Interviewing is not a “courtesy”

I’ve worked on the employer side of hiring for many years now, as well as spending a lot of time on LinkedIn and various subreddits, so I see a lot of #discourse from both the hiring and candidate side.

Job searching is frustrating. It takes forever, employers have all the power, and most of the time you just send your application into the void and get radio silence in return. It sucks.

But in reading posts from frustrated candidates, I think sometimes their focus is misguided. There are a lot of things candidates think they want from a hiring process, because they think it would be better than what they get (which is, usually, nothing), but in practice, really isn’t. This is one of those:

This person is very likely just frustrated, and not expressing their exact thoughts in precise words. But what caught my eye here was “... getting rejected without even the courtesy of an interview.” 

An interview is not a courtesy. It is a demand on your time, a demand on the hiring manager’s time, and an important step in determining mutual fit. 

You do not want courtesy interviews. 

I will do a “courtesy” interview occasionally, almost always when the candidate was referred to us by either a current staffer, or someone else we trust and have a relationship with. In this case, it’s not really a “courtesy”; I am giving them a “free” interview because someone we trust has told us that they could be a good fit. That’s information. I will talk to such a candidate even if I am not impressed with their resume, because I have this extra piece of information that suggests they may be great. 

This happens in many ways in hiring; for instance, I may not be impressed with a candidate’s resume, but their cover letter demonstrates superior writing skills and a deep understanding of our policy niche, so I interview them even if they don’t meet the experience bar I had in mind. The bar to overcome a structural weakness in your candidacy is very high, but these sorts of things are how you bridge that gap. 

Neither of these scenarios are “courtesy” interviews, but I tend to think of the first one as such because the candidate themselves doesn’t really have to do anything - I will typically interview such a candidate as a “courtesy” to the person who referred them, because if someone sends a person from their own network to us, I want to treat that person reasonably well, even if I don’t have a place for them on the team. But the courtesy ends with that interview, as the candidate still must stand on their own two legs… the candidate gets an advantage in this case, no doubt, but the “courtesy” is not for the candidate, it is for the referrer. 

What the commenter above is upset about is not that they weren’t given a “courtesy” interview. Of course not. Do you really want employers to ask you to take an hour off work to do an interview for a job they have no intention of hiring you for? The candidate is bothered because they were qualified for the role, but not advanced in the hiring process. That’s a post for another day (being “qualified” for a job is table stakes; not only does it not guarantee you a job, it doesn’t even guarantee an interview, for obvious reasons), but I did want to talk about this particular language, because the discourse on jobs and hiring rests on some sense of what job seekers are “owed” by employers that we don’t always make explicit. Social media has a well-identified tendency to amplify slogans over substance, which makes nuanced discussions difficult. 

My hope, with this kind of post, is to push back not against the anger that person feels at being treated badly in hiring processes - employers routinely treat candidates badly, and there are plenty of ways they could choose to operate differently but do not, public anger at them is deserved - but to push back on the specifics of what candidates and employers ask of each other. Candidates might think they want a world where every job is given after a resume and one (1) hour-long interview, and certainly there are some roles where that is entirely sufficient. But that also gives candidates less space to demonstrate their merit. 

Yes, each phase of the hiring process is subject to various biases. But having different phases in hiring also helps different kinds of candidates succeed. I personally do not think well on my feet, so I’ve gotten most of my jobs through cover letters - I write pretty well, and am good at convincing hiring managers that I kick ass at my profession through that medium. In a hiring process that only allows for a resume and one interview, I am at a significant disadvantage, while other candidates (those magical people who can command a room with their charisma) have a significant advantage. 

I can’t tell you what the perfect hiring process is (I imagine it varies with each role and company tbh). But I can tell you that what rejected candidates think they want, in the moments where they feel most crushed and ineffectual, is often not it. Get your frustrations out, by all means. But be thoughtful about extrapolating your frustrations into structural changes. I don’t mean that as “don’t do it”, I mean exactly that: “be thoughtful about it”. Use the Kantian imperative: consider not what might have allowed you personally to get this one job, but about what changes we can make to hiring processes that actually get better results for everyone.