One of the most frustrating aspects of getting rejected after a job interview (and there are many), is the reluctance of recruiters to give you any feedback so you can improve for your next interview.

After one of many failed job interviews, I decided it’d be good to finally get some feedback on my performance in hopes that I could find some actionable improvements to make.

Right after I received the rejection, I created a job interview feedback survey on SurveyMonkey and emailed it directly to the four interviewers I had seen that day. I also wrote to the recruiter, who told me of the rejection, to ask if she could give me any feedback.

Unsurprisingly, the next email I received said this, “Due to the volume of requests for feedback from interviews and our resources, we are unable to accommodate requests like these.”

At this point, I had already sent the survey (to which one had already responded). Within hours, I received a 1 minute, 30 second voicemail from the recruiter telling me she didn’t have time to give feedback, and I should stop bothering the team. The next day, she called again and left a 45 second voicemail wondering why I sent the survey when she told me they don’t give feedback. She followed that up with a five paragraph email saying the same.

With the phone calls, she’s put 2 minutes and 15 seconds into explaining that she doesn’t have time to give me feedback. Estimating two or more minutes for the email (a conservative estimate), she’s got nearly 5 minutes invested.

Seems to me, she could have given me two minutes of feedback, still have saved herself 3 minutes, and we all would have been happy.

Sometimes it takes more effort to be unhelpful and follow a policy than it does to be helpful.