The notion about lawsuits is basically the answer.
I've interviewed and hired hundreds of people and the real reasons are usually pretty banal, e.g. not a good match between skills and requirements, wants too much money, etc. so in cases where somebody does hear something and they hear "not a good fit" that honestly is usually the case. It's hard to provide more specifics because interviews don't really uncover deep specifics about candidates.
On occasion I've rejected people for less common reasons also, e.g. behavior problems during the interview, poor attitude, etc. and we have to keep those things pretty confidential from the candidate because it would be used in a lawsuit even if it's not an example of discrimination. All the "culture fit" notions in startup-land would be other examples of this kind of rejection.
There's of course all kinds of discrimination in hiring and companies hide behind these practices all too often. I've never been part of this kind of thing thankfully, but I can imagine.
tptacek's old company has more rigid hiring practices that produce what I would guess are strong metrics that help them find good candidates but also might protect them in the case of a lawsuit.
I've also been on the receiving end of rejections of course. Before the second dot-com boom/bust companies used to actually contact you back with a "not a good fit". After that you usually just don't hear anything unless you really press the recruiters.
On occasion, when the recruiting department isn't as well put together as might be expected, real reasons will leak out and those are also surprisingly interesting:
- salary demands are too high and exceed even senior execs. I don't make all that much out of the ordinary for my experience level and position, so that brought a lot of insight into how they function as a company
- bad culture fit - depending on the company I actually felt relieved by some of these rejections and perturbed by others.
- the weirdest one was where the company's internal hr processes were so broken, and they had some sort of internal clock on candidates, that they were not able to process me through the interview rounds in a timely fashion, so they rejected me because it was taking too long to process me. I can say that the interview and hiring process was a real shit show so it didn't surprise me at all, but I found it impressively annoying. I did think about suing them, but then I thought about what I wanted out of the lawsuit and decided not to bother.
People showing up to interviews drunk or high, clear untreated mental health problems, etc.
One guy showed up hung over after walking a few miles to the interview after he wrecked his car the night before while out binge drinking and drunk driving.
I had one large guy block the exit from the interview room and demand that we hire him to do GPU programming, even though he clearly knew nothing about the subject. We said "sure" and then once he got out of the way had security come and remove him.
You really never know what you'll encounter when you call people in for a chat.
Similar experience - interviewing for a DBA position, one candidate couldn't answer the most basic questions, started getting angry and not at himself. The interview is clearly a waste of time so soon I'm saying "thank you for your time today" and he starts shouting how he is a good DBA, just ask his friend Mike, call him right now. I reach for the phone, but not to call his friend Mike. He left before security could get there.
Wow. Can you elaborate on the mental health cases? Are we talking about mood disorders like depression or detachment from reality like schizophrenia or something else?
I probably can't diagnose correctly, but the ones I dealt with personally reminded me very strongly of some schizophrenic family members I have when they've stopped taking their medication.
One guy had to ask to leave the interview multiple times to go wash his hands.
I've interviewed and hired hundreds of people and the real reasons are usually pretty banal, e.g. not a good match between skills and requirements, wants too much money, etc. so in cases where somebody does hear something and they hear "not a good fit" that honestly is usually the case. It's hard to provide more specifics because interviews don't really uncover deep specifics about candidates.
On occasion I've rejected people for less common reasons also, e.g. behavior problems during the interview, poor attitude, etc. and we have to keep those things pretty confidential from the candidate because it would be used in a lawsuit even if it's not an example of discrimination. All the "culture fit" notions in startup-land would be other examples of this kind of rejection.
There's of course all kinds of discrimination in hiring and companies hide behind these practices all too often. I've never been part of this kind of thing thankfully, but I can imagine.
tptacek's old company has more rigid hiring practices that produce what I would guess are strong metrics that help them find good candidates but also might protect them in the case of a lawsuit.
I've also been on the receiving end of rejections of course. Before the second dot-com boom/bust companies used to actually contact you back with a "not a good fit". After that you usually just don't hear anything unless you really press the recruiters.
On occasion, when the recruiting department isn't as well put together as might be expected, real reasons will leak out and those are also surprisingly interesting:
- salary demands are too high and exceed even senior execs. I don't make all that much out of the ordinary for my experience level and position, so that brought a lot of insight into how they function as a company
- bad culture fit - depending on the company I actually felt relieved by some of these rejections and perturbed by others.
- the weirdest one was where the company's internal hr processes were so broken, and they had some sort of internal clock on candidates, that they were not able to process me through the interview rounds in a timely fashion, so they rejected me because it was taking too long to process me. I can say that the interview and hiring process was a real shit show so it didn't surprise me at all, but I found it impressively annoying. I did think about suing them, but then I thought about what I wanted out of the lawsuit and decided not to bother.