Unsuccessful Interview = Waste of Time?

This is a tough one y’all.

A lot of job seekers are understandably frustrated when they get rejected after an interview. The process can be absolutely grueling at many companies, and a lack of feedback (or God forbid – closure!) can feel like salt in the wound. Believe me, I get the urge to go straight to LinkedIn and fire off a post asking how Company had the actual audacity to interview me knowing they weren’t going to hire me. (Yes, we’ve all seen posts like this)

EXCEPT – the company likely did NOT know they were not going to hire you. That’s why they interviewed you. To figure all that out. Check out “What’s The Point Of An Interview Anyway” for more on that topic.

So what’s a job seeker to do? Even if we have the most positive outlook on this, being rejected still stings and doesn’t get us any closer to a regular paycheck. NOW WHAT?

Change your thinking.

We tend to look at interviews as a one time event that results in a clear yes or no. While this is technically true, what if I told you that you could use your interview as a networking opportunity? Think about it – whatever field you’re in, you’re likely going to interview with people who also do the same thing. If you’re an electrical engineer, I would be SHOCKED if you didn’t have at least one electrical engineer on your interview panel. This pretty much goes for almost any industry, don’t you think?

So here’s the specific next step I want you to take. Once the interview dust has settled, the decision is in, closure has been received, send a note. This will likely be a LinkedIn message or invite, unless you have specific contact info for folks you met (which frankly, is pretty rare). Try something like this:

Hi Interviewer,

Thanks so much for the time you spent interviewing me last month (or whenever) for the (Title) role. I was bummed to hear from (recruiter) that I wasn’t selected, but I really enjoyed getting to know everyone and would love to keep in touch for future opportunities.

I hope you’ll consider connecting, and I hope our paths will cross again in the future!

You

So why does this work?

Simple! You’re just making friends/connections with people in your industry. Now this isn’t an immediate fix or automatic re-consideration of your interview – it IS an opportunity to stay connected to someone who does similar work. That person may go work for a new company, and when asked “who do you know” by their new recruiting team (I promise you we do this) well – they know YOU!

The reality is this – we’re not going to overrule a hiring decision. While it would be WONDERFUL to get feedback, I want you to also keep in mind that feedback is highly subjective and only relevant to three things:

• The Company
• The Team
• The Role

If you want to work for that company in a different capacity, it’s fine to ask if it makes sense to reapply, target different roles or different levels. Also find out if there’s a cooling off period (of course I have a video on that TOO). Beyond that, feedback about this specific interview may not be as actionable or constructive as you might hope. My failed interview at Meta did nothing to keep me from moving on to Google.

Now go make some new professional friends! You never know what doors they can open in the future.