The power of instant feedback in interviews

We believe interviews should be a respectful, two-way process that lets candidates learn about us as we learn about them. To that effect, we use immediate and honest feedback to build trust, benefit candidates and reflect our culture. In this blog post, you’ll hear from Ahmootha Ramachandran, Head of TA APAC, JingQuan Lee, Advanced Software Engineer and Malte Hartwig, Principal Software Engineer, about the benefits of instant feedback, the challenges involved and the impact on candidate experience. 

In brief:

• What is instant feedback and why does it matter?
• How does instant feedback reflect our culture?
• How does instant feedback go beyond the interview process?

Interview feedback can feel intimidating, but if you’re eager to hear how well you did on your most recent job interview, instant feedback is really useful. You don't need to wait days or weeks to hear back from a recruiter, you'll get your answers there and then during your interview. Here at Zühlke candidates will go through their interview, and the interviewers will then ask the candidate to stay online or in a meeting room for a moment for them to debrief, before giving the interview feedback right then and there.

 “We want to set the candidates up to show their best,” explains Malte Hartwig, Principal Software Engineer. “Giving effective feedback on the spot is a skill that needs to be practiced, but it means we can get more out of the interview. Instant feedback offers the candidate a chance to react to the interview feedback and gives us, as the recruiter, a bit of additional information that we might not have had otherwise.”

Our interviews cover two aspects: the cultural assessment and the technical assessment. “We pay a lot of importance to both parts, as we need the right balance,” explains Ahmootha Ramachandran, Head of TA, APAC. “Even if we have a talent who has all the qualifications we’re looking for, we still pay a lot of attention to their cultural fit. We need to ensure they align with our culture and our collaborative way of working.”

JingQuan Lee joined us in June this year as an Advanced Software Engineer. “Before attending my interview, I had been to 10 other software interviews and the interviewers would take on a very passive role, assessing me via a checklist. 

Instant feedback reflects our values, with engineering at our heart. Typically, engineers are analytical and direct, so it’s a natural way of working. “We debug as a day-to-day activity, so it makes sense that we also debug interviews,” says Malte. 

“People often tell me they are looking to grow, learn more and expand their abilities and I can confidently say from my own experience that this is the case at Zühlke. People here are happy to drop what they’re doing to help you out. The collaborative mindset of doing things together is core to our approach and what sets us apart as a company. We’re able to build trust through transparency and open communication here. And we’re able to show people in the interview what it’s really like to work here.”

As a digital transformation partner, we are in a very competitive talent market. An advantage of our open, feedback-driven interview approach is that we gain the interest of the candidate very early on.

“We’re able to retain talent through our job application process and we don’t often lose people through it,” explains Ahmootha. “One of the reasons for our high offer acceptance rate is that candidates can see and feel the effort that we make.”

Having recently joined the team, JingQuan explains how useful the instant feedback was for him and how it made him feel. “The main feeling is respect,” he says. “In other interview situations, I have no idea what the interviewer is thinking. After the interview I went away having learnt something about myself and how I could improve myself if I were asked a similar question in a future interview.”