My unprovable conspiracy theory is there is a lot of unconscious bias and prejudice in recruitment till this day. An overwhelming majority of people who progress with US/MC/SC firms come from a very particular demographic that makes up such a tiny proportion of the population.
If these firms said they will only hire XYZ type of candidates it would result in discrimination suits cos its breaching protected characteristics. Like having an ethnic name, being from a certain area or going to a ‘low-ranking uni’, if firms explicitly said we we don’t want this = bad for PR.
Oddly enough, two of the firms I have been able to progress with didn’t seem to use any contextual recruitment tools (or at least I can’t remember if I entered the data). Other firms which seem to do a lot of parading around social mobility had outright rejected me (same exact credentials on paper).
So my idea is firms avoid offering feedback cos they’d end up digging their own holes admitting they rejected candidates for arbitrary and unfair reasons. Surely being transparent about what it is you’re after from candidates (e.g., Cleary) will rly make this process much more transparent.
I think what you're saying has merit, but just to input it's also blind luck to an extent. For example, I don't think there is necessarily rhyme or reason to most SJTs for example (every firm will prioritise values, and the sliding scales really make no practical sense most of the time) other than being a tool to get rid of a % of applicants at random, knowing that even if they get rid of loads of competent candidates they will still statistically have more than enough left in the pool.
When it comes to VIs, I assume they have different people assessing VIs. There may be checks etc, but in reality there comes human error/human discrepancy when reviewing them r.e. standards and what they think is good/bad. That's the same I guess with applications questions, forms etc.
The WG test is probably the more objective test, but I guess they have to combine it with other measures or they'll still have too big a pool of candidates (especially as people practice it a lot).
I don't want to be downer on anybody, or make anybody feel like it's hopeless, if you improve in quality of applications, interviews etc and you have submitted multiple applications then the odds do improve, and possibilities to showcase your abilities do too. But there is still a luck aspect, especially amoungst a field amoungst super strong super competitive candidates.
