Why You Didn't Get the Job, Despite Acing the Interview

With Blind Bytes on "The Blind Ambition with Jack Kelly" podcast, Jack Kelly and Rick Chen reveal insider tips about professional life, which you can use immediately to level up your career. In this episode, we take on why you didn't get the job despite acing the interview.

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Jack explains how interview cycles are set up at most companies and why a hiring manager, recruiter or HR team might take their sweet time with the process and the decision. He also takes us into the minds of the hiring manager and the behind-the-scenes work they might have to do to get approval for a job offer and things like benefits or pay packages. Finally, Jack gives us a script of what to say in the job interview, which might unlock the job offer and make the decision easier for everyone involved.

Hey, this is Jack Kelly with Blind Bytes, an abbreviated podcast to give you bursts of information that you need to know to be successful in your career. And today, I think we've all kind of been there. You go on an interview and another interview and another interview, another three, four, five, six, seven interviews. You think you nailed it. You think you got the job, and you don't get the offer. You're like, what happened? Why did I not get the job offer? Well, you're in the right place. Your buddy Jack Kelly will fill you in.

So here's the deal, you know, placing people for like 20-plus years. A lot of times, you find out, it's not fair. A lot of times, they don't really tell you the true reason why you didn't get that job offer. So let me just start with some, you know, in no particular order, right?

No particular order, but let's say number one, managers sometimes are intimidated by you.

Like to think if you're a manager, right, you're going to hire the best person, the most well suited person for the job, right? Makes sense. But if your boss isn't too confident in him or herself, and they find somebody who's like, like this rock star, they may take a pass because they feel wow, they'll think to themselves, but they're not gonna say it out loud. They're gonna think this person's going to eclipse me. If we go into a meeting or a conference, they're going to turn to that other person because that person's, frankly, better than I am. So because they, instead of saying, hey, I'd rather get someone who's better than me to bring everybody up, and I can even learn from that person. Nope, you're like, I don't want that competition. Thank you, but no, thank you.

Number two, what happens? Sometimes, it's like companies place ads, and I mentioned this in another Blind Bytes, where they'll put ads out there, but they don't really want to hire, so it's out there to just appease the employees.

So, let's say someone left, and they didn't get replaced. They start worrying, uh oh, what's going on here? How come we didn't replace George? What's up? Is something wrong? And everyone gets nervous. So you put out an ad, and you make it look like you're hiring. You actually do some interviews, but you really don't want to hire that person. So it's not real. They probably need a job, but they're not really trying hard to do it. So you're kind of getting deceived.

Number three, if you are kind of a mid to senior-level executive, the odds are you're going to go through three to 10 interviews over the course of a month, three months longer, sometimes, especially nowadays, and it's a decision by consensus, meaning, throughout the interview process you meet with, let's say just six people. Just think six people. You have to have all six people agree that they collectively like this candidate and feel that person should get the offer.

Now, it sounds simple, but think about it. Think about your own personal life. How easy is it? Let's first look at your family. How easy is it to decide, if you have young kids, what movie to watch and where to go out to eat, right? Something different. Everyone wants a different movie. Everyone wants to go somewhere different. You end up, come on, you, we've all been in this, right? You're sitting at home, and you're scrolling through Netflix, and you're watching, you know, all like, you know, the trailers, and no one can agree on anything. And then you go to Amazon Prime, and then you go somewhere else, and just nothing gets done because no one could agree what to do. And then you even decide where to send now, you know, can't go out to eat because too it's too late. Now you can send out and you have to argue about sending out, so you can't do it.

Like in real life, it doesn't really work out that well when you have everybody weighing in. So when you're in this office setting, or like virtual and you're meeting these people, you have to have six, seven people. Well, I'm ready, and what are the odds of that? Because come on, you have five, six, seven people, there's always going to be that one. Well, I like this about the person, but I'm not really crazy about that, so let's keep looking easy for that person to say because they're tangential to it.

That's a that's another thing that happens. You have all these people you meet with, and a lot of them have no skin in the game. And why? Because the senior level people who are hiring lack confidence, so they feel, if I get five, six, seven, eight people all agreeing and the candidate starts, joins the company, but is a bomb as a dud, the big boss doesn't have to take the blame, because the big boss say, well, it wasn't me. We had five, six, seven people interview this person. They all love this person, so don't look at me. They all agree. So they feel that's a way to justify it and deflect instead of taking ownership.

So you have these people, who you know, usually it's like, alright, you want to meet your manager, your manager's manager, maybe some people in a different division going to work with you. Really don't need five, six, seven people, but they do that because they're afraid to make a decision. And by having more people involved, it takes longer, so they feel the longer it takes, well, finally, we'll get somebody, or the longer it gets, we'll find someone better. Let's keep it going because maybe we look some more, we'll find someone cheaper, and somebody who's more desperate. We could pay them less, and maybe they're even better. So it just goes on forever.

Then, number four, let's be real. There's prejudices, biases, discrimination in the workplace, and it's everywhere. It could be where you went to school, you know. I mean, we talk about, sometimes, racial, sex, you know, gender, what have you. But I think it's everything, where you went to school, how you talk, you know, where, what companies you work for beforehand. So, people have these different kinds of biases that just mentally block you out and say, nah, not this person.

