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For most candidates, feedback on how their interview went arrives days after an interview\u2014if it arrives at all. But one CEO has decided that waiting is a waste of time. Instead, he\u2019s started delivering his critiques to candidates on the spot (sometimes in front of a full panel) as part of the interview test.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cStarted to give candidates direct feedback during the interview process,\u201d Gagan Biyani (who goes by @gaganbiyani) revealed in a recent X post. \u201cOften in public during our panel interviews or live at the end of my 1:1 with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CEO of Maven, an education platform, and cofounder of another e-learning provider, Udemy, said it\u2019s the \u201cmost telling part\u201d of the interview\u2014and often a deciding factor in whether they get offered the job or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this is their nightmare, [the] candidate freezes up or even gets offended,\u201d Biyani added it highlights straight away that they are \u201cnot a fit\u201d for the company. \u201cIf this is exciting, they are more likely to join.\u201d<\/p>\n
The California-based chief revealed that he typically reserves the test for applicants that he wants to move forward with. But sometimes, Biyani admitted he\u2019ll even throw the feedback test to candidates he liked who aren\u2019t the perfect fit for the role.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s no right or wrong answer per se<\/em>\u2014he\u2019s even happy for candidates to scrap what they said moments earlier and pivot based on the critique: \u201cNo matter what, we expect the candidate to take the feedback in real-time and change their answers from then on out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The interview tactic has drawn a mixed response. Some commented that they \u201clove it\u201d and that it\u2019s a great way to gauge a candidate\u2019s ability to receive criticism and whether that can thrive under transparent communications. Many others were not so sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPublicly critiquing someone in a high-stakes, power-imbalance situation like this isn\u2019t a test of \u2018coachability.\u2019 It\u2019s a test of who is willing to suppress their nervous system response to humiliation, stress, and social threat in exchange for a job,\u201d the most-liked response read. \u201cFreezing, discomfort, or offense in that context isn\u2019t fragility, it\u2019s biology\u2026. And filtering people out based on how well they override that isn\u2019t selecting for resilience or a growth mindset. It\u2019s selecting for compliance under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n Others highlighted that a candidate\u2019s reaction in a high-stakes interview setting could be very different from day-to-day in the role, that some need time to sleep on feedback before responding, that it\u2019s a \u201cdehumanising\u201d approach that would raise HR\u2019s eyebrows, and ultimately could result in losing talent.<\/p>\n Career coach Kyle Elliott, EdD, echoed that \u201cin 10 years of coaching more than 1,000 clients, no one has ever reported facing this type of situation.\u201d<\/p>\n While feedback is perfectly normal, he said that the fact that it\u2019s one-sided, based on a single interview without any prior rapport, with a job offer hinging on the response makes it problematic\u2014and is unlikely to actually help test a candidate\u2019s ability to do the job they\u2019ve applied for. \u201cThis just reads like an insensitive science experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf your company doesn\u2019t care about psychological safety, likes to put people on the spot, and triggers trauma responses, I suppose you could run this test, Elliott added. \u201cOtherwise, your interview process should mirror the candidate\u2019s day-to-day work environment to get the best talent possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Live feedback is uncommon, but as Lewis Maleh, CEO of the global executive recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, warned, it is growing in popularity.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are seeing more companies experiment with stress testing candidates in various ways to assess how they perform under pressure,\u201d he told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019ve heard of some tech CEOs and startup founders doing similar things, particularly in high-pressure roles where quick thinking and resilience are critical. But it\u2019s definitely not mainstream practice.\u201d<\/p>\n Maleh sees the logic. \u201cIf you\u2019re hiring for a role where receiving feedback, adapting quickly, and performing under pressure are essential, testing those skills in real time makes sense,\u201d he said. But \u201cit absolutely can be cruel depending on how it\u2019s executed.\u201d Public critiques can intimidate even brilliant candidates, potentially ruling out top talent who simply don\u2019t thrive in that scenario.<\/p>\n Either way, with tech companies often setting the pace for unconventional hiring and retention practices, similar tests could become more common across other sectors.<\/p>\n Maleh\u2019s advice to candidates? Practice receiving feedback in real time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAsk friends or mentors to critique your work or ideas on the spot and practice responding thoughtfully rather than defensively,\u201d he added. \u201cYou can also use your favourite LLM chat (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok) and ask it to \u201cact as a very harsh interviewer\u201d to give you practice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFocus on staying calm, asking clarifying questions, and showing you can incorporate feedback quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n But don\u2019t forget that interviews are a two-way street: \u201cRemember that if a company\u2019s interview process feels excessively harsh or performative, that might tell you something about their culture too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #CEO #job #candidates #live #feedback #interviewsand #offended #theyre #fit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For most candidates, feedback … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[1337,2005,542,529,624,2006,2012,205,2007,2008,2013,635,1360,2010,2014,454,2009,2011,2015],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Mixed reactions to the interview tactic: \u2018If your company doesn\u2019t care about psychological safety, run this test\u2019<\/h2>\n
How to handle live feedback in an interview<\/h2>\n