5 Pointers For Giving Great Interview Feedback

5 Pointers For Giving Great Interview Feedback Imagine  spending hours preparing for an interview, scheduling time off from your current job to attend and then giving your everything  to a probing hiring manager, only to never hear back about where you went wrong and why you didnt get the job.  It would be terribly frustrating and youd likely want little to do with that company in future. Withholding  candidate feedback after an unsuccessful interview is an extremely damaging choice that many companies make. Theres a lot of talk about how important it is for organisations to offer an excellent candidate experience, but who sets the rules as to what this actually means? Its up to individual businesses to decide how they choose to go about attracting talent,  but one non negotiable element to a great recruitment method  is the timely provision of feedback to unsuccessful applicants. Granted, it can be extremely time consuming relaying perceived  strengths and weaknesses to each candidate, hence why its so important to put in place a simple feedback process. Even if a  person isnt perfect for the role heyve just interviewed for, neglecting them afterwards will give them a terrible impression of the business and is likely to discourage all future engagement and probably give you a bad reputation  within their wider network. You might not feel the negative effects of failing to provide feedback immediately, but youll ultimately be shooting yourself in the foot in the long run. Take a look at the following tips  to  help you get it right: 1. Use pre-made scorecards It goes without saying that before an interview, you need to be really clear on what it is you are assessing the candidate on.  Instead of taking down notes next to each question, try creating a template where you can record performance against various specific metrics. It can be extremely difficult to scribe and listen at the same time, so you might find your notes are hard to decipher afterwards.  Creating a simple system to rate a candidates abilities, skills and behaviour will help you take away more thorough information and make for easier direct comparison with others. 2.  Summarise and file  feedback immediately after This one is especially important for hiring managers who are interviewing multiple candidates in one go. To avoid forgetting important details about a candidates performance and your overall impression of them, always compile and summarise your notes immediately afterwards, and be sure to record them on your applicant tracking system. 3.  Relay, dont delay Dont wait an unnecessarily long amount of time before providing candidates with feedback. If you have to wait to complete other interviews before making a decision, let them know this is the case when they leave. If you know however, that they are unsuccessful, let them know as soon as possible. The longer you keep them waiting, the longer theyll spend feeling anxious and the harder the blow will be when they find out theyre unsuccessful. 4. Be honest but  constructive Feedback is supposed to outline how a candidate has performed. There is no need to rip an ill-performing candidate to shreds all in the name of honesty, but its also unhelpful to gloss over mistakes. Feedback should provide unsuccessful candidates with compelling reason/s they werent selected to move forward. The feedback should be constructive  and  help the job seeker to be better at their next interview. Feedback shouldnt be a soul-crushing experience that points out a million and one ways they arent right for the role, nor should it be  a ego-boosting activity where you falsely commend sub-par candidates and fail to justify  the negative outcome. Using examples will help you to explain your choices. 5. Always end on a good note Regardless of the  outcome, you should always end the interview process on a good note with all candidates. Just because a candidate slipped up or failed to convince you they are the person for your vacancy, doesnt mean they wont be the perfect fit for another opportunity in  your team in the future. Even if you are 100% sure they will never be of value to your company, you cant assume they dont know someone who might be. When it comes to winning over top talent, a companys reputation can be a life-saver or a deal-breaker, so dont go burning bridges! Providing candidates with helpful  and timely feedback will not only win you respect from the candidate market in the long run, but will also set you apart from all the frustrating businesses out there who neglect unsuccessful interviewees at the earliest chance. Even though breaking bad news is never fun to do, it will get easier each time, so start providing proper feedback now!