RECRUITMENT MYTHBUSTERS VOLUME 4- Why they’re not calling you back (with an offer)

Oh boy. Like Adam Kay’s memoirs, this is going to hurt. I’ll try and be gentle, but this is probably going to be the most starkly brutal thing I’ve ever had to write. In the majority of the cases, if you’re not getting the call back you want with the job offer after your interview process then it’s not them, it’s almost certainly YOU.

I’ll keep going. They’re just not that in to you. You just screwed the pooch on the day and messed up your interview. You weren’t the best person they saw in the process. You didn’t have what they’re looking for. You weren’t fun, for them, to speak with. They couldn’t see you doing the job in their team.

Now some of these things aren’t your fault. In fact, if it’s only after a few interviews or you’ve been pipped to the post by someone with genuinely more experience, or who is genuinely a good cultural fit for what they want then you can rest easy. Interviewing is a numbers game after all, in fact it’s more like Tinder than we ever give it credit for. Sometimes you’ll go for something that looks GREAT on paper but it fizzles in person whereas other times it’ll just click in and something wonderful sparks.

But if you are CONSISTENTLY getting invited to interview and knocked back, after a while the common denominator and problem is you. You’re probably doing one of the following things that is wrecking your chances and you need to stop immediately;

1)     You’re not signalling that you’re right for the role and the business.

This one is hard to be honest, and I want to preface with this by saying it has nothing to do with being neuro-typical or not which a lot of critique on communication can dial back in to. It has to do with your engagement with the process. If you can’t focus on being INTERESTED in the job, the project, the business or the interviewer, then they’ll likely find someone who is because it’ll make them feel better. People are pretty simple in that respect. And outside of the process, if it takes you three days to send your resume in after a chat with the recruiter or never make the effort to attend interviews then… yeah. You turn people off. If you're interested, act like you are.

2)     You’re not preparing for the conversation.

Very few people can go into a business conversation and “wing it” with less than ten minutes preparation. Particularly an interview where a degree of questioning and scrutiny will come into play. If you come in unprepared, it will show up. And someone will walk in better prepared and blow them away.

3)     Your CV is better than you actually are.

You got your CV written for you. It looks ~sexy~ and makes you look like a professional rockstar. But… you aren’t backing it up and you’re not demonstrating the competencies that your interviewing is expecting. Know your career history, successes, stories, facts, figures and be damn comfortable delivering them. Otherwise you’ll be knocked out of the process faster than Scotland gets knocked out the World Cup.

4)     You don’t look like you belong.

If you turn up to a dot com start-up in a 3 piece and tie and your interviewer is in flip-flops that’s not a match. If you rock up to ANY job interview in sweatpants and trainers you’re not going to look like you care. And if you don’t care then why the hell should your interviewer? Don’t even get me started on poor personal hygiene- and yes that is a factor and yes I've had some smelly folk in interviews. You don’t need to be in a Hugo Boss suit and swim in a bucket of Chanel, but dial into the organisation’s culture and aim for the smartest, cleanest version of that possible.

5)     Your questions are one-note.

Love this phrase. If your questions are all about “me, me, me, me, meeeeeeeeeeeeee” then you’re not showing any commercial engagement or awareness.

6)     Your nerves are getting the best of you, or worse… you want it so much you’re desperate.

I have a chronic anxiety condition, so I know what it’s like to have your brain weasels crawling and going mental. I once blew a final stage because I was *SO* keen to show what I knew and *SO* fully signed up for the organisation that I lost all credibility. Learning how to manage those nerves is something you need to do. Practice answering mock interview questions, record yourself doing it and self-critique. Take a glass of water in with you and make sure you drink it, and use it if they ask you a question you can't answer to fill the silence.

Sorry if this has hurt your feelings. Feedback is hard to take, and is probably why most recruiters don’t like giving it- and yes, some of us do avoid it, because we know it'll hurt your feelings. This hasn’t been easy for me, and I look forward to your comments about how it’s somehow all the recruiters fault still.

However, next week I am going to whip the ole focus around and the next edition of Mythbusters will expose some of the common mistakes companies make when it comes to hiring staff. Until next time… keep remembering that interviews are a two-way street.