Candidate Feedback
Lead consultant at Test Partnership, Ben Schwencke, explains candidate feedback.
In the context of employee assessment, candidate feedback refers to the process of providing helpful, constructive, and honest feedback on candidates’ assessment results. Making feedback available to candidates upon request is considered good practice, and can significantly impact the overall candidate experience, especially for those who are unsuccessful. Failure to provide feedback often breeds resentment among candidates, leaving them feeling unappreciated and disrespected.
This form of feedback can be invaluable for future interview preparation, helping candidates to hone their interview technique and increase the probability of future success. Withholding feedback from interviews can dramatically reduce the candidate experience for unsuccessful candidates, negatively impacting both their self-esteem and their perception of that particular employer.
Feedback for psychometric assessments is often more nuanced. With ability tests, assessors should talk candidates through their scores, explaining technical jargon and outlining the format of any standardised scores i.e. percentiles, z-scores, sten-scores etc. Although cognitive abilities themselves cannot be improved, assessors can provide resources to help with test practice, helping ensure that candidates are better prepared next time. Personality questionnaire feedback is often reserved for the final stages of the recruitment process, as often there is a significant amount of material to discuss. Assessors should try to balance score interpretation with meaningful advice on personal and professional development, providing valuable insight into a candidate’s personality.
