Have you ever wondered why some candidates get chosen over others for a job?
#JobRejections#CandidateChoices#IndustryExperience
Investigating Job Rejections
Have you ever found yourself researching the people who landed the role you were rejected for? I often do this by checking out the company on LinkedIn a month after the rejection. From my observations, final candidate choices usually fall into one of three categories:
- Less overall experience but more industry-specific knowledge
- Less overall experience but with a history in “big companies”
- More overall experience
Personally, the second category tends to bother me the most. What have you noticed about final candidate choices in your job search experiences? Share your thoughts!
#JobSearchInsights#LinkedInResearch#FinalCandidateSelection
Many times it’s not your experience but something else. Companies hire people, not resumes. If you have the have the right experience and the right skills, but that’s just part of it. Are you the right fit for the department and the company? Have you convinced them of this during your interview. Does **everyone** you met with agree? Was someone with, say, 4 years experience better able to explain subject matter expertise better than your 7 years of experience? And not just explain that to the hiring panel, but also to potential customers? All of that is in play.
I interviewed for a director of analytics job last fall. checked who was hired
– woman with a pure account management background and no coding skills
– she had been out of the work force for 8 fucking years raising her kid.
this was a 200k director of analytics job. she had to know the hiring manager.
Sometimes it’s all about whether or not the team LIKED you
Done it once.
My rejection was apparently because they needed someone with very specific experience.
Looked up the person who got the job a couple of months later. He didn’t have that experience. But he had worked with the hiring manager before…
4) Less experience, and arguably unqualified, but with an advanced degree.
Nothing against people with advanced degrees, but some people lose their wits when they see some letters after someone’s name.
Just once because the company was small and he worked at the place I currently work at so Linkedin popped him as a “potential connection just hired!”
Hilariously I had been with the firm for 4 years won several leaders club awards and a presidents club award. He was fired after 8 months for not selling anything. Dude was basically a professional interviewer switching jobs every 12 months. So he likely knew what questions would be asked and had better answers for them right off the cuff.
I did feel like I dodged a bullet though. Management there had a choice between race horses won that has won several races before vs another that is limping around and barely able to walk and they went with the one that was barely able to walk. Makes me think their decision making in other areas is probably lacking as well.
Didn’t look them up, but one role I got a call from a recruiter for a role I had interviewed for about a month prior. It was a different recruiter at a different agency. I thought I was a good fit, but might have come in high on the salary expectation. Don’t know who they ended up going with. The interview felt average, didn’t think I did particularly good or bad.
Yes and they fired him in 3 months and I was off the market when they told me lol
I didn’t make it far in the interview process for a role at a startup that sounded really exciting. I later looked up who got it and it made sense- we had very different profiles.
Fast forward several months, I’m in a new job (a leadership role at a medium size org) and the person who got the job I’d wanted applied for a role on my team! …She didnt have the profile we needed.
Small world. And, guess that org wasn’t all I assumed it was if she lasted six months in that job.
Twice I missed out on roles, at different design agencies, to someone who I’d spent time working with when they were at a uni placement at an agency I was in a lead position at. Humbling.
One time I interviewed for a job at a company and they completely ghosted me. I also interviewed for another company around that time and although I didn’t get that one either they were great with me. I found out the guy who’d interviewed me for the first company had been the person who got the job at the second company.
I interviewed for my current role around 18 months before I was successful but didn’t get the job that time. I work with two other people in my role, nobody has left, so one of them beat me to it last time!
I did, I was better fit. But the person had a cookie cutter background and looked very similar to the job interviewer. Very disappointing that the Hiring manager still had these biases. I raged a bit when I saw that and have been applying to any job they post
Did it recently for a position where I got to the last interview with the team and was feeling good about possibly getting the job. I had a bit more studio experience than the person they went with but unfortunately the other candidate was local, so they would have saved money by dodging paying relocation fees for me.
What makes me mad the most is if the position is still open.
No, but I’ve had a few conversations with hiring managers who had to get contractors to supplement services because the person they chose couldn’t do all the things I could. Just had to laugh and say oh no, that’s unfortunate
I only did once because my mom was my personal reference/referral, and she was in a mid-level senior manager position with the company I was trying to get the job with. And this company, by the way, is hard to get your foot in the door with unless you know someone, i.e., there’s a lot of nepotism (and the whole city knows it, to be honest lol).
So naturally, I was like, “What the f**k??!?”, when I didn’t get the job. Someone’s buddy got the job. Not their daughter or son. Or their spouse. And they only had a bachelor’s degree, while I have both my MA and BAS in healthcare management (it was for a clinic manager position). I was pissed about that one.
I also wouldn’t say that I “looked them up.” My mom was pissed, so she told me lol
This feels like something that isn’t good for your mental health tbh.
Im losing to this
Less experience overall, but has some “big companies” in their job history
PATHETIC if you ask me. Just because I havent worked for Google or Linkedin.
