[jakobegger]

> In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all

I can't imagine that this makes any sense.

Let's say you give every interviewee feedback:

- 90% of candidates will be grateful

- 10% of candidates will not like the feedback and start to argue (at this point ignoring emails might make sense to avoid wasting time)

- 0.01% of candidates will actually sue you over it

The lawsuit will probably go nowhere, and in the worst case cost €10.000 in legal fees.

But all the good will from the other people must be worth something! Maybe one of all those people who you gave good feedback refers a friend, and they apply to your company. If you hire that person, you just saved 10.000€ that you don't have to pay a recruiter!

So either all these lawyers are giving bad advise, or maybe my numbers are wrong? I've never heard of a lawsuit where a candidate sued a company as a consequence of interview feedback that they got, so I assume that must be a very rare occurrence.

[desas]

The lawyers are correctly suggesting how to minimise legal risk, it's up to HR and the company if they feel like the risk is worth it.

The lawyer isn't likely to get upside of giving feedback, they will likely get the downside of the company gets involved in legal stuff.

[jakobegger]

> The lawyers are correctly suggesting how to minimise legal risk, it's up to HR and the company if they feel like the risk is worth it.

A good lawyer should also tell you how big the risk is that you are avoiding, otherwise their advise is worthless.

[scarejunba]

Well, I have no trouble giving feedback these days because life's too short not to, but that isn't even an accurate description of the problem.

A prospective job seeker goes on Glassdoor. 100 companies. 99 with only positive and neutral reviews, maybe some negative saying "rejected without feedback". 1 with a rant about how they're disrespectful dicks who are just assholes. "It wasn't the feedback. They weren't even correct and they just told me I wasn't up to their so-called 'standards'. Completely rude in their email correspondence.".

Go on, you read that, you have 99 other places to apply to. What do you actually do?

[ChuckNorris89]

What if the other 99 other places do the same thing because it's the new norm now? Do you stay unemployed?

[Kalium]

> But all the good will from the other people must be worth something!

Is it possible that there may be a distinction to be made between all the good will from the other people being worth something and all the good will being worth more than the legal headaches, PR headaches, and other potential consequences of someone reacting badly to feedback?

This is the kind of question that demands a quantitative analysis, but I hardly know where to begin beyond that it's an expected value question. Where do you go about putting a number to the value of something that "must be worth something"?

[crististm]

where did you get those figures?

[nothrabannosir]

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say: they’re guesses, feel free to post better ones. Especially if it changes the conclusion.

[jakobegger]

I made them up.