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Ensuring a great candidate experience is highly important for any organization that wants to attract top talent. One of the ways of ensuring a great candidate experience is to provide feedback on interviews after the interview round.
Providing post-interview feedback is a practice that shouldn’t be considered out of the ordinary. It’s a basic courtesy that all organizations must follow during the recruitment process.
Founder of Amazon and one of the wealthiest people in the world, Jeff Bezos, said: “We see our [candidates] as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the [candidate] experience a little bit better.”
When a candidate receives feedback after an interview, they get to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. Candidates usually spend a lot of their time and energy applying for jobs. That’s why they must gain something from these experiences, especially when they’ve reached the interview stage.
If you want to improve your candidates’ experience by providing good feedback on interviews, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, you’ll learn how to give interview feedback comments. You’ll also be provided with some of the top positive interview feedback examples.
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Evaluation Criteria For Interview Feedback Comments
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Preparing For The Feedback After The Interview
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What Is The Ideal Feedback On A Candidate Interview Process?
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The Major Keystones Of Ideal Feedback On A Candidate Interview Process
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Examples Of Interview Feedback For Unsuccessful Candidates
Evaluation Criteria For Interview Feedback Comments
Before providing a candidate with positive interview feedback comments, you must know how to evaluate candidates after their interviews. Certain criteria must be considered during the evaluation process.
What Are Those Criteria?
Here’s a common set of criteria that is considered when evaluating a candidate post their interview:
- Educational background: One of the most important criteria is the educational background of the candidate. Their educational experience reflects their knowledge of the field. So, the hiring manager must carefully examine how their educational history will benefit the job they’ve applied to
- Work experiences: Whereas education is usually a testament of academic knowledge in the field, work experiences tell about the practical knowledge the candidate has
- Special skills: A candidate with special or technical skills related to the role is always an added advantage and hiring managers must look for these in candidate profiles
- Leadership quality: Leadership quality is a highly desirable trait in almost all industries and job profiles. A natural leader will be a much better asset to your organization
- Body language: Body language cannot be evaluated through a resume or cover letter. It can only be studied in an interview. So, this is something that must be assessed after a candidate’s interview
- Communication skills: Another quality that’s desirable in most job positions in the present day is communication skills. The hiring manager must judge communication with a team and collaborate with them effectively during an interview
- Problem-solving skills: The ability to solve problems is always an invaluable skill to have in employees because it allows them to work their way around any hurdle
- Attitude: Candidates with great attitudes make their workspaces a better place to work. They foster a positive work environment for everyone, resulting in overall higher productivity and better output
A successful interview is one that brings out all of these different aspects in the candidate. And preparing for it keeping these aspects in mind is essential to a successful interview.
Preparing For The Feedback After The Interview
To give candidates feedback on interviews, it’s crucial to prepare well for the interview itself.
Prepare a standard set of questions before the interview, and don’t forget to take careful notes during the interview. After the interview, you can compare your notes with coworkers and form a list of strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. The lists that you made can be used when giving feedback to the candidates.
Remember that you’re supposed to give positive feedback, so constructive criticism is the way to go when evaluating a candidate.
What Is The Ideal Feedback On A Candidate Interview Process?
The purpose of giving feedback on an interview is to help candidates in their job hunting journey. Candidates can use this feedback to improve their profile and do better in their future job applications.
Therefore, it’s crucial to provide positive interview feedback with clear and fair answers about improving. The ideal post-interview feedback must have clarity because if it’s vague, it doesn’t help the candidate. You must provide candidates with clear feedback, highlighting the areas they can work on to get the job of their dreams.
The Major Keystones Of Ideal Feedback On A Candidate Interview Process
Now you must have learned the evaluation process of a candidate. Once the evaluation is done and you’ve decided, the time has come to send the feedback to unsuccessful candidates.
Are you still figuring out how to give interview feedback to candidates?
