While it might seem like a particular kind of self deprecation to dwell on the failures of unsuccessful interviews, you might be surprised what you can learn from a bad experience. There’s a difference between obsessing over your past job interviews and learning from your experiences. As is the case with most things in life, practice makes perfect, and every interview is an opportunity to fine tune your interviewing skills, your presentation, and your ability to market yourself as a prospective employee. Here are a few of the most important things you can learn from a job interview, in order to better your chances in the future.
Go with Your Gut
Some of the best feedback you can get from a job interview is the feeling you get right after you walk out the door. Your gut feeling about the success (or lack of success) is a great indicator of the success (or lack thereof) of the interview itself. If you walk away feeling like you did not quite present yourself to the best of your abilities, then in all likelihood you didn’t. If that’s the case, look back over the conversation in detail, take notes about how the discussion progressed, what questions you had difficulties with, what topics you felt you excelled at answering, and then prepare yourself to make the necessary adjustments.
Ask for a Debrief
Working with a recruiter is a uniquely powerful position to be in when evaluating what did and did not work in previous interviews. Many companies communicate with their staffing firms about what they did and (most importantly) what they did not like about prospective candidates. Check in with your job placement professional for a little extra information from the other side of the table. Perhaps you did not communicate well how your skills would translate to the new position, or maybe the interviewer found your shirt distracting. These are the sorts of insights that you are unlikely to hear from an interviewer directly, but that are incredibly valuable when preparing for your next run.
If you feel that a more detailed analysis of your interview would be helpful, consider requesting a debrief (likely through your recruiter or job counselor). A debrief is essentially a blow-by-blow evaluation of how you did. While a debrief of an unsuccessful interview can feel disheartening at times, consider the feedback to be valuable fuel to motivate you to be more successful in your next opportunity to show your worth to an employer.
Making the Necessary Adjustments
Interviews are meant to be difficult. They challenge you similarly to the way a new job would. An interviewer is as much evaluating the style and thought process behind your answers as the answers themselves. Thinking about how you would improve on your responses to commonly asked questions will help you prepare for similar discussion topics in the future. Also, practicing your interview skills helps to build the confidence you need to improve as well.
Sentech Services knows the decision makers at local companies – we can find unadvertised opportunities that may be the perfect fit for you. And we work only with clients committed to safety, so you can be sure that your new job will be both safe and rewarding. Contact our great team of recruiters today to get started working with one of the top staffing agencies in Detroit.
