BBC Radio 4 programme Woman’s Hour recently broadcast an interesting piece on graduate job-hunting which exhorted unsuccessful candidates to seek feedback from the employer.
Getting useful feedback can make the difference between
success and failure at your next interview. Unfortunately, too many organisations offer
feedback such as:
“You did very
well and were appointable, but unfortunately there was a better candidate.”
“You didn’t
have any weak areas, but your scores weren’t as good as those of other candidates.”
If you are the unsuccessful candidate, this kind of feedback
might help you feel a little better about the rejection, but it doesn’t enable
you to identify what you have to do to be successful in your next interview.
I’ve managed assessment centres and
interview processes for more than 15 years, and during that time I’ve trained
thousands of assessors. Here are my top
tips for candidates on how to elicit useful
feedback:
1. Contact the
organisation as soon as possible.
You’re more likely to get some helpful insights if the assessors
remember who you are. Ideally, you want
to talk to one of the people who actually interviewed you, rather than an HR
person who is reading someone else’s notes.
2. Be tenacious. Giving feedback to unsuccessful candidates is
probably not top of the assessor’s ‘to-do’ list for that day, so you may have
to gently but persistently chase them.
If you’ve left a message but they haven’t contacted you within a couple
of days, try again.
3. Be nice. Assessors are much more likely to open up a
bit if you are pleasant and grateful.
Use phrases such as “thank you very much for taking the time to call me -
I’d really value any comments you have which might enable me to be successful
in my next interview”. Express
appreciation during the conversation - it will make the assessor more inclined
to give specific feedback.
4. Don’t argue. You might feel that the interviewers made the
wrong decision and you may disagree with their assessment of your
capabilities. But they are not going to
change their minds. You are far less
likely to get helpful specific feedback if the assessor gets the impression
that you want to challenge their decision.
5. Do probe
(gently). Although you don’t
want the interviewer to feel that you are cross-examining them, it is important
that you get specific feedback so that you can change your behaviour at the next
interview. So, if the assessor says
things like:
“We just felt you weren’t committed to a career in this
sector.”
or
“We didn’t see enough evidence of your team working skills.”
Ask them questions such as:
“Could you say a little more about what it was that gave you
that impression during the interview?”
and
“What aspects of my team working experience should I have
emphasised?”
6. Send a 'Thank
You' email. This is common
courtesy and I know of one candidate who was offered a job 6 months later by
the organisation because they remembered how professional she had been in the
way she had handled the post-interview feedback (she had sent a pleasant email
saying that she was disappointed by the verdict but would love to be considered
for future positions).
Image from
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/help/acknowledgement/index.php
