Brex layoff + 6 weeks

Five: The number of rejections in the past week.

Two: The number of round #2 interviews in the past week.

Two: The number of companies that, after rejecting my application without feedback, asked me for feedback on their interviewing process.

Two: The number of requests in the preceding category that I summarily deleted. Asking for feedback when you don’t give candidates feedback is annoying.

One: The number of round #5 interviews in the past week. It took 3 1/2 hours.

One: The number of round #3 interviews scheduled for the coming week, so far.

One: The number of companies asking for my high school math and verbal proficiency and grades. (!)

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Last week I described how a company passed on me with a perfunctory, “we’re not interested,” after three interview rounds and a take-home test. A LinkedIn comment from Aaron suggested that I should ask why I was rejected. I did that. They didn’t respond.

There’s an old chestnut that companies shouldn’t give feedback because they could be sued or otherwise get into trouble. Giving unethical or illegal feedback could be a problem, sure. But brief constructive feedback after a few interview rounds isn’t difficult:

• “Your coding test submission worked but wasn’t optimal. There’s a much faster solution using map and zip; we encourage you to experiment with them. This Stack Overflow question is for a similar problem: xxxxxxxxx”
• “Your answers to the portal design question were good, but didn’t include all of the considerations we expected. For example, you didn’t include satellite library sites. We encourage you to research system design. This book would be a good start: xxxxxxxxxxxxx”
• “You have good knowledge of product design considerations. But we’re looking for more depth in this position. If you want to reapply, we encourage you to first do significant reading in xxxxxxxx.”

It’s not hard to craft a constructive response that says, “You’re good but we’re looking for more xxxxxxx than what you presented. Here’s a way you could improve.” A pro forma rejection is fine for a cold resume submission, or a round #1 or #2 interview. But after round #2 or a substantial test, not giving feedback is bad form and reflects poorly on your company.