Rant - Multiple interviews with no feedback

[Deleted member 651465]

So....

I applied for a senior leadership role within Amazon, after seeing a job advert on LinkedIn. After an initial candidate sift, I was invited to a video call with the hiring manager. This lasted about an hour as an initial interview and went really well.

A week or so later, HR invited me to an interview panel of 4x 45 minute interviews with a variety of other leaders including the hiring manager. They asked for my availability to which I responded with 3 out of 5 days in the next 2 weeks.... of course, they chose the 1 day I wasn't technically available but I reorganised my eye test and accepted (causing me a delay in 3+ weeks for cancelling).

As a site leader, I had to reorganise my diary and "work from home" to facilitate the interview panel but took it on the chin as it was a good opportunity.

Fast forward to last week where I went through the interview panel. I'm not one to complain but the schedule left no time between interviews and one of the slots was cancelled within 5 minutes of the start time:

09:00 - 09:45
10:00 - 10:45
11:00 - 11:45 (cancelled and rescheduled at the last minute)
12:00 - 12:45
13:00 - 13:45
14:00 - 14:45 (this was the rescheduled slot)

This meant I was sitting at home in a suit and tie for the better part of a day, with no opportunity for lunch and the thing which annoyed me the most was the rescheduled slot. Anyway... I did the 4 interviews and felt like they went particularly well. The final interview was with HR who I asked about salary to be told that they couldn't give that information out until the offer stage

....a week after I was informed that I was unsuccessful and that they have a policy "not to provide feedback". I accept that businesses can't give feedback to every person that comes in for an interview but we aren't talking about an entry level job, this is for a manager of a fulfilment centre role.

To be told "sorry, you didn't get it kthnxbye" really ****** me off. I asked to set up a call with the hiring manager so that I can understand where I went wrong (particularly as I exceeded all the requirements for the role and felt that I did well in the interviews) but have not received a reply.

Why do employers do this ****? I've invested 6hrs of my time over 5 different interviews, worked around your diary because you can't read a simple email and get nothing in the way to better myself in the next interview

 

[Kenai]

Cynical response

It's because the feedback is little more than 'we had someone lined up but need to go through the motions of interviewing a few people because there's a fair opportunity policy that says we won't just give people jobs'

 

[dowie]

Because they can, unfortunately, with some warehouse roles like that they perhaps have an abundance of candidates - they're a huge company with over a million staff - that isn't a "senior leadership role" for them by any means, quite far from it. Perhaps for some roles where they've had to headhunt people via some executive search firm then they might give feedback but AFAIK it's a policy for them that they generally don't.

It's worth doing some research into these companies before interviewing them, Amazon is known for being quite efficient and has a policy of getting back to candidates quite promptly, like 2 days after a phone screen and 5 days after an onsite, the lack of feedback is also known.

At other places going via a recruiter who has an established relationship with the hiring manager will tend to get you feedback, other tech firms with inhouse recruiters who manage you through the whole process will tend to give feedback too and might want you to try again in a year's time for example etc...

It just varies a bit, I'd not get too put out at not getting feedback after taking half a day out to interview, I mean at least it's over with quickly then - you got all the interviews together and weren't strung out over multiple rounds etc..

 

[Martynt74]

That's a shame, i interviewed for a Finance Analyst role there a few years back and got quite a bit of feedback from the hiring manager, which mostly co-incided with how i felt the interview had gone, which was poorly! (It was a phone interview at 5pm on a Friday when i'd spent the day driving up to Sunderland for a client visit which took much longer than expected, then took the interview in the car in a layby on the way home).

Maybe because i only went Finance Hiring Manager > Potential Line Manager, made it a lot easier for feedback to be relayed, rather than having to collate with multiple senior people.

 

[MrRockliffe]

@EVH it’s a royal PITA - I’ve been in your position a few times, albeit for much more junior roles by comparison, and it’s really energy sapping.


All I would say, is that the companies that have provided feedback to me/others, have proven to be the best companies I’ve worked for


Then again, it can be highly dependent on the person managing your application




Feel free to trust me if you wanted to do some interview practice or anything like that

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Because they can, unfortunately, with some warehouse roles like that they perhaps have an abundance of candidates - they're a huge company with over a million staff - that isn't a "senior leadership role" for them by any means, quite far from it. Perhaps for some roles where they've had to headhunt people via some executive search firm then they might give feedback but AFAIK it's a policy for them that they generally don't.

It's worth doing some research into these companies before interviewing them, Amazon is known for being quite efficient and has a policy of getting back to candidates quite promptly, like 2 days after a phone screen and 5 days after an onsite, the lack of feedback is also known.

At other places going via a recruiter who has an established relationship with the hiring manager will tend to get you feedback, other tech firms with inhouse recruiters who manage you through the whole process will tend to give feedback too and might want you to try again in a year's time for example etc...

It just varies a bit, I'd not get too put out at not getting feedback after taking half a day out to interview, I mean at least it's over with quickly then - you got all the interviews together and weren't strung out over multiple rounds etc..

Senior Safety Manager isn't a warehouse role. It's one of the site leaders and very much a senior role!

