Often, when it comes to the final stage of applications, it's rare you get clear-cut reasons for rejection. As such, interviewers give you bland, vaguely troubling explanations, rather than a useful breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of your performance.
A great deal of feedback is code for "we just chose someone else". This easily slides into rejection: you don't feel good about it, and you haven't learned anything either. There is a real danger that candidates immediately alter their interview and application techniques off-the-back of these generalisations, randomly hoping for a different result. For example, an interviewer says "your examples were too long". So you adjust your strategy for all future interviews, chopping out good information and not telling the full story.
But this isn't an effective jobseeking strategy. You need to be able to identify feedback that could actually improve your performance. Address as much as you can in practice interviews so that you don't waste the opportunities presented by real job interviews to learn the basics.
Here are some examples of useful feedback:
• Speaking too much so that the interviewer couldn't hear the right evidence or ask all the questions.
• Appearing too reserved and not sounding excited by the role.
• Being inappropriately assertive.
• Underplaying strengths and achievements.
• Failing to translate experience into language that could excite the interviewer.
• Not covering all the bases in terms of the interviewer's shortlist.
• Failing to read the room and establish some kind of relationship with everyone present.
How to ask for feedback
Avoid any question that sounds like a challenge, such as, "why wasn't I selected?" The questions "what did I do wrong?" and "what were my weaknesses at interview?" still sound too assertive. Instead ask – verbally if you can – for some tips about how you could improve your interview technique next time. Ask for just one or two pointers which will enable you to improve your performance. Listen carefully, take notes and then reflect on what you have heard.
If you feel that you have not been given a constructive feedback you have two choices. One is to hope that the next interview is a better learning experience, the second is to ask better questions when seeking feedback. You can sometimes ask for feedback a second time if you feel the responses were unsatisfactory, but if you do, switch to a question about what you could do better next time. That said, usually if an interviewer is reluctant to give feedback, it doesn't work to ask more questions.
Rejection is not feedback
If you get similar feedback from several sources – for example, "you are not communicating your skills in the right language for our sector" – that's tangible feedback you can work with.
There are many reasons, however, why you might not get shortlisted for a role (particularly before the job interview stage) and many reasons are much more about the arbitrariness of the process than they are about your application. It's tempting to put yourself centre stage, but believe me, most reasons for rejection are not about you.
So don't feel you always need to rewrite your CV, learn new interview answers, or even give up. In fact, if you get a no, go and do something entirely different which is not related to jobseeking – cycle up a hill, go to a movie, go shopping – and review things when you have a clearer, cooler mind.
Bouncing forward is nearly always about building on what is working and making sure you don't trash some of your best techniques. It's also about learning from experience and getting a reality check from someone who can give you objective advice about the first impression you create when you begin an interview, and the impression you leave in the mind of the interviewer.
Simply doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result is not resilience; moving forward is about making small, positive changes every time you present your own evidence.
John Lees is a career coach, founder of John Lees Associates and author of Just the Job!
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