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I recently made my decision and let some other firms know that I declined my offers there. A partner at one of the firms who I had a great interview with and had been "recruiting me" (sent me an email or two and offered to connect me to others at the firm) sent an email wishing me well, asking where I'd ended up, and asking why I decided to go elsewhere.

I didn't choose that firm for a variety of reasons (didn't feel a great fit, the group I was interested in recently lost a few key partners, they don't give a ton of responsibility to juniors, etc). One of them that sticks out to me, though, is I had a terrible experience with their recruiters. They were bad at their jobs, I thought -- I had to be the one to follow up to make any scheduling happen (getting the second look took a ton of effort + phone calls on my part), they didn't respond to my requests at all (ignored my practice group preference and dietary preference), and they made commitments they didn't keep (e.g. we will contact you by such-and-such a time, we will put you in touch with people in XYZ group, etc). Frankly, this really bugged me -- if they're bad at that, I can't imagine how much of a pain it is to work with admin stuff throughout the firm. Even if they were more appealing, this probably would've disqualified them for me.

Should I mention that? On the one hand, I think their recruiting team sucks (or at least I had a bad experience with them), but on the other hand, I don't want to get anyone fired -- that feels like an asshole thing to do.

Just say something generic and nice and move on with your life.

I wouldn't say anything about the recruiters - odds are the partner already knows about the problem, and either can't do anything about it (no one is going to fire the recruiter regardless) or there were extenuating circumstances you don't know about, so you're better off not mentioning it.

incompetent recruiters are kind of the expectation in the industry. I personally think you'd come off as kind of whiny if you did.

I kind of agree about the whiny thing. And that it is an expectation in the industry. I'm not saying that this recruiter doesn't seem incompetent or that you shouldn't see your experience as being negative but I definitely ran into pretty much all of these issues during recruiting.

The meat and potatoes folks in recruiting offices within big law firms (who do all of the scheduling and tasks that involve the kind of interaction you described) are usually folks a year or two out of college without much experience.

Ive run into that at several different firms both in getting hired and in practice. I know those things seem like personal slights in that they didn’t hold you in a high enough regard, or you believe it reflects on the firm generally, but I’ll echo what others have said — it’s just how the system works. I do think some firms are “better” at it than other but it’s not a great way to judge a firm.

You also don’t gain anything by saying it to that partner.

Is that so? I've had really excellent experiences with recruiters at every other firm I wanted to do a second look at. (They were reasonably prompt, they connected me with people in my practice group, etc.) I guess I got lucky.

I appreciate the advice, this definitely was not the primary reason I decided against this firm. But it felt noteworthy to me.

Why would you do that? There is literally nothing for you to gain, and you potentially risk coming off like a bit of a jerk.

just say you had a great experience with X firm and really appreciate the offer, but you think you'd fit better at Y firm. do you think the hiring partner gives straight answers when he rejects candidates? no.