An effective interview feedback to the candidate can help you in the hiring of some of the best talents. When you are looking for the best candidate for your company or team, you are likely to go through a long and tiring process of hiring. So, you’ll haveto provide feedback effectively in order to organize yourself for picking the best candidate for the job.

The following points will let you know how toprovide or write an effective interview feedback:

1. Provide a Clear Answer

You need to be clear about the answer to the candidate if she/he is a “hire” or a “no hire.”

The answer must be on the first sentence of your feedback.

2. Give a summary

This part of the interview feedback answers clearly why you hired a particular candidate or why you didn’t consider the person for the position. This summary should be written right after the “hire” or “no hire” part.

An example of a summary is “Hire — then mention (the name of candidate) has good communication skills. She/He possessed the skills needed for the job and displayed amazing data analysis and research skills. She/He is quite knowledgeable about the position and the industry.

3. Provide a First Person Description

The following paragraph or lines would talk about the candidate from the first person point of view i.e. this section will talk about your own experience and thoughts about the candidate.

It should answer the questions like will she/he fit the company/team? Did she/he answer all the questions correctly? Were she/he was engaged in the conversation?

An example of this is “I liked how (name of candidate) expressed her/his opinion about the new trends in the (specific) field and agreed with her/him on most of the answers. She/he is straightforward and can very well fit the data and research team.

4. Mention The Pros and Cons of the interview

You need to list down the pros and cons of an interview for your reference and the candidates’ too. List the pros for them to help them keep the trait and cons to let them know where they can improve upon.

This is where you find the strengths of the candidates and if you can consider them in the future if you are not interested now in her/him.

An example is (Name of the candidate) expressed great knowledge in the field of medicine or pharmaceuticals, however we are looking for people in data and analytics currently. In the future, we can consider her/him if a role in that particular field comes up in our company.

5. Let them know if they are Capable

The last section of the interview feedback is judging and writing to the candidate if she/he can do what is required of her/him.

An example is (Name of the candidate) has good knowledge of our company. She/he is familiar with the ongoing project and a perfect fit for the team. She/he is capable of doing the job perfectly and can be on boarded without much training.

DON’TS OF AN Effective INTERVIEW FEEDBACK

Don’ts

1. Don’t ever be rude

You don’t need to be rude ever while providing the interview feedback. You have more power over her/him during an interview, but that doesn’t make you better than her/him. Always remember that everyone is equally good at something or the other.

Be very mindful and adjust the tone of your feedback accordingly not to sound rude and mighty but polite, neutral and helpful.

2. Don’t make false promises

On the contrary don’t be too kind also and tell a candidate that you are still considering even if you have no intention of really hiring her/him.

Don’t say that you’ll keep their CVs on file if you don’t have that intention to. It will lead to resentment later, which is not good anyways.

3. Never compare

While conducting a group interview especially, there is no need to say that someone is better than the other.

Do not ever compare. If you want someone to improve then comparing them directly with others would hurt the candidate and the chances of improvement is diminished.

4. Never be careless

Be careful always about the words you use and how you communicate with the candidates.

You wouldn’t want to risk yourself or the company towards any legal hassles. Always be sensitive to the situation of the candidate while interviewing. It needs a lot of empathy.

Always be helpful and positive towards them. That’s the right way you can provide effective interview feedback to the candidates. These people would learn a lot just as much as you would learn from them.

SUMMARY:

Providing or writing an effective interview feedback to a candidate is extremely important for an organization, as regardless of whether the candidate was hired or not, it not only improves consistency, but it also reduces the risk of any exposure from a candidate who is negative about not getting the job and is an important part of the recruiting process. Hence, it’s worth following all the points mentioned here looking at the long term benefit of the company in regard to it’s brand and reputation.