Career Cube Blog

Don’t you wish you knew why you didn’t get that job?  You worked so hard on your resume, got through the phone interview and was called in for the in person interview. You think you’re on a roll, but you never hear back from the interviewer.  What happened?

Here’s a peek behind the interviewer’s desk.

They saw something promising on your resume and decided to call you for a phone interview. That went well-you handled yourself well on the phone and answered the basic questions they asked.

Something happened when they met you in person.

Each interviewer is different, but here are some common reasons why you may not hear back from them.

You weren’t dressed appropriately for the position or company.  Think about the way others at the company were dressed, and the status of the position you were interviewed for.  Were you “dressed to impress”?  One time I interviewed someone for an account manager position that might be a bit of a stretch from what he was currently doing.  I was willing to give him a chance.  However when he showed up for the interview he was dressed pretty casually and didn’t even bring a notebook to take notes during the interview, or a pen to write with.  I needed him to show me that he was going to project a professional image without my having to follow him around to remind him to bring a notebook when he meets with a client.  I expected him to look more pulled-together, and that he was hungry for this job.  I didn’t see that in him, and was turned off.

Your body language was a turn-off.  Did you maintain eye contact with the interviewer?  Not in a creepy-staring contest kind of way, but in an honest, sincere, and interested way?  Did you look comfortable?  Were you jumpy and nervous?  Did you talk very quickly?  What was your interviewer’s facial and body language while you were speaking?  Try to be objective about how you were presenting yourself.  You want to learn from each interview, not perpetuate your problems because you refuse to admit what you do wrong.

You just weren’t a good fit for the organization or with the interviewer.  Remember that they need to work with you day in and day out.  If they think that you’ll be irritating-for whatever reason-unfortunately it’s their prerogative to not hire you.  Period. End quote.  It isn’t fair, but better that they eliminate you now, than you get on each other’s nerves after you are hired.   There isn’t anything you can do to improve your chances if it was just a personality-thing, but just hope that you will have a better fit in your next interview.

So why don’t you hear from an interviewer after the in-person interview?  Consider the possible reasons I’ve outlined above and then imagine yourself in the interviewer’s position.  Would you rather have them cite one of the reasons above, or give you a polite but inaccurate reason, or not reply at all?  There isn’t a best answer, but those are the choices most interviewers are faced with.  So send your followup email, but if you don’t hear back from them, just move on with your search and try to improve your performance in your next interview as best you can.

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Four years ago VisionQuest began with an ebook that I wrote to de-mystify recruiters. Essentially, it pulls the curtain back on them, tells you how to get noticed by one, how to work with one, and most importantly, how to tell a good one from a bad one. It morphed into more than that though - so even if you’re not working with a recruiter, there’s a ton of helpful info in there on interviewing, resigning, all of that.

But I’m not writing this with the intent to plug the book - even though that’s what it looks like. I’m writing it to tell you about how a bad recruiter can really screw things up.

My boyfriend is looking to make a change. He’s a high-level tax guy. He’s a recruiter’s dream, because he has everything a company could want: public, private, international, specific (and not very common) government regulations and all sorts of other stuff. Plus he’s been with his current company for ten years. That’s about as specific as I dare get.

So this recruiter calls him and from the small amount of information provided, it sounds like exactly what Steve is looking for. He checks in with me on questions and prep and everything else he wants to make sure he covers, gets back with the recruiter, finds out additional pertinent information, and they set up a phone interview.

As soon as the phone interview is finished, the company wants to set up an in-person interview so that Steve can meet a few others. That takes place less than a week later. A very good sign.

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Why are you looking for a new job?

This is one of those job interview questions that will be asked by the savviest of interviewers. Although it’s positively heart-stopping to be on the answering end of this question, if you were the employer, wouldn’t you want to know how this seemingly fabulous person ended up on the job market? It’s similar to meeting an interesting, attractive person of the opposite sex, or finding a used car that’s only got 1000 miles on it and is 3 years old. Just a little too good to be true, and you can’t believe that no one else has discovered this amazing find.

Basically they’re trying to figure out what is wrong with you, and suspect they will get a clue by looking at your relationship with your last job.

So your task is to not give them any ammunition to rule you out of the game.

1. Never, ever, ever speak ill of your current employer, or any former employers for that matter. Everyone knows that one reason for this is because your interviewer will envision you badmouthing them when you decide to leave, and nobody wants to think about bad rumors about themselves traveling through the industry. Another reason to avoid dissing your past employer is that in this very small world, they could be a friend, relative or even your potential client at this new job. No person works on an island and you must always be conscious of the seemingly invisible threads that connect so many people.
2. Another never is to speak ill of the tasks you were asked to perform at your past or current job. ANY tasks. You may think that this new job would provide a blissful escape from the tedium of your last one, and so gleefully explain to an interviewer all of the mind-numbing things you were asked to do. However, your interviewer is thinking about the similar (but different) mind-numbing tasks of this position, and decides that you would quit after the first month. There’s no reason to hire you if you’ve already given them a reason for you to quit.
3. Also, you don’t want to speak ill of your co-workers. Those were or are your teammates, and the same rule holds true as reason #1. This world is too small, and good jobs are too few to take the chance.

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