My Interviewer Remembered Me from Middle School… I Had No Idea Who He Was

University Recruiter: “Do you remember me from middle school?”

*awkward three-seconds of silence*

Me: “Uhhhh no I don’t, sorry”

Some context

I had just completed GaTech’s OMSCS program while working full-time as a firmware engineer for a power-electronics company and months into the dreaded job hunt. I wanted to transition into a software-related role with high expectations to eventually be able to transition from this software role into a data science role.

Okay, back to the story

Yep. This actually happened. Right after I had delivered the most epic elevator pitch I had ever delivered. I practiced it over 20 times the night before. I rocked it, knocked it out of the park. Then this happened. And you can probably guess what was going through my head the moment he asked if I knew who he was: “Oh shoot”

And what made this even worse was the fact that I had used one of my five LinkedIn Premium messages to send this guy, who I should have known for over a decade, this unnecessarily formal and cringe-worthy message:

Subject: Fellow Illini Reaching Out!

Hey Person*!

We were both in the ’16 graduating class from UIUC! Glad to connect with you. Since graduation, I’ve been working full-time and pursuing an MS in computer science with Georgia Tech, and I’m actually about to finish my graduate degree in May! I would love to move my career to the Bay Area, and Company* seems to have some incredible new-grad software openings I would love to pursue and/or talk to you about. Would be more than happy to hop on the phone and chat with you about my background and how I help Company* as a software engineer. Thanks in advance, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Cheers, Mikey

So. Embarrassing.

So, there I was freaking out, sifting through what I remembered of my middle school student body as fast as I could and trying to process the embarrassment that was about to completely ravage my consciousness for the rest of this interview:

“HOW DID I LET THIS HAPPEN?! HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHO PERSON IS?!”

“MIDDLE SCHOOL! YOU WENT TO MIDDLE SCHOOL TOGETHER. THERE WERE ONLY, LIKE, 100 KIDS IN YOUR CLASS!”

So, at the end of a few agonizing seconds of silence, I had come to the conclusion that I had no idea who this guy was. I had come to the additional conclusion that I am in trouble and will never land this job. But I trudged on. As far as I could tell, I had two options: 1.) tell him the truth or 2.) lie and act like you and him are two long-lost middle school buddies separated by the hardships of early adulthood. I chose option 1.

Me: “Uhhhh no I don’t, sorry…”

Person: “Yeah were in the same gym class with Mr. Mister!* We also went to the same high school!”

Me (in my head): “This can’t possibly get any worse”

I was in full-blown panic mode. Fight or flight… until Person did something that offered me the sweet salvation I needed: He put his glasses on.

It was like a movie. Everything came back to me. Who ‘that guy’ was, Mr. Mister’s gym class, even high school. I had finally recognized who he was (let me tell you… a lot about a person’s appearance changes from the ages of 10 to 25 years old!).

I started spewing out memories left and right to compensate for not knowing who Person for the last three seconds and salvage as much as I could for the rest of the interview. And after another minute or so of small talk, I had managed to convince myself and the recruiter that I had, indeed, remembered him from middle school.

The rest of the half-hour interview went swimmingly, and I had been, to my surprise, moved onto the next round(s) of interviews (which deserve their own article).

So What?

Though this experience was extremely unusual, I think lots of people in the job hunt can relate to it: letting a small mistake completely mess with your psyche. Don’t let it! The very fact that you’re making mistakes at all during the job hunt is a good sign because it means you’re putting yourself out there. People that make mistakes get jobs all the time. And people that don’t make mistakes get rejected. The job hunt is weird like that.

So, if you’re in the job hunt, don’t let mistakes discourage you. Mistakes are only failures when you fail to learn from them.

In my case, I learned to consult my yearbooks before reaching out to anyone on LinkedIn :)

*Note* — the person’s name is not ‘Person’, the company’s name is not ‘Company’, and ‘Mister’ is not Mr. Mister’s real last name.