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Updated August 24, 2022You’re reading an excerpt of The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring, a book by Osman (Ozzie) Osman and over 45 other contributors. It is the most authoritative resource on growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, over 800 links and references, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.
Not every company collects feedback on the interviewers and process from candidates who have gone through an interview loop. But doing so can be very helpful in determining pitfalls in your process, especially when it comes to the candidate experience. The key to collecting candidate feedback is to do so only if you have the intention of using it to improve your process. (See Diversity and Inclusion in Tech for more.)
You might send something like a “candidate experience survey” to each candidate directly after their interview process, regardless of whether they received or accepted an offer. A second alternative is to send surveys out in batches once a quarter or at some other interval.
The survey might ask a combination of qualitative and quantitative questions. Quantitative questions ask candidates to rank the experience or a subset of the experience on a scale of 1–10 or to rank how likely they would be to interview at the company again, on a 1–5 scale. Qualitative questions might include:
“How was your experience?”
“Would you recommend this experience to someone else?”
“Was there anything your recruiter or hiring manager could have done better?”
“Anything else, positive or negative, you’d like to share?”
If your company has a recruiting function, you may wish to ask some targeted recruiting questions.
caution It’s critical to keep candidate feedback anonymous.