How to Still Get a Job Offer When You Didn't Ace the Interview

Hello, it is so good to be here with you. I'm Madeleine Mann. And go ahead and say hi in the chat. Today we are talking about, okay, so you did the interview. And maybe you didn't do so well, maybe you fumbled a bit. And so how do you still get the offer? I have had so many clients maybe stumble in the interview, not do as well as they had hoped, and then recover. Or let's say then they don't get the offer. They're still then able to get reconsidered for that role or a future role. And so I just want you to know that when you go into an interview, it's not necessarily a dead end and an end-all be-all. Now, it is high stakes. I'll give you that. It is high stakes interviews. Really, you do have to show up. You do have to do your best. And one thing we do have to know is that if you are qualified enough to make it to the interview, then they're pretty much 100% evaluating you on your interview at that point. Even if you are less qualified than other candidates, if you make it to the interview, your interview performance can often move you farther than others. But let's say that that's the part where we stumble. There are options. Well, it's so good to be here with you today. Now go ahead and say hi in the chat. So good to be back here. I'm seeing Donna's here. I'm seeing Ashley. Hello. I'm seeing ET, Virginia, from Massachusetts, Soling from Washington, Wellington, New Zealand. Very cool. Fiona's here. Barry's here. Marcus is here. Karen. John's here. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's so good to see you all. So you might not recognize— I don't know if you've been following my lives. I have been traveling. I'm finally back in my normal office, in my normal studio. It feels so good to be grounded, and it's just a lot more relaxing. The setup is a lot better here. You can probably hear me a bit better. The video is clearer. I love it. Mary's here! Welcome, welcome! All right. Jaud is here. An is here. Welcome. Okay, so one thing to know about this session is that this is a live session for a reason. This is my moment to interact with you. So whatever questions you have, put them in the chat. You all ask incredible questions, and that's really why I'm here, is to make this a conversation with you. So let's dive in. So absolutely, you can recover after a bad interview. Obviously, you're going to have to hustle a bit. You're going to have to make some moves. But really, there are two major things that you want to recover after an interview that didn't go as well as you'd hoped. First, you want to make sure you restore your competence if that is something you feel like maybe was in, potentially gone astray. But the second is to really emphasize your interest in this job. That is probably your best tool here. Is first, first of all, you know, if you have to iterate that you are actually highly competent, that's important. Though when it comes to two equally competent candidates, who is the one that the company will choose? Well, the company will choose the person who appears to want the job more. And so that is going to be one of your secret tools in order to get ahead. So I've had people who wanted to work for me or companies I've worked for who were not as skilled, but who zeroed in on that company and said, this is the place I want to work. Here's why. I will go above and beyond. Yes, you rejected me, or yes, that was a tough interview. But they don't A lot of people, the way they— if you got rejected after an interview or whatnot, if you felt the interview didn't go well, the way most people react is they get bitter. They don't respond. You know, they don't respond to rejection. They, they, you know, are short about it versus someone who is saying, totally understand. Let's keep staying in contact. I really appreciate you all. I'll be cheering for you all from the sidelines. That is a totally different tone. And that's the type of person that these companies want to work with because your character is not tested in the good times. If the interviews are all going well, you're doing great, all that kind of stuff, your, your character is not being tested. If things go wrong, if you get some poor feedback, such as I was just listening to a client interview So she had done an interview with a company. I was listening to the recording, and on the recording, the interviewer goes, 'I would like to give you some feedback. Your answers could have been more concise at times in this interview,' something along those lines. And my client goes, 'Oh, got it. Thank you for the feedback.' And I told my client after, I said, 'That interviewer was just told, was just instructed to give you feedback at the end just to see how you react. Because I've just listened to your whole interview. You were not rambling. I— there's— look, that's a piece of feedback that a lot of people need. A lot of people are ramblers. My client actually gave really good details and didn't— I mean, maybe there was a sentence or two where she could have cut it off, but she wasn't. It was just to see how she reacted in the moment. And she did it perfectly. She said, okay, great, thank you. A lot of people would shut down at that moment or make a snide remark or something like that. And you think, how is that possible? And usually if you're someone who follows me, it's normal for you to think, how is that possible? Because you are a different