How well did you handle the non-technical questions? Did they ask you things like where do you see yourself in 5 years? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Read up on typical interview questions and put together good answers for them. I remember being flummoxed by those questions when I was 21 since I hardly knew what I wanted to do.
Work with a career counselor to really find out what you need to change. Are you still in school? You will likely have resources there. There are usually many low cost career seeking options in most communities who can also help. They can help you with your resume and give you practice interviews so you come across as well as possible.
You’ve already had some good responses as to what they might mean with their response.
This is a great learning opportunity about the types of questions you should ask in an interview. You know at the end, when they’ve finally finished grilling you and then they say, ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask us?’
Here are some questions you can use:
What type of person do you feel would be most successful in this role?
We’ve talked a lot about the skills and experience required for the role. What other things are you looking for?
How would you describe the company culture here?
Are you trying to change the company culture in any way at the moment?
What would you say is the best aspect of the company culture here? And what would you say is the worst? How are you working to change the culture?
Then when they answer the question(s), use the opportunity to then talk about how well you match their requirements (assuming you do, of course) - using real life examples of how you have demonstrated those characteristics in previous positions/workplaces.
The benefit is that if they’re genuinely not ready, it’s possible to tell them this upfront and suggest that they either reapply for a different role or wait a year and then apply again. I’ve seen both scenarios result in hires who later turned out to be valuable contributors.
Of course, this benefit is also coupled with the very real costs you’ve outlined above. Personally though, I have a (possibly misplaced) sense of integrity that if someone is willing to take significant time out of their day to speak with us, I at least owe them a degree of respect to communicate in a non-bullshit fashion. When I tell a candidate that we didn’t move forward for culture fit reasons, it’s because of genuine, specific, culture fit reasons which I outline and I try hard to refer them to friends who might find them valuable.
I have to ask though, if people who smelled bad and were openly racist made it to the in person interview stage, maybe the problem isn’t in how you reject them but in how you screen them in the first place. By the time someone arrives at your office, you’ve already committed at least a full person-day’s worth of lost productivity to this candidate. Was there really no way you could have saved everyone the hassle on someone who is such obviously a no?
Once I was turned down because I didn’t fit the culture of the company.
One of my co-workers interviewed for the same position and got the job.
I was early 30s, 5’3", about 150 pounds, wore very little makeup and dressed appropriately for an office professional.
She was mid 20s, 5’8", about 120 pounds, wore lots of makeup, miniskirts, and low cut tops.
I got the better deal.
Three months later I still had a job. She had to be let go because 1) she couldn’t program her way out of a paper bag, and 2) her sole purpose for working was to find a husband so she could get married, stay home, and make babies. She had a habit of dating and latching onto the single men at work, creating a lot of drama if they so much as looked at another woman at work.
If they think you aren’t going to fit the corporate culture, they are probably right, and you are probably better off if they don’t hire you,
Exactly. The people who seem a bit off are likely to cause a lot of problems if you go in to the real reasons they weren’t hired. No one is entitled to a job. Demanding to know why they weren’t hired is a red flag that they would be hard to work with.
The most likely situation is that they had a bunch of very qualified candidates who could all do the job. The interviewer might not even be able to quantify why one candidate was picked over the other. They just liked one person more than the other. It doesn’t mean anything was wrong with the other candidates.
I’m not asking for why I wasn’t hired. I’d just like someone to let me know that they’ve chosen someone else. That way, I’m not waiting around, hoping for a call and trying not to sound like a stalker as I leave follow-up voicemails with the people I spoke with.
I totally understand, agree, and will commiserate with you. However, in the real world you shouldn’t followup asking about the decision. If they want you, they’ll let you know. By following up, you look desperate for the job and that can look bad to the employer. You want the employer to think you’re so busy fielding offers from other companies that you don’t have time to followup. They better snap you up quick before someone else does. By calling to followup, they know they can take their time and interview other people before making a decision.
In general, you shouldn’t put too many expectations on any specific job. They likely have 10’s or 100’s of applicants for every position, so your chances are pretty low. If you put your job search on hold for several days because you’re waiting to hear back from your interview, chances are you’re just wasting time. It’s better to keep going with the job search and see what offers come in.