Number five: People just can't make decisions. They're scared. I kind of alluded to that. They're afraid to pull the trigger. They're afraid if they make a decision, it's the wrong decision. So what they do is they don't make a decision, and they just keep letting it go on.

Or, what ends up happening is that the person who is really good kind of starts tapping out, and then they get desperate, and they just hire, like anybody, just to get it done. So you like to think it's so funny, in a way, it's funny, but it's sad. You like to think it's just so much more professionals, particularly, you know, in top-tier investment banks and, you know, tech companies, whatever. But yeah, it just boils down to, like, just the human being aspect of it, being afraid, not having the confidence pulling the trigger, you know, wanting to just keep meeting people after meeting people because you're scared to make the wrong decision.

It's so crazy how this works. But here's what I would suggest you do if you're stuck in that vortex, right? If you're stuck in that vortex, meaning that the interviews are going on forever, you know, you don't see an end in sight, but you really want the job, right? You're really excited about the job. You think that this is right up your alley. Here's what you do: You say in the interview to find the right person, you know, like, who, who's real, you get a sense as a decision maker, and you say to that person, hey, hey, so and so decision maker. I really enjoyed interviewing here. I like the company, your mission statement. I actually use your products and services, and they're great. I know people who work in organization; they told me just wonderful things about it. I read up on what you do, what goes on there, and I love it. And if you were to offer me the role, I would gladly and happily accept.

And the reason I'm saying it that way is this for a hire manager who's scared to make a decision, they're also scared to make a decision, where they make an offer, and the person says, thanks, no thanks.

Because when you make an offer, it's not so easy. You have to go up the chain of command. You know, you have to go to HR, get something approved, get maybe some of the senior people involved in the whole process, they have to sign off. So, you expend a lot of political capital. If you want to hire, you know, Bob, you have to go through all these hoops, the bureaucracy, to get the buy in to be able to hire Bob. So if you go through all this time, all this effort, negotiate a salary, negotiate a total compensation, stock, pension fund, 401(K), benefits, that takes a lot of time and energy.

So, if you put all that energy in, right? And then Bob says, hmm, no thanks, but no thanks. You know what? I got a counteroffer at my firm. I'm going to stay at my firm, or I got another offer somewhere else. Thanks, guys. It was really a pleasure meeting you. Bye. Oh my God, and everyone's gonna say, like, what? Like, what happened? You just wasted six, seven, eight people's time. It took weeks. We had to put this offer together. That's time. Wow, you suck as a hiring manager. What the heck? I don't know if we could trust you to do this again. Maybe you're not the right person for it.

So now, to go back to what I said before, if a person says, hey, I gladly accept it. You know, I love this job, you have a better chance of getting it, because now the hiring manager is going to feel okay. You know what? I wasn't sure what to do, but Jack seems really serious that he wants it. I believe him. I'm highly confident that he'll take it, and I could go to HR and go to the senior higher-ups and say, hey, Jack has told me, point blank, if we give him the offer, you know, at this price point, at this compensation, he'll accept it.

Now, is there a 100% guarantee? No, but there's a better likelihood. So, by doing that little hack, right? That little hack of saying, hey, if the offer were to be extended to me at, you know, such and such salary and so forth, I'll take it because that makes their life easier. It takes away all the stress, all the anxiety, all the worries about having.

Then, just let me give you a couple of other little things. What you have to do. You gotta clean up your social media footprints. Nowadays, everybody kind of looks at it. They're going to check you out on Twitter. They're going to think about how many times on Twitter, do you hear where you know for a senior-level role somewhere or sports figure they said something stupid ten years ago, and they're holding it against them. Cleaning up your social media footprint so that when people look to see what you post on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Facebook, what have you, that it doesn't, you know, after the whole process, they're like, we can't hire this person. It's too much trouble. So that's another thing to do as well.

So, I think you kind of get the gist. What you may have thought the interview process is like, the best person wins. You know, the best person gets the job. Not so simple, not so simple, prejudices, biases, managers being afraid of competition from who they hire, getting five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 people to agree. This is what goes on behind the scenes. So when you're going through the interview cycle, you kind of know what's happening.

And you know, each time you interview, you've got to sell that person on you because all you need is one person that changes, who says, no, you're out.

I hope this helps. This gives you some kind of insights. If you always were kind of wondering, why didn't I get this job? I thought I was a sure thing for it. I don't get it. And then think about, I bet you people watching this, there's going to be at least a few people who say, I, you know, I didn't get the offer, and I saw on LinkedIn who got it. And I'm way better than this person. What? What? I don't get it. Now you understand the person didn't want to find someone who is the best. They want to find somebody who's going to be a little below where the manager doesn't have to worry.

I hope this helps. I don't know if minds are blown with this, or everyone's like, duh, Jack. I know it, but I'm like, the whole idea for these Blind Bytes is to get an inside scoop on, like, what's happening, what's going on, what you could do to improve your career, your job, move forward with your life, succeed, be happy with what you're doing. And by giving this ammunition, arming you with all this information, you can make better decisions and it will lead to a successful career.