type of person. You are someone who's very growth mindset. You are someone who's probably also— you enjoy my positivity, you enjoy that part. So you're not maybe a hyper-negative person, but trust me, being on the hiring side, they— we experience so much negativity and so much, um, name-calling. I've been called lots of names when I was a recruiter. Um, there's just— and, and I understand it's people going through a really tough moment in their life. They're going through rejection, they're going through potentially financial struggles, and it's tough. Um, oh, this is a good— this is a good question. So, um, Thermama says Doesn't showing you any— showing you want the job often come off as desperate? How do you avoid that? So showing you want the job absolutely does not come off as desperate at all if you are specific. So, so if you're saying things like, oh yes, I like any part of this job, I could also do things in another department, that's fine, it doesn't really matter. Like, I would like to just get my foot in the door. I, I'm, I'm up for anything. I like anything. That's desperate. Okay. But if you're— if you say, I've been doing research on your company and you guys are focusing on X, Y, and Z in the next quarter. And I saw this role and the things about this role, which are A, B, and C, are directly in line with my skills and my interests. And that is why I'm so sure that this is the right next step for me, because, you know, A, B, and C in my past has really prepared me for this. And I've talked to X, Y, and Z people already in your organization to understand what the culture is like there. And it really works with my approach. Are you noticing something completely different there? This, that, that does not sound desperate at all. That sounds like someone who is a job shopper, someone who says, I care about where I work next. I've given this tremendous thought. I can be specific about why this specific company in this specific role you compared to all the others is the right fit, that can put you head and shoulders above other candidates so, so, so quickly. Okay, great, great call out. How to be your client. Yes. So you can go ahead and I'll actually put the link in the chat. It's www.madeline mann.com. Madeline mann.com/coaching. I believe we have spots open right now on the calendar if you want to chat with someone on our team to see if it's the right fit. I will say our program is getting the best results it's ever gotten. It is— we've added so much where essentially we can— we'll apply to jobs for you, We will basically really help you to prepare for your interviews. We are kind of taking it out of your hands so that the most stressful part of the job search, we take it on for you. People have been loving it and already we're seeing some really tremendous success stories. Just, it's not only that the success stories weren't fabulous before, but they're just happening extremely fast now. As well as help with your LinkedIn profile, getting optimized, getting sourced. We have people every week saying, oh yeah, I was sourced by 9 recruiters this week. I was sourced by 7 recruiters this week. So it's happening. The movement's happening. So absolutely, if you're looking for coaching and looking for help acing the interview, getting more interviews, all that, we can definitely help you. Okay. So, Randy says, I interviewed at a company who really wanted someone in person, but I do not live in their area. They met with me because I was recommended by two different people they knew in the industry. Two interviews in a week and a half ago, crickets. How should I follow up? Okay, so this is a perfect segue. So one of the things, in order— if you did flub the interview or anything like that, a really important component is to follow up. Okay, so following up is really important. And again, the question might come again, Isn't following up desperate? Let's think about that for a second. If you have an employee who has to get some work done, do you respect the employee who just never follows up with you and just lets the communication die and then never pushes along the project? Or do you respect the employee who, you know, is proactive and says, hey, following up on this, You know, could I get your sign-off or what's the status or whatnot? You'd prefer the second employee. So why suddenly in the job search do we think, oh, we can't follow up? Now, of course, there is 100% a bad way to follow up. There's such a thing as following up too much. There's such a thing as following up too soon. So I'll actually, you know what I'll do? Let me see if I could. Oh yeah, here we go. I'll go ahead and pop in the chat a document, like a free, it's a free download. You can just grab it, Randy. Hopefully this— I know you're over on LinkedIn. I'm going to put this in the chat. I think it does go over to LinkedIn too. It should. I'm multi-streaming right now. So this is a document that will give you these follow-up email templates. So let me make sure. Follow-up email templates. Definitely use these to get back in the loop with them. Yes, it's no, it's not desperate. Thank you. Thank you, Elsie. That's exactly right. I did good on an interview and the recruiter told me that I was probably moving forward. I called yesterday and now they're only calling one person back. Can I come back from this since working with the recruiter? Okay, let's— let me, let me process this for a second. So