The Gift of Mutual Feedback
By Edgility Consulting
Summer 2023
Nurturing a positive candidate experience isn’t at the forefront of every hiring manager’s mind. They’re often buried under a mountain of applications, scheduling interviews every hour of the day and sifting through potential candidates. It’s natural for candidates to crave feedback, but few hiring managers can spare a moment they don’t feel like they have. Taking a few extra steps to do so could make the hiring process a lot easier.
Giving constructive feedback to candidates allows for an open dialogue about the entire process. This opportunity is invaluable for organizations that hope to evolve and improve their hiring culture. And if you can give honest, empathetic feedback to your candidates, you can often expect to receive it back. The back-and-forth sparks curiosity and forwardness, enabling your organization to work towards a more people-centered and equitable hiring process.
Unwrapping the Evidence
Feedback is proven to help affirm strengths and aid in accountability for shortcomings. When applied to candidates, it empowers them to make changes to better themselves for their next opportunity. Mutual feedback, where the candidate gives the organization feedback on how they felt during the hiring process, can foster necessary changes in processes, systems, and hiring culture.
Even though mutual feedback seems to be a net benefit, it’s just as true that egos tend to get in the way of this being an easy process. T he mind doesn’t enjoy being critiqued, even if the critique is kind, valid, or useful. This defensiveness can arise in the candidate and the hiring manager and defeats the purpose of feedback, as neither party will view a defensive position as constructive.
Still, there are multiple actionable ways organizations can cultivate a hiring culture that emphasizes positive mutual feedback. And in doing so, you can harness that valuable feedback to create a more equity-based work environment.
Incorporating Feedback in Your Process
At Edgility, we make it it goal to provide one-on-one feedback once they’ve begun engaging with the client. It’s proven to facilitate mutual respect with our candidates, and it’s part of why we have strong relationships with them regardless of the outcome. Remember, just because a candidate isn’t the right fit for one role, doesn’t mean they aren’t the right fit for the next one!
We use actionable feedback and approach with good intent. It’s only human to feel like thoughtful critique can be harsh criticism. But the kind and human-centered feedback we aim to offer is difficult to deny and helps pave the way for a more constructive conversation about overall hiring process improvement.
One way to collect candidate feedback is by distributing post-search surveys. These allow prospective hires to be more candid with their thoughts and feelings about their experience. It’s another source of valuable information for organizers and hiring managers to tap into, and it’s built into Edgility’s process.
Giving some agency to the candidate with surveys and one-on-one feedback with individual recruiters, even if rejected, liberates the candidate from feeling the emotional overwhelm that comes with rejection. Instead, they’re free to analyze and reflect on the feedback they’ve received and make strides toward bettering themselves as they move forward. In turn, it also helps them give better feedback without being clouded by ego.
It’s an ongoing endeavor to provide healthy, kind feedback to potential hires, and many hiring managers need help finding room for it in their busy schedules. But Edgility’s approach removes many roadblocks and uses a people-first approach to improving an organization’s hiring process. It’s a worthwhile effort to change processes and behavior to be more equitable, and when you commit to it, you’ll find it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Founded by Allison Wyatt and Christina Greenberg, Edgility Consulting is a talent services firm that helps mission driven organizations bring practice and structure into alignment with their values. Through compensation and talent management consulting and executive search practices, Edgility partners with clients to build intentional equity. Learn more about Edgility here.
This post is part of the America Achieves Talent Summer Series. America Achieves is a national nonprofit organization founded in 2011 to strengthen democracy by building educational bridges to the middle class and re-establishing the link between work and opportunity.
In early 2023, America Achieves selected Bolster, Edgility Consulting and LER Consultants (LER) and DGW Consulting Group (DGWCG), all nationally recognized talent sourcing and executive leadership firms, to participate in a philanthropically funded national talent pipeline pilot project known as the Collective Impact Talent Initiative. The Collective Impact Talent Initiative builds upon America Achieves’ work with equity-centered economic growth and workforce regional coalitions through the Commerce Department’s Build Back Better Challenge and Good Jobs Challenge, both of which were part of the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan. The Collective Impact Talent initiative, with its partners, provides inclusive, place-based regional coalitions from across the country, from upstate New York and Central Valley California, to Virginia and Texas, among others, with individualized and capacity-building support to source, recruit and hire the key diverse talent needed to drive the regional coalitions’ innovative and bold visions of equity-centered economic growth and workforce development. The Collective Impact Talent Initiative is grounded in the belief that coalitions and their work are only as good as their teams and people. You can learn more about the Collective Impact Talent Initiative by going to catalyzeblog.americaachieves.org/talent_initiative or by emailing catalyze@americaachieves.org.
