You're hired. Or are you?
Every year, I work with Textio to publish original research about the state of performance feedback at work: who's getting it, how good it is, its impact on employee retention, and more. For the first time ever, this year's research focuses on interview feedback, and it dropped today. 🙀
We looked at this from two angles. First, we analyzed over 10,000 written interview assessments across nearly 4,000 candidates. Then, we surveyed 1,100 job seekers about the feedback they got during their interview experiences.
If you like this stuff, you should get all the data. For this week's nerd processor, I'm breaking down the highlights. I'm sharing Textio charts below, not my usual snarky nerd processor stuff. I think you'll like them anyway!
Top candidates get the least insightful feedback
Our past research has shown that top performers at work consistently receive the least actionable feedback. Instead of specific guidance, they’re showered with generic praise (“Great work!” “Superstar!” “Great work, superstar!”) This isn’t just unhelpful; it’s actively demotivating. High performers want to grow. When they can’t, they leave.
The same thing happens in interviews. Candidates who ultimately get job offers are more likely to be described with vague, personality-focused language like “great energy” or “fun to work with,” while their actual skills go under-assessed. Meanwhile, candidates who are rejected receive 39% more written feedback than those who are hired, suggesting that interviewers feel pressure to justify a “no,” but not a “yes.”
That’s backwards. If anything, your "yes" decisions are even more important to get right than your "no" decisions. Once someone is part of your team, you need to be able to count on them to do great work.
You've heard of vibe coding. What about vibe hiring?
In our dataset, almost 30% of interview assessments include commentary on a candidate’s personality traits. In fact, candidates who are ultimately hired receive even more feedback about their personalities than candidates who are rejected.
These personality descriptions are heavily gendered. Who would have guessed it? Oh, right. Everyone.
Men are described as “confident,” “level-headed,” and “charismatic.” By contrast, women are called “pleasant,” “nice,” and “bubbly,” up to 25 times more often than male candidates.
These aren’t trivial differences. They reinforce longstanding stereotypes and illustrate how decision-makers interpret behaviors based on candidate gender. For instance, one interviewer called an extroverted woman "friendly" and commented that she'd be "fun to work with;" the same interviewer described an extroverted man as "charismatic" and commented that he'd be "great presenting to the leadership team."
A large body of research has shown that, when interviews hinge more on gut feel than job-relevant skills, we make weaker hires. For instance, I love this 2021 study showing a causal relationship between the contents and structure of interview documentation and the eventual quality of hire. When interviewers explicitly document their assessment of candidate performance against job-related capabilities, the eventual hire performs better on the job.
Huh. It's almost like vibe hiring doesn't work that well!
Candidates are investing more time, but getting less back
Today’s candidates expect to invest serious time into the hiring process. More than half of our survey respondents, and over 90% of exec candidates, said they anticipate spending over seven hours in interviews. Yet, even after all that effort, 84% of rejected candidates say they’ve never received feedback on their interview performance even after a full interview loop. Successful candidates don’t fare much better; only 23% say they “sometimes” or “often” get feedback after receiving a job offer.
Unfortunate, but not surprising. After all, a few months ago, I published data showing that 35% of candidates get completely ghosted after completing full interview loops.
Why does this matter? Because feedback improves performance. In controlled studies like this one, candidates who receive structured feedback from trained interviewers perform better in future interviews. The candidates we surveyed confirmed this: those who had received interview feedback in the past were significantly better at predicting their interview outcomes.
The bottom line: Based on this data, about a third of candidates are vibe-hired. They get the job in large part because the hiring team thinks they're really cool. And hey, I like cool people too!
Unfortunately, the research shows that vibe hiring doesn't actually work. People who are vibe-hired are a lot more likely to flame out in their first year on the job than people hired using structured, skills-based assessments. Maybe save the vibes for your coding.
If you like this stuff, join Jensen Harris, Rocki Howard, and me on May 20 to hear some of the most hilarious and awkward experiences we've had being vibe-hired ourselves. Hope to see you there!
Kieran
Are you serious about hiring and building high-performing and connected teams? I put together three of my favorite, tried-and-true meeting prompts that get teams aligned, no big budget required. Let me know what you think!
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