This was many years ago, but one time I did an all-day onsite interview (~6 hours long) and I was ghosted and never heard from the company again.

That infuriates me even to this day. At least give me some kind of news that it was a no.

If you ghost, they’re likely going to continue to contact over multiple channels. Because they want an answer so that they can take next steps. Same as a candidate.

If you say thanks but no thanks, they’re going to want to know why, is there anything they could have done differently, or try to convince you that you have it wrong.

There’s basic human reasons for these very common reactions, we just put a construct in front of one of those groups and tried to explain it away as being acceptable.

There are too few jobs now. Paul Krugman called it a "savings glut". There are no opportunities to invest the cash you are holding productively, consequently interest rates are low and the best thing you can do is buy back your own stock.

There's asymmetry from the other side too.

What's preventing someone from trying to extract $3M in settlement money from a rich company that doesn't want its reputation tarnished in a long running discrimination lawsuit?

And $3M is a lot of money that lawyers would eagerly represent someone that has an evidence of discrimination.

When I did hiring, I had several top candidates take a different position, so I had to go to a second or even third choice.

Anyway, no answer is sometimes preferable to some of the nonsensical standard doublespeak letters you might receive ("niet weerhouden...").

Respect is far to be found in these HR practices, in my experience. It usually reflects in the business who took them on board. Once you see through all these efforts to make people behave exactly like they want, I doubt there will be much workplaces left considering.

If the first company rejects you and tells you so, you can immediately accept the second choice. If the first company rejects you and ghosts you, you instead wait a month hoping the first company will get back to you, then accept the second choice.

If you are willing to completely burn bridges, you could accept the second choice, with the intention of immediately leaving should you hear back from the first choice. While possible, I'd have some qualms about doing so.

Be specific with the details, to make it clear there is no bluff. (If they are so inclined, they could call XYZ and confirm everything you said.) And if they don't respond, then go through with XYZ.

Anyway, unless the first versus second choice thing is about something concrete like compensation/benefits, or work location, a lot of it is just in your head; you have not actually worked at either place.

Sometimes they'll dangle candidates if they're waiting to hear whether their first choice accepts, but even then it's rare not to communicate at all once you've done an on-site.

I was expected to prepare (in advance) a number of things including a technical presentation and detailed answers to a large number of questions, which took me several evenings and most of a weekend. I flew there on a monday for what was an exhausting full day of interviews before my return flight that evening. The recruiter phoned me the following day to say they were very impressed and would be making an offer, but there were some other people who wanted to meet me.

So a few days later I took another day off work to fly down for a second round of meetings. At the end of this second day I was told that the senior manager was abroad and they would finalise the offer when he returned.

I flew back home and waited a week or 10 days before emailing to hear how things were progressing. The recruiter responded "to recap, we are waiting for $manager to return before finalising the offer".

That was about 7 years ago, and it was the last thing I heard from them. I get that employers can't be bothered responding to every CV that crosses their desk, but this was a demanding process that cost me several days effort and 2 days salary. Maybe they lied when they said they liked me, I have no idea and don't really care. But I certainly didn't expect to be ghosted after all that.

A year or two later I had a new colleague who had been working there around the time of my interview, and I told him this story. His response? "You dodged a bullet".

It's probably at least 50% of my interviews. Roughly 1/4 of my interviews have any kind of follow up at all.

It doesn't hurt to tell people that someone else was hired. Closure is important to job seekers.

The only reason I called was because they stiffed my the reimbursement for travel expenses which they had agreed to pay for. The HR turnover was so high that everyone I had talked to before the interview was gone by the time I put in for the reimbursement.

Clearly things went your way if you didn't get the job in that environment.

Funny story about that, I'd set up a macro to fire off said email with one keypress. Finishing up a phone screen that went horribly, I thanked him for his time and all the other niceties, and pressed the key right as I was about to hang up.

"But wait! I have some questions for you, too!"

Cue the longest 5 minutes of my life.

After reading some of the comments here about candidates who want to debate the interviewer's decision, it seems to make sense.

This attitude it toxic and feels like you're looking to turn an interview into a lose-lose situation. It doesn't have to be.

You, on the other hand, are quite possibly still thinking about it every day, and turning down or delaying (and missing) other offers.

