Candidate Feedback: A Detailed Guide

It may seem like everyone knows that feedback  in recruitment is essential and should be of high quality.  Yet, all too often, feedback ends with a vague statement like, “We’ve decided to move forward with another candidate.” And that’s understandable: giving comprehensive feedback is a skill in itself (sometimes writing feedback can be just as challenging as writing lines of code).

Mariia Kutsevol, Recruitment Team Lead at ITExpert, and Serhii Nemchynskyi, CEO/Founder at FoxmindEd, share how to build this skill. In this article, the experts explain:

• why feedback is a must
• which phrases and wording to avoid in candidate feedback
• three techniques that help structure feedback
• how to communicate decisions at different stages (+ready-to-use templates)
• when to get back to candidates
• how to align with your team on the feedback format

Why Candidate Feedback Is a Must-Have

There is no stage in the hiring process where a candidate should be left without feedback. A recruiter should stay in touch from the very first message until the specialist starts their probation period. Candidates should understand where they are in the process, what is happening now, and when to expect the next update. Otherwise, the process turns into ghosting, and the company risks losing strong professionals.

51% of respondents in the Job Seeker Nation Report 2025 named strong recruiter communication — including timely feedback and follow-up messages — as one of the key factors behind a positive candidate experience. And according to the Greenhouse Report 2024, 79% of candidates would be willing to apply to the same company again after a rejection if they had received feedback following the interview.

High-quality feedback works on several levels at once:

• improves the perception of the employer brand;
• reduces the risk of miscommunication and lost conversations;
• helps teams make more objective hiring decisions;
• keeps the door open for the future: a candidate may not be the right fit for one role today but receive an offer for another tomorrow.

Next, let’s break down what good feedback consists of and how to phrase it.

How to Reject a Candidate: 10 Phrases to Avoid

We’ve collected phrases that are better left out — along with stronger alternatives. Adapt the examples to the actual reason behind your decision: polite wording won’t make up for feedback that isn’t genuine.

1. “You’re Not the Right Fit for This Role”

The phrase “not the right fit” explains nothing. Name the specific requirement for the role and show how it affected the decision.

Better: “For this role, we’re looking for hands-on experience with Kubernetes in a production environment. During the interview, we found that you haven’t worked with these types of tasks yet, so we’re not ready to move forward with the process.”

2. “We Chose a Stronger Candidate”

It doesn’t help a candidate to know that someone else was “stronger,” had more experience with the required technology, lower salary expectations, or simply made a funnier joke during the interview. It is much more useful to explain which specific expertise became the deciding factor.

Better: “We’ll continue the process with candidates who have experience building CI/CD processes from scratch. Since you haven’t worked with these types of tasks yet, we’re not ready to invite you to the next stage.”

3. “You Don’t Have Enough Experience”

Avoid relative assessments. Always clarify what kind of experience is missing and why it matters for the role.

Better: “For this position, hands-on experience independently launching a product in international markets is important. Your background is more focused on supporting already launched solutions, so at this stage we see a mismatch with the role requirements.”

4. “You’re Not Quite at Senior Level”

A grade is not an assessment of a specialist’s value or the quality of their experience. Tie it to specific tasks, the expected level of autonomy, and responsibilities on your project, in line with the candidate profile.

Better: “For this senior role, we’re looking for experience in architecture design and team mentoring. At this stage, we won’t be moving forward, as you haven’t yet had responsibility for these areas.”

5. “You Won’t Fit Into Our Team”

Don’t try to define someone’s personality based on a single conversation. If the decision is related to soft skills or cultural fit, describe the expected behavior and the specific facts from the interview.

Better: “After a detailed review, we decided not to move forward because your approach to building teams and processes doesn’t fully align with what we need for this role. We need someone who is more interested in creating team rituals, organizing team-building activities, and reducing the bus factor.”

6. “We Didn’t See That Spark When You Talked About Our Product”

“Spark in the eyes” and “not active enough” are subjective labels and a direct route to a negative employer review. Talk about what the candidate actually said or couldn’t support with examples.

Better: “It was important for us to understand your motivation to work specifically with a B2B product, but during the conversation we didn’t get enough information about your interest in this area.”

7. “Your Answers Were Wrong”

In complex technical tasks or management cases, there often isn’t one single correct answer. Evaluate the logic, the risks considered, and how well the proposed solution fits the context.

Better: “In the system scaling case, we expected the candidate to consider database load and fault-tolerance risks. These factors were not addressed in the proposed solution.”

8. “You Change Jobs Too Often”

Don’t automatically turn the number of companies on a CV into a “job jumper” label. What matters more is understanding why they made each move, what they achieved in each role, and what they’re looking for now.

Better: “During the interview, we understood that you’re currently more focused on short-term projects and frequent changes in responsibilities. For this role, we’re looking for a specialist interested in long-term collaboration and growing within one product, so we’re not ready to move forward with the process.”

9. “Another Candidate Is Asking for Less Money”

Don’t compare the financial expectations of different candidates or disclose details of someone else’s hiring process. Talk about the role’s budget and how it differs from this particular specialist’s expectations.

Better: “For specialists with this level of experience and English proficiency, the budget for this position is up to [amount]. I understand that this is below your salary expectations. If the conditions change on either side, I’d be happy to stay in touch.”

10. “You’re Too Old for This Role”

Rejecting a candidate based on age, gender, race, or religion is discriminatory and may violate employment laws in many countries. If the role requires up-to-date technical knowledge, a certain pace of work, or a willingness to learn new tools, evaluate those criteria directly. Don’t replace specific requirements with assumptions about a person based on their age.

