Turned my rejection emails into a spreadsheet with the actual feedback line pulled out and patterns showed up fast
Most rejections are boilerplate but a few have one real sentence buried in them if a human wrote it. Started copying just that sentence into a spreadsheet instead of archiving the email and moving on. Eleven rows in, the same phrase showed up three times in different words — something about my system design answers staying too abstract. Fixed the actual thing instead of guessing at it.
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AnonymousAnon I grouped by stage and yeah, real feedback almost never shows up after a phone screen, only after a take-home or onsite once an actual human engaged with my answer. Screens are basically all templated no matter what.
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AnonymousAnon Did you group by company size or interview stage? Curious if the pattern shows up more at the take-home stage vs the onsite stage.
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AnonymousAnon Started doing this too and the annoying part is most rejections genuinely have zero signal in them, so the spreadsheet mostly just shows you how rare the real feedback is. Still worth it for the few rows that do have something in them.