| Jumping in as a CTO and hiring manager currently spending 50% time on recruiting: We're definitely to blame as well. In the beginning, I really made an effort to be courteous and polite to every single candidate and give them their optimal chance at learning something from the interview process, but I realized that recruiting is a process that really does suck for everyone. Especially now that we're scrambling to grow, I need to constantly prioritize in order to just stay sane and get forward. If I've interviewed 10 candidates in a week and there was one or two which were really interesting, that's what I'll be focusing on first. Whether I get to write 8 rejections in detail, it doesn't matter for the company. At least in the short term. And chances are >50% that candidates don't perceive detailed and honest feedback in a good way (even with the best intentions), so I might get stuck in a discussion about details going forward when nothing changes that "no". Nothing good came from that for either me or the candidate ever. Rejections always feel like failure and honestly I hate writing them as well, as I know I'm always hurting someone. It's not a part of my job that I'm proud about (hence the throwaway too), but this is frankly my thought process around the whole thing. I've been on the other side of the table multiple times, so I know how much the candidate experience sucks, but that's how it goes. If you're searching for a job, just do yourself a favor and go broad while not taking anything too personal. It's very much in your best interest to get the bidding war for your person on, so never fall in love with any single job offer. |
It sounds like you’re rationalizing how desensitized you are behaving and scapegoating it with being busy as an excuse.
Either you care and you make time to solve them problem (including by growing slower so your humanity and dignity remains intact, which sounds pretty questionable) or else admit you openly don’t care about candidates and you choose to value the marginal use of your time focused on growing the business higher than you value doing the right thing or coming up with a solution that meets some minimum level of care.