Better: “This position is primarily hands-on and doesn’t involve team management or participation in strategic decisions. During the interview, we understood that you’re currently looking for a broader scope of responsibility, so because of this mismatch, we’re not ready to continue the conversation about this role.”

The level of detail in feedback depends on the hiring stage:

• After reviewing a CV, it’s enough to briefly explain the key mismatch.
• After an interview or test assignment, provide more detail: mention the candidate’s strengths and explain the decision. Where possible, suggest what they could work on. For example, share a review of the main interview questions, with a list of topics or individual questions the candidate could improve on.

The main principle is simple: comment on the candidate’s fit for the role, not on the person. “We’re looking for different experience” is professional feedback. “There’s something wrong with you” is not.

And what if you don’t have anything specific to say? Revisit the validity of your candidate assessment methods. It looks like you may be stuck at the intuitive hiring stage — and it’s holding back your growth.

3 Candidate Feedback Techniques

Even when the team understands the reason behind the decision, turning internal notes into a well-worded message can be difficult. One of these three frameworks can help.

The “Sandwich” Method

This approach involves delivering feedback based on a scheme that balances positives and negatives: The letter is written according to a script:

1. Start with strengths and highlight the candidate’s positive attributes.
2. Introduce areas for improvement with polite “buts”.
3. End with motivation, such as noting that you enjoyed speaking with the candidate.

The DAKI Scheme

DAKI stands for Drop, Add, Keep, and Improve. When using this method, your feedback should outline which skills or behaviors fall into each category.  

Here’s an example of feedback structured using the DAKI Scheme:

• Keep: An understanding of traditional networking technologies.
• Add: Hands-on experience with Kubernetes. 
• Drop: Negative attitude toward cloud technologies.
• Improve: Process automation skills.

This approach can provide clear, actionable insights that can complement a decision to reject or invite a candidate to join your team.

The CAS (Criticize-Ask-Suggest) Model

This method combines constructive criticism, questions, and suggestions. It’s especially useful when you can offer the candidate alternative opportunities.

For example: “Unfortunately, for this position, we’re looking for someone with more extensive Kubernetes experience. Are you open to considering other opportunities? I’d be happy to send you a job description for a Network Engineer role that might be a better fit.”

6 Ready-to-Use Feedback Templates

When rejecting a candidate, they are unlikely to appreciate your originality. What they will notice is respect, specificity, and timely communication. Below are six ready-to-use templates for the most common situations: from screening and technical interviews to a pause in hiring.

1. Rejection After Screening

2. Rejection After a Technical Interview

3. Rejection After a Test Assignment

4. Rejection Due to a Mismatch in Working Style

5. Invitation to the Next Stage

6. Update About a Pause in the Hiring Process

When to Give Candidates Feedback and What to Do If the Response Is Delayed

The optimal timeframe is 2–5 business days. According to the Employ 2025 study mentioned above, 57% of candidates expect to hear about a rejection within three days.

It’s good practice to tell candidates when exactly you’ll get back to them. If the decision is delayed, don’t wait for the final update. Briefly explain the situation and provide a new timeframe.

Here are a few examples of such process updates:

• “I’ve forwarded your resume and technical responses to the IT specialists for review. I’ll update you as soon as I receive their feedback.”
• “The interview process includes three stages: 1) technical, 2) managerial, and 3) a team introduction. You are invited to the first stage, which will be conducted by the team lead in English via Google Meet and will take about an hour. When would be a convenient time for you?”
• “How did the interview go? What were your impressions? I’ll receive feedback from the interviewers within 2–3 days. As soon as I have it, I’ll let you know.”
• “We’re in the middle of a release, and the technical team is fully occupied. However, interviews are scheduled to start in about two weeks. Would you be able to wait until then?”

If detailed feedback isn’t immediately available — for example, if the hiring manager is on leave or the interview hasn’t taken place yet — it’s crucial for recruiters to perform regular syncs or check-ins with the candidate. Recruiters in outsourcing or outstaffing roles often face unique challenges, such as sudden process holds or client decisions to reject candidates without detailed explanations. In these cases, it’s better to be transparent with candidates, apologize for the situation.

Pro Tip: Even the lack of feedback is a form of feedback.

How to Build a Culture of High-Quality Feedback Within the Team

Agree on the ground rules with interviewers upfront:

• How quickly feedback should be provided. To get back to candidates within 2–5 business days, agree that interviewers will provide internal feedback within 1–2 days.
• What the feedback should look like. Create a consistent structure. For example, you can list the main strengths and weaknesses for each candidate. Or you can define assessment criteria (specific skills) and add comments for each candidate to a comparison table.
• Where and how candidate communication and feedback will be managed — whether managers will have access to the ATS, whether feedback will be stored in a spreadsheet, or whether you’ll use separate chats for each vacancy/candidate.

How to motivate the team to follow feedback rules? Encourage adherence to feedback guidelines by emphasizing their value. Be a data-driven recruter: prepare analytics on how many candidates “drop out” due to a long waiting period and what reputational risks this causes for the company.

To streamline the hiring process, prepare a standardized list of questions or topics you want candidates to answer. The interviewing team can evaluate each item on a five-score scale: knowledge of databases, Java Core, Spring Boot, etc. This will greatly speed up the decision-making process and writing feedback to candidates and make the assessment more objective. The scoring approach also helps to determine the grades in IT: perhaps the candidate does not reach the senior level, but you can offer them a similar position with Middle level requirement.

Tables with collected candidate assessments are called hiring scorecards. They are especially useful when you’re hiring a large number of people with similar skill sets — for example, five Middle Java Developers at the same time.

Final Recommendations: Make high-quality feedback a mandatory rule. Avoid reviewing new candidates until decisions have been made for those already interviewed. Synchronizing these processes benefits candidates and hiring managers in your team. They will appreciate it.