My process is that I generally read through resumes and select ones that fit the criteria I’m looking for. HR then does screening based on questions I’ve prepared. I evaluate the responses and HR’s feedback and then determine who to bring in. There’s not much more to screening than that.
I read a resume fairly quickly - I will reject most within 20 seconds. If someone has potential I may spend 1 or 2 minutes. I give HR names, they email me back summaries. From there, I spend maybe 1 more minute on it. There are some things you can’t screen for. The oddly smelling person, that doesn’t come across through the phone. The person who asked if one of the executives was Jewish out of the blue, that’s just strange. These are outliers of course. I have cut scheduled 1 hour interviews short after 15 minutes for various reasons and I’m sure they weren’t expecting a call back.
There is very very little upside to contacting each rejected candidate. At the very best, HR may send them a rejection post card. I have no idea if they do that or not. Frankly once the person leaves I rarely remember their name for more than a few minutes unless they have potential.
Certainly. It was a three hour interview, I met with three different people, I had researched the company and highlighted my skills. At the end of the interview the woman who would have been my boss told me I should be encouraged.
If your HR department is large enough or can afford an applicant tracking system, once you make a hiring selection or a expiration date has passed, it will prompt them to send decline letters to the rest of the candidates. The expiration dates are helpful to HR because many job requisitions are linked to budgets that are on a timeline- hire or lose your employee allotment.
Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds like “you weren’t a good cultural fit” sounds like it could be used as cover or a code word for discrimination, either racial, age-related or based on ethnicity.
And it also seems to me that you actually don’t want a bunch of cookie-cutter employees. As a silly made-up example, let’s say you mostly hire new graduates of schools that regularly compete in the March Madness tournament. So all of your employees are going to be distracted for a month or more. If, on the other hand, some of your employees are indifferent to basketball, they might be able to cover the slack from the ones obsessed with the tournament.
That they didn’t get the job? You don’t have to say why, but letting them know takes two seconds and is the nice thing to do. They probably spent weeks preparing for that interview.
I work in an office of about ten people. We are one the phone a lot. We have cubicles with high walls, but no doors. You are going to hear your co-workers professional and private conversations. We offer suggestions and talk across the room. If you come across as someone who needs to be left alone and work by yourself all the time, you’re not a good cultural fit. One recent candidate was reading NOOOOOO for me after fifteen minutes because she would not stop talking. Imagine working with that all day!
Seems contradictory? Well, we’re buyers. Each responsible for our own orders, but it’s essential to share information all the time. Something comes up and it sounds familiar, but not quite, you need to be able to call out “Didn’t someone have an issue with XYZ last month?” Or “How do you set up a vendor in Bulgaria?” It’s a position where you have to be personable to people in the office (end users) and on the phone (vendors) and be professional even if they’re not. You have to be able to work alone and get your own stuff done, but you have to be able to collaborate and brainstorm on others’ work, too. If you are a loner who hides back in your cube, you’re not a good fit. If you can’t shut up and let other people work, you’re not a good fit.
Can you get someone who’s really honest, maybe someone who doesn’t know you that well, a friend of a friend, to do a practice interview with you? There may be something glaringly obvious to someone who’s objective, but it might not be something an interviewer can tell you.
Two things - Cultural fit is a real thing. “Regardless of their qualifications, do I want to spend eight hours every day with this person?” is a legit question.
Also, a good question to ask an interviewer and to ferret out the ‘corporate culture’ is to ask why/how they got the job they’re currently in.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about being rejected because of cultural fit. You don’t want to work at a company that doesn’t fit with how you like to work.
Hypothetical: The workplace’s culture is rampant arseholes. Let’s assume they’re futures traders or quantitative analysts, or something else in high-stakes finance.
If the candidate is not an arsehole, they’re going to be so intimidated and run-down that they’ll be completely ineffective.
Hence, a non-arsehole is a terrible cultural fit in an all-arsehole working environment and you’re doing them a favor by not tendering an offer.
