Can I ask The Interviewer Why I Wasn't Hired For The Position? Career / Job Advice

Can I Ask The Interviewer Why I Wasn’t Hired?

Seeing as how we cover all things Business & Lifestyle we often touch on workplace issues.

Recently on a lot of online forums and message boards about jobs, the workplace, and careers I see a lot of threads asking if it’s okay to ask an interviewer why you weren’t hired and some people even want to ask what they could improve upon.



Though you should be applauded for persistence as well as wanting feedback to improve and hopefully land the next job it’s not your interviewers job to be your job coach, career counselor, or critic.

Another topic that often comes up which is somewhat related is many people complain about not getting correspondence back from a company they applied to. Today were going to touch on both of these topics.

Why Your Interviewer Won’t Answer Your Questions

If you decide to follow up with an interviewer and try to figure out why you weren’t hired you will probably meet a brick  wall they most likely won’t return your call if they can avoid you.

If you do get a hold of them you will most likely get a pretty generic answer like “we found someone who was a better match for the position.”

In this litigious world we live in saying the wrong thing or even just something coming out of the interviewers mouth wrong could lead to a lawsuit so that’s one reason they won’t answer you.

I think the simplest answer to this question however is simply that they are a professional, they have a job to do and that job is to find an employee for said position. You may think your just asking a question which takes a quick second to answer but imagine if all those hundreds or thousands of people who applied for the job want an answer as to why they are not hired how much of a time drain that is on the person looking for an employee.

Lastly and I don’t blame those trying to get a job for this but even if the employer gave you a straight answer on why you were not hired I imagine many people would take that as an opportunity to try to rebut those critiques and attempt to talk the interviewer into giving them another consideration.

Overall though it’s just not their job to play career coach for you. It may sound harsh but that’s how it is, it’s business.

Why Don’t Companies Bother To Let You Know You Aren’t Getting Hired?

This is another question that comes up again and again on job boards and forums.

I completely agree if you have a face to face interview and even more so if  you have multiple rounds of interviews the least a potential employer could do is give you a call or at least shoot you an e-mail saying they appreciate your interest and taking the time to apply and go through the process but they found a better fit for the position.

Doing this lets you know that you need to continue your job search and not get hung up on that job and shows some appreciation for you taking the time to apply, taking days off work to come interview, etc. Though it’s the right thing to do it’s not always done but I have to agree with the posters on this one that if you’ve been through multiple rounds of interviews you deserve some correspondence hearing you didn’t get the job.

I’m always surprised however when people who just send in an application and don’t have any interviews or correspondence with the company wants to get a rejection letter.

Guess what, if you don’t hear anything back that’s your rejection. Hiring is a time consuming and expensive process and it’s not reasonable to ask a company to devote manpower to putting a rejection letter together or the expense it would cost to have those letters printed and mailed which is probably 0.18 or 0.20 cents even at bulk rate to tell you that you aren’t getting the job.

Like I said, I’m always surprised people want that rejection postcard. Do you feel better when you get it and know for sure you didn’t get the job? Probably not so why do you want that letter.

The second thing if your anything like me your job search starts out researching the companies, spending time putting together a cover letter tailored to that job, etc. After that job hunting fatigues sets in though many of us often just start applying to every job on Monster, Craigslist, and CareerBuilder and figuring if someone gets back to me then I will take the time to research the company and learn about the position which is actually something you should do before even applying, I admit I’m guilty of this too though.

Half of these companies had they gotten back to me I would probably learn I wasn’t even interested in the position so for that reason it would be a waste of time and money for them to bother sending someone like me a rejection letter.

The only reason I can really think people want a rejection letter is this. They apply to their dream job say working at Facebook or something. They then kind of sit back and put their job search on hold because working at Facebook is what they really want to do, they don’t want to work at Dunder Mifflin a mid level paper supplier.

What winds up happening is they sit around for a month waiting to hear back and not job hunting and then eventually hear they didn’t get the job and now they are starting from scratch again after having waited a month sitting on the sidelines.

Even if you apply and think you have a chance at landing your dream job continue applying and if you receive another offer then have that debate with yourself over whether it’s worth sitting on the sidelines waiting to hear back from Facebook but in the meantime continue applying so you have other pokers in the fire so to speak.

We always love hearing from our readers but this is especially a topic we would like your feedback on. As a job seeker do you expect to hear that you didn’t get the job?

Also, if you are or have been a hiring manager or HR person in the past do you get back to those who apply and if so under what circumstances, i.e. They made it through 2 rounds of interviews, 3 rounds of interviews, etc? Leave a comment below and let us know.