- Published on December 17, 2018 on LinkedIn – James Caan CB
James Caan CBE Influencer
Interviews are daunting at the best of times. There are countless contributing factors that go into a successful interview and, if you’re not at your sharpest, it can be easy to miss the mark. The reality is that everybody, no matter how confident or qualified, has off-days on which they won’t be able to grasp that golden opportunity. That’s just life – the trick is learning how to respond to it.
If you feel strongly that you are perfect for the role that’s escaped you, there are a couple of things you can do to get yourself back on track – if not for that specific position, then certainly the next.
Step 1
Gather all your relevant qualifications, experience, research etc. into one place. Analyse this carefully – where are the gaps? Where did you fall down in the interview? Give yourself a brutally honest appraisal, annotating your script so that by the end of the process, you will have a visual one-pager of what went right and what went wrong.
Step 2
Find a way to contact your interviewer. You can do this by email, or by phone – but be prepared for them not to answer you. During a recruitment project employers tend to be extremely busy, and perhaps reluctant to spend time on past candidates. That being said, in my experience I have found that many employers are happy to give feedback – and what they say can prove invaluable.
Step 3
Dive in. Ask them the 3 things that prevented you from being shortlisted. If it happens that these 3 qualities are simply things that you did not have the chance to demonstrate during the interview, then draft a summary of how you display those qualities with relevant, concrete examples to support your case. If you have already been rejected for a position, there is no time to deal in abstracts. Get specific and get to the point.
There is a chance, albeit slim, that the employer might reconsider your application. Refusing to accept defeat could help the employer to see your commitment to the role and, having had a second look, they might even notice what they missed at first glance. There is no reason to be pushy, but persistence has its own value.
Source: <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rejected-interview-what-do-i-next-james-caan-cbe/> [18th Dec 2018]
