I read an article earlier today about the black hole that is 'The Feedback Deficit' which often haunts students like a poltergeist with too much free time, and the topics covered therein provided some good food for thought when aproaching graduate jobs.
The article was about Marco Erzingher, a Graduate who describes himself as 'someone with a good degree from a redbrick university with a strong history of academic achievement and quite extensive work experience', yet a year on from graduating, Marco's still struggling to find a graduate job he's happy with and is growing increasingly irritated by the lack of feedback his unsuccessful applications receive. Some of the key points the article raised were as follows:
First up, the question I'm sure all students have asked themselves at one time or another, the irritating, the frustrating, the occasionally rage-worthy, "Why won't they give me any feedback?" The response, it's impractical. No matter how unfair it may seem, or how rude it may make companies appear to some, providing genuine feedback to each and every applicant is just too time-consuming to become a reality. Or so I thought. It would seem that Teach First, the largest recruiter after PWC, gives feedback to both successful and non-successful applicants to their Leadership Development scheme. I say seem because I haven't applied nor do I know anyone that has, and seeing as I have no intention of doing the former, I'm forced to take what is advertised at face value. So perhaps it is possible.
But honestly speaking, although I will admit that I equally dislike parrot like responses such as 'due to high volumes of applicants, we are unable to offer feedback on this occasion', which to me just screams of a tell tale 'I couldn't be bothered to give you feedback' trying feebly to disguise itself as a 'At least I sent you something', I doubt feedback will become common practice any time soon. Most companies are not able to take the time to give the kind of feedback that is detailed enough to be useful. As for exceptions like Teach First, they are what they are.
Secondly, responses to the article included the idea of feedback being given strictly to applicants who advance to the latter stages of the application process. Interesting, but then that raises the issue of which stage entitles you to feedback and whether or not the guy who failed at stage one still has the right to ask for some. Another suggestion that the article led to was that employers should think about, and then list, the exact skills that are necessary to do the task rather than a laundry list of generic characteristics like motivation, initiative and teamwork. This is absolutely ridiculous. How would that work in practice? Will employers state requirements such as the ability to make a good advert, the capacity to deal with complex numerical formulae followed by examples, or the necessary awareness to predict market changes? Even if that somehow came about and ignoring how difficult it would be to measure that, what would the application process then turn into? Would applicants just now be ticking a series of boxes or just filling the page with yes's and no's? Again, ridiculous.
Also, employers don't just want to hire someone who can say 'yes' to everything on their application checklist, they're not simply looking for a statistic, not just someone who can do the job, they want a person, and the right person will have the required skills and will also have a personality. Often, the latter includes aforementioned generic characteristics like motivation, initiative and teamwork. So they can't be ignored. A more promising idea that was raised was that companies should install automatic responses into their online testing systems which present unsuccessful candidates with an idea of where they went wrong. It's natural to want to know why you failed at something so that you can try to improve. And if you don't know where you're going wrong, it makes it rather difficult to make things right.
As for how to go about getting feedback, some say you should be persistent and send follow up emails or call up company offices, in some cases this is worth the effort, in others it will just lead to an all too familiar generic response. The best advice available when dealing with this entire issue, advice which you probably won't like, and which I don't like either, is just to get offered the job in the first place so you don't care about getting any feedback. If only it were that simple.
I'll continue with this theme next week.
Charles, GRB Journalist