 

[dowie]

Senior Safety Manager isn't a warehouse role. It's one of the site leaders and very much a senior role!

I meant as far as Amazon is concerned, I get it might be in a smaller company etc.. But senior management roles at Amazon pay 7 or 8 figures and the selection for them isn’t going to be half a day of back to back interviews.

I mean if it’s some safety manager role at a data centre or office or something instead of a warehouse I don’t think that changes anything. They got that as a general policy and have a million + employees you’d have to be quite unique or very senior I’d suspect.

 

[HangTime]

Count yourself lucky to be told the outcome, after 3 interviews with them I didn't even get informed that I was unsuccessful until I emailed their generic candidate support inbox, their internal recruiter contact ghosted me.

Not providing feedback is one thing but not even letting you know the outcome I don't understand. It just wastes everyone's time, including theirs, because they have to read/respond to the follow-up emails I sent them to determine the outcome. Surely it would save them more money in admin time to just send a generic one line email saying "Thank you for your interest in Amazon, I regret to inform you that we will not be proceeding further with your application at this time", rather than total radio silence and having to deal with specific questions from me?

In other words, I would have been fine with the "sorry, you didn't get it kthnxbye" you cited, but I didn't even get that.

I kind of expect this ghosting from recruitment agents but it's a poor show to get it from dedicated internal recruiters.

 

[malachi]

Same with me, had an interview with them a few weeks back. Funny thing they don’t give you feedback if you are unsuccessfully but expect you to give them feedback on how the interview went.

I’m still waiting for feedback for interviews I had back in June and July lol.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Count yourself lucky to be told the outcome, after 3 interviews with them I didn't even get informed that I was unsuccessful until I emailed their generic candidate support inbox, their internal recruiter contact ghosted me.

Not providing feedback is one thing but not even letting you know the outcome I don't understand. It just wastes everyone's time, including theirs, because they have to read/respond to the follow-up emails I sent them to determine the outcome. Surely it would save them more money in admin time to just send a generic one line email saying "Thank you for your interest in Amazon, I regret to inform you that we will not be proceeding further with your application at this time", rather than total radio silence and having to deal with specific questions from me?

In other words, I would have been fine with the "sorry, you didn't get it kthnxbye" you cited, but I didn't even get that.

I kind of expect this ghosting from recruitment agents but it's a poor show to get it from dedicated internal recruiters.

Yeah, I can see how that is worse but I was so annoyed by the whole process that I wanted to rant

In the initial interview, the hiring manager had to disappear to receive a package from a courier and speak to his wife, which I found unprofessional. Adding to the fact that I got dressed in a suit and he was sat at home with a t-shirt on... I know I'm the one applying for a role, but I found it disrespectful to the whole process.

To get a cold "sorry you didn't make it lol" email was the kick in the teeth and I just wanted to know why. I guess I'll never know!

 

[Screeeech]

I had 7 interviews with them for AWS (L6/L7 NDE), to be honest my process was quite streamlined. The only hiccup was in the coding interview the guy doing it was holding his newborn baby in his arms whilst I was in the middle of a coding test, it was screaming it's head off through his headset and it was just a nightmare, it was like some weird test of nerves, it was also the final interview of the virtual on-site so I was exhausted..

I got an offer after about 24 hours, I've been there about a year - we generally have a policy (in AWS anyway) to give the feedback as quick as possible - and to be honest, the way feedback is calculated is probably the fairest I've ever seen at a company before. It is a well oiled machine - but it is a machine and you need to treat it like such going in.

To get hired at Amazon you have to really focus on their leadership principles, the whole company lives and breathes them - too much in my opinion, not knowing them will definitley put you at a disadvantange. In my process I did get a clear set of things I needed to do - I had to do a writing test independant to any of the other interviews, they also told me which interviewer would cover each specific subject. The only problem I had was that they'd change people around in the middle of the process, they also sent me the wrong call details for one of them.

It's also worth noting @EVH whist Amazon is a machine - they don't discriminate against people who interview again, you're free to apply again and get interviewed - they won't reject you just because you didn't get through first time, I just think you have to leave it 6 months or so. (there's one guy who's interviewed for AWS 7 times and failed, and he keeps applying )

 

[physichull]

To add to all this, I'm fairly sure interviewing companies have some kind of obligation to provide feedback as to why an individual didn't get offered a role. This is so as the interviewing company could defend their record and hiring process against cases brought against them for discrimination maybe?

I'm not 100% sure on all the legalities etc, but in my last company you had to be very careful what you put in writing in the interview record forms so as not to sound too personal about an individual, etc, that could be brought against you. And legally we had an obligation to provide the candidates with these records, if they asked for them (most don't).

 

[A2Z]

I'm just amazed you spent the whole day doing all these interviews and had no idea what the pay is. I would have asked at the initial interview you had. If I was told they could not tell me there's no way I would have carried on with the process. What a bunch of jokers.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

I'm just amazed you spent the whole day doing all these interviews and had no idea what the pay is. I would have asked at the initial interview you had. If I was told they could not tell me there's no way I would have carried on with the process. What a bunch of jokers.

