive “good candidate” a bit easier in terms of time & effort.