I had a one candidate come thru who wasn't a fit. But on top of that, his clothes were filthy and his resume had a bunch of typos in it. I told him after the interview that we wouldn't be hiring for skills match reasons, but also offered the feedback on his appearance. He wrote me a letter a couple years later thanking me for the advice, which I guess he hadn't realized was holding him back.

Another time a hiring manager told me that a candidates mullet haircut was too unappealing. I decided to pass that feedback tactfully to the candidate after buying him a beer. Mullet guy actually ended up interviewing me for a job years later, and brought that up. He said his job prospects got much better after he got a haircut and thanked me for the feedback.

While I think giving no feedback is good advice in general, I think it's fine to tactfully offer feedback to a candidate if they really need to hear it. No one is going to try justifying the ketchup stain on their shirt. Haircuts might be more sensitive, but I was fairly confident mullet dude wasn't rocking business-in-the-front-party-in-the-back style for religious or cultural reasons.

I think you're a ---- for considering someone's haircut a reason not to hire.

* We already had a candidate in mind but our hiring process requires us to publicly post the opening and interview other candidates before we hire the person we already decided on.

Maybe it's to spread the fault around if it goes bad?

This is actually the most common feedback i that i get :D

Definitely. Send feedback from a no-reply box and make this apparent.

It was just a personality conflict that few people would admit to in writing (e.g. "You're kind of an asshole, I don't want to work with you" isn't something you tell a candidate).

Nothing wrong with pointing out a perceived deficit in written & verbal communication skills.

There just isn't much actionable feedback to give. "Nobody felt excited to potentially work with you" isn't really actionable feedback, and sharing that just feels kinda mean for no reason.

If you stress during the interview that culture fit is a large component of the hiring process, simply stating that there wasn't a strong enough culture fit should be enough. No need to go into further detail, there are a lot of applicants.

Someone better came along to fill the role and nobody wants to tell a candidate "We found someone better than you".

It can be relieving to know that the fault doesn't lie with your character or presentation, and that management simply decided to hire the person with more experience.

Barring liability cases, it's all about managing expectations.

On the contrary, most automated reject messages from recruitment systems use something along the lines of "we regret that other candidates were a better fit for this job".

This turns it to be widely useful, inoffensive and can be used instead of the real reason.

What's the benefit of feedback to someone you already decided won't be on the team?

It's meant to be a gesture of good faith towards the candidate that invested their time and energy to interviewing with you, i.e. at least the candidate didn't walk away with nothing from the process.

They were not, but they were super, super nice about it. I was on all their email lists and they would reach out from time to time. In fact the founder took me out to lunch at least three years later just to catch up and see where I was.

He didn't have to do any of this. I've never had anyone but consultancy recruiters keep in touch for that long, and they often feel fake and exploitative.

There was an old saying in Seattle that 'Seattle is a small town'. From a software perspective, there are a ton of people in the city, but up until pretty recently you were virtually guaranteed to bump into old coworkers again, or at least work with people who also worked with them. It's no good pissing off people who aren't a fit for this job now but might be a great fit in three years. They may remember how you treated them... Google.

For those curious, the two companies were Coinbase and Envoy. Interviewers at both companies were across the board superb.

I would probably apply again at places that ghosted me, but not ones who use stress tests. Only two types of people use stress tests. Sadists, and groups that spend most weeks running around with their heads on fire.

You’re not going to learn this about me in an interview, but if you put me in a room of panicked people I’ll be the calmest one. If you keep us there, I may not be the last person to tap out but when I do there will only be one or two left in the room and the end will be in sight. And for sure I’ll remember more details for the postmortem than the next two people combined, and I’ll do more with that info than anyone else.

The ugly truth is that I keep going even when I get into deficit territory, and since I know this about myself I’m highly motivated to prevent such situations for recurring. I’m always on the lookout for antagonistic people and processes. I’ll work my ass off on these problems on my schedule if that means that they don’t keep happening at random to me or others. If the antagonist is a person you immediately go into the untrustworthy bucket.

So if you antagonize me in an interview, we’re already off on the wrong foot, I don’t trust you, and who likes to collaborate with engineers they can’t trust? And since you didn’t give me time to ask revealing questions, how do I know you aren’t like this every day? Working for crazy people just makes you crazy too.