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Fred de Villamil's avatar

Thank you for sharing this piece of resilience and strong will.

This is one of the reasons why we always give candidates we reject a comprehensive and honest feedback, and invite them to try again 6 months later, provided they really want to work for us: being rejected is hard enough, you shouldn't be looking for the reasons why it happened and company's expectations all over the place.

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Matteo Pecci's avatar

Thanks Polina for sharing this. I had a similar experience when I joined Amazon. My first try in 2014 was unsuccessful at the final round, but this helped me to know better the process (do and donts) and when i had a second chance in 2017 I did not miss it and got it through which changed my carreer. Never give up and believe it!!!

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Polina's avatar

Steve Jobs was right: we can only connect the dots looking backwards. There are some moments, that turn out to be pivotal, years later. But we can never tell in the moment.

Great story of persistence - Amazon has certainly won from it too! :)

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Polina's avatar

Having feedback is really valuable. Some people can take it the right way and improve. But some cannot. They complain and may even sue.

Did your company have any experiences like this - and you still choose to give it?

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Fred de Villamil's avatar

No, it's never happened. Maybe because I'm not hiring in the US first thing. Also, we are very clear at the beginning of the process. We repeat each time if we decide not to continue with you we will tell you why. And we always give a feedback against our expectations we never go personal or even judgmental or critical. We say we were expecting this and this and that.

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Fred de Villamil's avatar

And I agree, 100% that most people can't support honest feedback unfortunately

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Fred de Villamil's avatar

Which makes me think: over the past 4 years, 500+ candidates met, only 4-5 tried again, 2 got hired, 1 didn't pass the trial period.

When you're not a big name, the "try again in 6 months" doesn't get much traction.

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Polina's avatar

This is a good statistic. Most people do not try again. Walls are there for a reason...

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