I have so much experience and in this one situation they didnt even send me to the second step. I realized they are targeting big companies people because on their site they have current employees and below their name it says EX GOOGLE or EX LINKEDIN…
They probably interviewed better. Them’s the breaks sometimes.
I tend to assume the people picked over me aren’t a threat to their managers. I’ve been a manager myself and I’ve never viewed anyone as a threat to me professionally, but I’m not insecure.
Sure did.
They were a better fit than me.
But I found a much better job literally a month later, so all good in the end.
YUPP
I have experience in a niche part of my industry.
My parent company was hiring for two roles within this niche part of our industry. The requirements were very specific stating that you HAD to have experience in this niche area, which I have.
The two people they ended up hiring did not have this niche experience.
One of the guys didn’t even have experience in the industry at all. He was packing boxes at FedEx previously.
The other girl had more years at the company than me, but she did not have any of the previously discussed niche experience.
These were not entry level roles either. I’m still salty.
I had a grueling interview for a position. A 90-minute test. A lot of questioning. At the end of it, I’m told I did really well. The guy escorts me to the elevators. While we’re waiting for the elevator he (white male) says to me (another white male), “We’re hoping to hire a woman or a minority.”
I kept checking. They hired a woman with a Hispanic surname.
That killed the last little bit of hope I had in the notion that you get hired on your abilities. I now put in the absolute minimum at all times. I deliver projects, literally, at the last minute. I NEVER have spare time to take on a new project. I do not contribute to United Way at the office drive. I don’t buy anyone’s kids’ candy or raffle tickets for their school.
I am pleasant. I remain polite. But that’s what killed any joy I had for the concept of work.
I’ve done it only once. This was after a rejection after the final interview, which was the 6th interview. The person who got the position was overall much more experienced and honestly, 10x more qualified than I was for the role. He was given a title one rank above the one they were hiring for, too.
The rejection sucked but it all made sense to me.
I recently did it for a role that I felt I’d smashed the task and interview for, and for context, I never feel like that after an interview. Tbf, the guy was way over qualified and had very solid experience. Certainly made me feel better tbh.
No. It serves no beneficial purpose. It can only sour my mood.
Once, then I recognized that maybe they simply closed the position because I can’t find anything.
YES and I get confused because half of the time my portfolio blows theirs out of the water and I have more experience. I don’t get it. That or they end up hiring someone who graduated before I was even born for a junior position
I make family trees of the job connections. Who worked with whom? When? Was there a resume gap that these friends covered for? It gets to me.
I like to see the phrasing the person uses to describe previous roles, responsibilities and accomplishments.
I am always looking for more impactful ways to describe CV bullet points.
I do it with every job. It gives you great insight. And a lot of the time is a relief.
Most often it went to someone internal or someone who used to work with hiring manager.
The worst one for me is if they don’t hire someone at all. Why did you waste my time?
In some cases “comes from a prestigious Ivy League School” similar to your num 2 …
This is a really unhealthy behavior, that you should probably stop.
I guess #1 and #2 bug me most. I have a lot of experience with software from a certain company. There are 3-4 companies that offer competing software and a bunch of other little ones as well. While the ideology behind the products is the same, the systems aren’t at all. Because of that, I normally only apply to companies that use the software that I know. Roles where they want like 4+ years experience so someone that knows it fairly well. Then I’ll see the person that got it has experience from one of the other competitor’s software… like wtf.. it’s going to take probably a year before that person can be somewhat productive.
I’ve tried to but had no idea how to even find out who the person even was. What’s the best way to search for this?
Yes. Internal position. It came down to two of us and they went with the person who someone knew from the company’s daycare and had no experience in the field when I had a degree and years of experience. She quit a year and a half later and I got the job this time, then got laid off 3 years later. Nightmare company.
I lost out to one guy who had C++ on his resume. This was for a VB job. The employer thought C++ == “better.”
I was angry because his C++ experience was academic. So was mine, but I didn’t list it on my resume!
The company contacted me a couple of months later and asked if I wanted the job. Mr. C++ didn’t work out. Unfortunately for them, I was already in another job.
I Interview and get rejected from people who aren’t special or better than me in any way. But it is what it is…
I always do this. I don’t mind losing out to a person with more experience, or more relevant experience. Both of those can happen and when it does, I’m just flattered that I was even offered an interview for a job that went to someone with 15 more years of experience.
But sometimes it goes to somebody with less, even far less, experience than I have and the only discernible difference is demographics.
Sure did . And both times for jobs I wanted to be honest I could see why they were selected I wasn’t even mad they were more competitive
Sometimes, especially if I feel very raw about how the interview went, it can be closure for me. I see what they really wanted. But usually I don’t bother. The other candidates aren’t the enemies. I don’t want to harbor any animosity towards someone who got a job over me.