Reasons why you didn’t get the job offer

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It’s really easy to take things personally when an interview doesn’t go your way, and you aren’t offered the job you wanted. There are a bunch of different reasons why you may not get a job offer- job interviews can be incredibly competitive, and there are always far more hopeful candidates than there are open positions.

By exploring the reasons you may be be rejected from a job offer, you can de-risk yourself as a candidate and eliminate the ways that the interview might not go your way.

You seemed nervous, or desperate for the role

As a candidate, you are selling- and nervous sellers always make buyers uneasy. You have to convey confidence- if you don’t, it will be harder to form a connection with your interviewer, and harder to convince them that they would be missing out by not hiring you.

Similarly, you must remember that a job interview should be a process of assessing a MUTUAL FIT. You must search for details that convince yourself this is the right role for YOU, and convey that it’s not a one way street. The best candidates know they’re in demand, and will not be satisfied to just answer questions that are thrown their way without looking to do their own detailed due diligence.

You failed to make a personal connection with the interviewer

Interviews sometimes feel a little stiff or awkward, but it’s your job to fight through that barrier to develop a rapport and comfortability with your interviewer. The reason this is so important: at the end of the day, interviews are there to establish who your interviewers will be working with in the future. You want your interviewer to look forward to working with you, and personality and culture fit are a big part of this.

That doesn’t mean you can charm your way through any interview. But what it does mean is that rapport building and forming a personal connection cannot be forgotten in your rush to memorize your resume or the accomplishments you’re going to talk about. Fight to stay present and in the moment with your interviewer, and your performance will improve.

On the other side of the coin, you came off as cocky and not humble

Job interviews are a delicate balance of being confident in yourself and your accomplishments, while not coming off cocky. You should not convey a sense that you are God’s gift to whatever teams you’ve been a part of in the past. You should feel comfortable speaking about your own accomplishments, but always share credit when credit is due, and NEVER throw an old boss or teammate under the bus.

Any of these negative vibes you throw off will be picked up quickly by an interviewer, and shared with the hiring panel when they discuss your interview performance. This type of red flag is a very quick way to put yourself out of the running.

The needs of this role were super specific, and another candidate happened to be a perfect fit

Sometimes, you can have an amazing interview, but you’ll lose out to a candidate whose experience was simply more directly aligned with the expectations of this new role.

In my own career, I have worked in sales organizations that sell collaboration software. If there was one opening available for one of these teams, someone who has experience selling collaboration software might be seen as a better fit than someone who sold advertising technology, regardless of who performs better in the interview. That is why mapping requirements and responsibilities to your own accomplishments is so important, you want to convey a direct fit between what you’ve done, and what you’d be expected to do.

You didn’t pass the technical or role specific aspects of the interview

The more competitive and elite a job is, the higher the likelihood that you will be tested on technical, role specific details of the role.

In a consulting interview, you may have to prepare hours and hours of work around different case studies. For an investment banking interview, you may be asked to explain key financial concepts, and respond on the fly to various valuation questions that test your mental mathematical acumen. In a sales interview, you may be asked to do a mock discovery call or a sample pitch.

In this regard, interviewing as a candidate is like being an athlete. The more you figure out what the technical detail of the interview will entail, and the more you prepare, the better you will perform.

Your background was not strong enough

There is a reason that people fight tooth and nail to go to schools like Harvard and Yale- there are very few people who applied to jobs, went to these types of schools, and had the recruiter or interviewer say “you know what, I’m not sure this person is smart enough or hard working enough for this role.”

Everything about your past helps recruiters and interviewers make split second decisions about whether or not to move you forward. This can include details like:

• the school you went to
• your major
• your GPA
• your extra curricular activities
• awards or honors you achieved
• the quality of the jobs or internships you’ve held before applying to this role

While these details are incredibly important, they serve more as an initial filter than a final, end all be all factor in your decision. If you’ve gotten past the initial screening process, and have moved onto the interview phase, you likely have a strong enough background to qualify for the role.

By that time, your background details take a backseat to your ability to share relevant anecdotes and examples, and your ability to problem solve in the technical or role specific portion of the interview.

You didn’t have enough prior experience, or enough specific anecdotes from your experience

Looking back on my own college experience, I am amazed at how clueless I was in the summer internship process. I didn’t understand what type of experience what I should be looking for, and once I got my internships, I didn’t understand what it was that I should be looking to accomplish.

To the best of your ability, you should look to do three things as a college student, or someone early in your career:

1. try to figure out what your IDEAL JOB 5–10 years out of college would be
2. work backwards to understand how people in those roles got their start when they were coming out of college
3. try to get internships that those types of firms
4. if and when you secure your internship, you must look to build a bank of anecdotes from your time there- don’t be satisfied to just have a resume item where you didn’t actually do anything

It’s easy to fake a few bulletpoints from an internship where you didn’t actually accomplish anything, but in an interview, you need detailed stories and anecdotes that reveal how you actually get work done. The deeper an interviewer digs, any fake stories will be quickly exposed.

The best way to avoid this trap is to work hard to get experience under your belt that is directly relevant to what you want to do in your next job, do as well as you can there, and be aware of the fact that you must develop stories and anecdotes to fully express your value to future employers.’

The YES wasn’t unanimous

Oftentimes, to make a hire, the “yes” has to either be unanimous amongst all the interviewers, or feature a heavy majority that includes buy in from the key stakeholders (the leaders of the org and your hiring manager.)

So you have to focus on covering all your bases, because if one of the 5 to 10 people you have to convince are a “no,” it can create an uphill battle. A stitch in time saves nine, so over-preparing is key for this reason.

You were unprepared for the interview, and didn’t know the material

When I was starting out as a candidate for jobs, I made the assumption that the things I would “need to know” for an interview were inherently unpredictable, so I didn’t attempt to study or prepare.

This is a giant mistake. The material you need to know in an interview is the bank of past accomplishments and stories from your life. The questions an interviewer asks are incredibly specific, and if you don’t brainstorm your go to stories and anecdotes ahead of time, odds are high that you won’t be able to produce the examples you need when pressed.

The goal of InterviewX’s main product is to help you identify and recall these stories ahead of time, so that you’re pulling from a bank of prepared anecdotes that you know will land well, as opposed to producing a half baked story on the fly. This is the skill that separates great interviewers from poor interviewers, and is one of the main benefits of our product.

If you’d like to learn more

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