[ghaff]

One problem with feedback is that the reality is that people are often not hired rather than rejected.

I've been on a bunch of hiring committees (for mostly not purely technical jobs). And a lot of the time the discussion takes the form of "eh," "not feeling the love," or "we can probably do better." Usually it's not about alarms blaring or red flags going up or some specific skill set missing. (To be fair, the jobs I've been on committees for usually involve a lot of interpersonal relationship skills rather than a specific set of technical requirements.)

[harvey9]

I think those scenarios are exactly where feedback could be valuable to the candidate. If the panel didn't feel the love, why so? If I get a low score on a coding test I am already going to realise that its going badly right there in the test so feedback is less valuable.

[ghaff]

In my experience, it's either hard to articulate or it's something I wouldn't say to them like "you came across as very arrogant." Not the same thing but imagine dating scenarios. I've had plenty of situations where there were no red flags and also I couldn't have filled out a questionnaire about why I didn't "click" with a person.

That's not always the case. "Your writing sample was poor" so take a writing class. But I'd say that has been the minority and I could name one mistake where I assumed that was a flaw we could fix.