Wrongly, I assumed that the HR interviewer would have told me on the final interview. She did not . Imagine getting the offer and declining it for being below expectations... madness.

Don't worry.... I had the "rate the application and interview" process email last night. Needless to say, I let rip.

 

[GhostWKD]

Honestly, the way job searchers get treated is abysmal. When recruiting into my teams I always make a point of sending bullet pointed feedback to HR to pass on to the candidate and even then some HR depts haven't passed on my feedback - weeks later I've been messaged on LinkedIn asking for feedback as they didn't get anything beyond a 'sorry but no' mail from the HR dept.

When I lost my job at start of covid (joys of being in probation period when it hit..) applied for literally hundreds of jobs. Many didn't bother replying but then 6 months later started getting GDPR mails "Can we keep you on our system?" type mails, real irony that they couldn't communicate to me but wanted permission to keep my details.

Edit:

Also just realised you mentioned you applied for Amazon; I've applied for Senior manager roles there in Pricing / Analytics in the past, they're one of the companies I heard nothing back from across multiple applications despite being a very good fit for the roles.

 

[Housey]

I would not put this sort of time aside and make these sort of changes to my weeks diary if I wasn't clear on the terms of the role, people I was meeting, bit of background to them as a person, type of people they have in their team etc. Senior roles would typically be expecting people to do that sort of due diligence too. Also as a general point never fear the "how much will I get paid" question as it is usually, for most, THE most important question of all and don't move past the first step without having some clarity on that is my advice.

I get one hour slots dropped into my diary by recruitment to interview people a fair bit. It tends to come with a CV, role background and some briefing notes and I know Amazon will work in a similar way. This is why people sometimes drop out at the 11th hour. It's not professional but you are herding cats a bit and life and job can mean people have to drop out at the 11th hour. You will just be a slot in a diary for most and they will mostly turn up having spent 10 minutes before your call doing their 'research' typically.

Good companies will provide feedback but again in terms of process the interviewer will usually have a format they need to fill in and rarely, for most roles, will they get together as a group and confer on people in our remote world in particular. In my last role we did as part of panel interviews. People would come in, spend their hour doing their thing and we would pretty much conclude at the end of that who was going forwards to offer who wasn't and again would fill in a form for the recruitment person to inform.

However there is no excuse for a decent debrief from the recruiter but ghosting is becoming a bit too regular for my liking in the business world and also candidates doing the same to potential employers.

 

[dowie]

Senior roles would typically be expecting people to do that sort of due diligence too.

I agree, I think in general a bit of due diligence is needed, no shade on the OP as he's perhaps quite busy at work etc.. but there is plenty of info on the process at these big US tech firms, lack of feedback with this one shouldn't be a surprise but is perhaps indicative that due diligence hasn't been done. There is even some Amazon recruiter with a youtube channel who goes through stuff about how to get hired there - as another poster mentioned in this thread (and he no doubt knows best since he works there) they have a bit of emphasis on their management style/way of doing things - not being familiar with and in line with that might well trip someone up in interviews.

Also "senior" is rather iffy whenever it comes to massive companies like this - lots of people go from being a big fish in a smaller pond to being just a cog in a machine at these places, you see it with "levels" and job titles - your senior/staff/principle whatever title elsewhere doesn't necessarily count at big-US-tech-co and your level might be less than expected - your pay on the other hand generally won't be.

It's just the way it is unfortunately - unless you're legitimately senior (as in you're going to be high on the org chart globally, flying in the company jets and big fat grant of RSUs well into multiple millions etc..) then it's going to be a fairly standard process and if you're not familiar with it/don't do the prep then you're lowering your chances massively.

It's almost (to use an expression some love me using) a bit of a LARP at times - perhaps in the 00s when google etc.. were hiring young Stanford/Berkley/Caltech grads then asking them some whiteboard algo questions was a good test of who were the smart kids who knew their stuff on their respective CS programs. These days there is so much info out there re: the hiring process at these companies that these tests can become more of a test of who has done a decent amount of interview prep and rote learned solutions to a bunch of these problems.

Similar thing with the desirable management consultancies - a friend was considering one of the big 3 management consulting firms for a technical position, he'd still have to do all the case study stuff as part of the process - the sort of thing MBA types spend a fair bit of time preparing for and which he had no background in so he ended up in a bizarre position where the company offered to assign one of their employees to "coach" him for a bit so he'd then be in a position to attempt their interview process!

Essentially these desirable/brand name firms have so many people wanting to work there and such big workforces that they just stick to their processes and if you want to work for them (even if you're rather senior elsewhere) it's probably still going to be a case of DYOR and work with the process they have in place.

 

[panthro]

I see jobs for amazon advertised frequently and think I might apply, but this puts me off completely.

 

[blairw]

Had the opposite experience with them, well AWS, but in the end I cut the process short as I wasn’t going to jump ship. In terms of salary expectations etc, that was all discussed with their internal recruiter prior to second stage with no issues.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

To get a cold "sorry you didn't make it lol" email was the kick in the teeth and I just wanted to know why. I guess I'll never know!

Probably wasn't you. My guess is they had someone already for the role.