Here’s how you can provide great feedback on a candidate interview process, with examples of interview feedback for unsuccessful candidates:
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Give Them Your Thanks
First of all, thank them for applying for the job and participating in the interview process. It shows them that you’re considerate of the time and effort they’ve put in for the job application.
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The Decision
Do not stall. In straightforward words, tell candidates about your decision immediately whether they’re hired or not. This should be the first line of your feedback message.
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Summary
The next thing mentioned in the feedback on the interview should be why the candidate was accepted or rejected for the job opening. Again, it should be written after telling them your decision.
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Strengths
Highlight their strengths and tell them where they did well. The compliments should not be vague and must sound genuine. Be specific about the things you liked during their interview and in their profile. Encourage them to develop their strengths further.
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Areas For Improvement
This is the part where you offer constructive criticism to the candidate, which should never be skipped. It would help if you always told the candidates why they aren’t a good fit for your organization and how they can improve.
Tell them what you felt missing in their experience or their answers during the interview. Don’t be harsh. Give them helpful information to be better prepared for future opportunities.
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Words Of Advice
Lastly, your feedback should have some kind of advice, or you could tell them the next steps they should take. For instance, you can advise them to apply for other positions in your organization that are probably better suited to their profile.
These were some of the basic things to keep in mind when delivering feedback.
Examples Of Interview Feedback For Unsuccessful Candidates
We are providing positive interview feedback examples because we believe it’s important to boost the morale of candidates even if you’re rejecting them. This is why you’ll not find any negative interview feedback examples here.
Here are some of the best examples of interview feedback for unsuccessful candidates:
Example 1:
“First, we would like to thank you for participating in our interview process and for all the time and work that you put into it. Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with your application.
We have made this decision after a lot of deliberation. We felt that some of your responses did not meet the standards we were looking for.
We were highly impressed by the strategy method you proposed to solve the customer case issue during the interview. The readiness and presence of mind you showcased earned you great respect from all the interviewers. We also saw a passion and zeal in you for the job, which is always great to see.
However, what we felt lacking were concrete examples of dispute management. This job will require you to manage angry customers and burned-out coworkers. We could sense that you are not too experienced in this area. If you could earn some experience in this area, you would be a great asset to our organization.
Overall, you proved to be a promising candidate, and you were among our top choices. But we do not think you would be a good fit for the role until you earn some more experience in dispute management. In addition, we would recommend you to be more involved with customer service teams in your current organization to have an insight into their work.”
Example 2:
“Thank you for taking the time to attend the interview for [job role] at [organization name]. It was indeed a pleasure meeting and learning about your remarkable skills and accomplishments.
Unfortunately, you are not selected for further consideration for the job.
I want to remind you that the competition for the job was very strong, and we had more than 500 candidates applying for the job. You should be proud that you made it so far, as you were one of the most promising candidates in the talent pool.
While we were impressed by your qualifications and enthusiasm for the role, we felt you were not better prepared for the interview. Your responses felt like guesses, and we didn’t think that you were confident about your answers.
We hope you work on your interview preparation skills and confidence because you are a talented and qualified individual. We will be keeping your resume on file for future job openings that fit your profile, and if anything comes up, we will surely contact you.
Thank you again for your interest in [organization name], and we wish you luck in your future endeavors.”
These positive interview feedback examples are meant to help you understand how to provide feedback on interviews to candidates in a clear and motivating tone.
Clear communication is a must while providing post-interview feedback. Remembering to be sensitive to the candidate while telling the candidate that they’ve been unsuccessful is the key to great feedback. With the help of examples of feedback after an interview provided earlier, you must have learned how to give interview feedback properly.
Apart from giving good post-interview feedback, it’s equally crucial to know how to take interviews. With tried and tested tips for structuring an interview, evaluating responses, and providing feedback, Harappa’s Conducting a Structured Interview pathway, you’ll be equipped to conduct interviews efficiently.
