It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates, or at least that when companies do, that they legally vet the feedback first (which would make you question the value and candidness of it). I have personally never heard of anybody giving or receiving it myself. So I’m not surprised that you would fail to find cases of disputes originating over it.
I give it whenever asked. Last I was interviewed, I got it at about half the places I talked to.
It's a very natural thing for people to ask about. And answering questions is also pretty natural. The notion that it happens approximately never strikes me as something that needs a lot more evidence than your personal experience.
The entire premise of the OP is that candidates are “rarely told why they got the outcome that they did”. The author claims to have a survey supporting this, but they didn’t publish any of those details. I did a bit of googling and found this[0] article citing a report that claims:
* 69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback
* Of those that did, 77.3% said the feedback wasn’t useful
That leaves 6.8% of rejected candidates receiving useful feedback, which sounds quite plausible to me. In reality “risk of getting sued” is over simplified. If you want to give feedback to candidates, you can choose between two options. Just do it (and risk getting sued), or have your feedback legally vetted. The number of people receiving useful feedback is so small that it’s entirely plausible that those cases mostly represent the employers who choose to accept such an expense when rejecting candidates. The author makes no attempt to explain why they think such risk aversive behaviour is not the cause of the lack of lawsuits, instead jumping to the conclusion that the aversion is unnecessary.
The other half of the headline claim (regardless of any debate about its technical accuracy) is spurious at best. Any plaintiff would know that the threat of filing a discrimination case is leverage in a settlement negotiation. Without knowing how many settlements of that nature take place, it’s not possible to draw such a conclusion.
Finally, the authors methodology is questionable. A survey (especially one that doesn’t report its sample, or methodology) is not sufficient to draw the conclusion “never”. Putting aside the matter of out of court settlements, you’d need to perform a rather extensive study of case law to draw such a conclusion. Certainly something more than “had a quick look, didn’t find anything”.
I don't understand how you reconcile "It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates" and "69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback".
It doesn't have to be useful feedback for somebody to sue over it. But even if it were, I still don't see how your point makes sense. Let's say there are a million software developers in the US. Let's assume they change jobs every 3 years and do 3 interviews when they do change. That's 68,000 things that people could sue over. Even if one in a thousand actually reaches the lawsuit stage, that's over a thousand lawsuits over the last 20 years.
I agree "never" is too strong, but I think this search puts a plausible upper bound on the rate of lawsuits.
