Will recruitment give negative feedback between rounds if you passed that round?

Hi there,

Sounds very promising already!

There may be an explanation for this. MBB and other firms often have a strength based feedback philosophy. This means that areas of strength are highlighted rather than those of weakness; the idea being that energy is best spent turning good into really great ("spike" in McKinsey language) as opposed to decent into good.

That being said, candidate feedback is usually “weakness” based and interviewers consultants will always find gaps to being great. Hence, I'd recommend to specifically ask your HR contact for any improvement areas. But manage your expectations; she already passed on the feedback notes from the interviewers and there's likely not going to be more.

Keep up the good work! Best of luck!

Hello,

I would say typically you get both positive and negative feedback, with the negative part framed constructively as points of improvement (= it may be that you didn't do anything badly per se, but maybe there's something that you could do even better). If you're only getting positive feedback, it's hard to tell whether that's because there's genuinely no areas for improvement, because something got lost in translation, or because the interviewer you got happens to lean more on positive feedback. So I wouldn't read too much into it in terms of where this puts you in the candidate ranking, but it's certainly a good sign - if there were any big issues, they will generally let you know. I would infer this as a sign that you're doing well, but to keep up the good work! Best of luck going forward!

Hello!

Congrats, that sounds awesome!

usually there is a combination between praising what you did well, and pointing out the parts that were weaker so you can focus on them. However, if they didn´t say anything specific, it can very well mean that it was an impeccable job. Keep it up!

Hope it helps!

Cheers, 

Clara

The truth is that it is very hard to give negative feedback. While you sound like you are open to it, there are people who start to question recruiters or even reach out to interviewers to clarify questions. As a result the incentive to provide negative feedback is quite low.

That being said, if you have made it to the final rounds you are doing well and you don't have any glaring areas of concern to work on. Everyone has some minor issues that's normal.

Hi there,

Q: After every round the recruiter would call me and give me feedback. The feedback was always overwhelmingly positive. So I was wondering, does this mean that my feedback so far really has been all positive or do they not mention the lesser points?

They will share feedback according to the performance and usually mention areas of improvement if present. 

However, normally the feedback on improvements is relatively generic so not very applicable. Plus, if it is HR that communicates that, they are referring to what the consultant said, so part of the feedback may be lost / be incomplete.

Good luck with the next steps!

Francesco

Might be both the case, there are some lesser points in every candidate as we can't meet everyone's expectations, but if your positives are high, then it all makes difference, and you will definitely get selected for the job. You should also keep yourself motivated and interested both.