the recruiter told me I was probably moving forward. They're only calling one person back. So these things can, you know, just because they're only calling one person back, that person might not accept, that person might shoot themselves in the foot. These things can happen. First of all, your response has to be positive, has to be hyper-positive. Thank you so much for getting back to me. You know what too many job seekers do? And again, you're going through something really tough, so I totally understand why, why the attitude can pop up. But we sometimes view, oh, I'm being ghosted, I'm really mad about that. But then when a recruiter responds, and says something like this, we get mad at them as well. So what you have to do is instead thank them for updating you. Wow, you have been so responsive. Thank you so much for updating me. Um, you know, now I know where we stand. Uh, you know, one thing you could do is definitely reiterate how interested you are in the company. Super interested in the company. Should anything else open up, I'd be really interested. Um, you know, and also you could do a Hail Mary right now. So one of the things that can be great— I talked at the top of this call that there's two things we really want to essentially weigh is your competence and your desire to work at the company. Those are the two levers you want to pull. So you just iterated your desire to work at the company. Let's try to pull on the competence lever. So think about what are ways that you could kind of give them one more taste of how competent you are. Did you already have something you talked about in the interviews that you could do a bit more research for it and send it over to them? Right. Some, some industry analysis you've done that's super relevant to them. You know, it's, it's almost— it's, it's really tough to say no to you after you've done something like that. Maybe they'll bring you back in. You can't do these things expecting that it is going to work out, but you do it hopeful and you also do it for the long game. 'Cause like I said, a lot of my clients, they will interview somewhere and then they'll be reconsidered. Um, and I, what I do is I work with them is I say, okay, why did they reject you? Let's reverse engineer why they rejected you and let's amp you up in those areas. Let's continue the conversation. We talk about exactly what to say, when to say it, not overload them, and then they get back in consideration. So how would you recommend for me to proactively ask for job interview feedback over the phone or via email? So Marcus asked this. So I, I'm not someone who always emphasizes to ask for interview feedback. Well, first of all, none of my clients ask for interview feedback because I listen to all their interviews and I give them feedback that's way more precise than what the, what the interviewer could even vocalize, because even though interviewer is feeling the things, a lot of times it's a lot of subtle things. And I can be like, the reason why you didn't get the next interview is because the interviewer had to ask you the tell me about yourself question 3 times in a row with several different variations because you didn't give her what she was asking for. Right? Like, I can see through that and be like, okay, that's, that's the thing. So next time you're asked, instead of actually giving, you know, this type of history, I need you to focus on this. Right? That kind of stuff. So I don't typically recommend this, but if you do want to ask, you can phrase it some— somewhere along the lines of, thank you so much for having me in this process. I really enjoy getting to know your team. I'm always trying to grow. So if you have any feedback for me, my ears are open, though I totally understand if not. Have a great week. Something like that. Do applying for a job from PC or laptop bring more chance than applying from a mobile phone? Is there anything hidden in the applying platform that is determined to increase opportunity and acceptance? No. I had a first interview this morning with a recruiter, and now I have a second interview on Friday with the hiring manager. I really want the job. Any suggestions? Okay, so, so you pass the recruiter screen. And the next one is the hiring manager, which the hiring manager interview will be harder. And for anyone who has a first round interview, make sure you go to my YouTube channel. You watch the video I have on first round interviews. I have several of them. One of them is for first round interviews. Another one is for if you're going for a role that is more senior level. So first round interview for, say, a senior manager, director, VP, or even just a high level individual contributor, go watch that video, right? Because that'll get you prepped. And I've gotten fabulous responses from that. Now, when it comes to hiring manager, things are going to shift. The first interview is a little bit more check the box. The second interview, when you go to the hiring manager, they're actually going to test your skills. They're going to ask you for specific examples of when you've done some of the top skills on the job description. They might even test you. They might say, describe this, or I'm going to give you a scenario, tell me how you react, or Let me show you this on the screen. You solve this. You know, they're going to actually go skill-based. So you really need to focus on that. They're going to look for you to ask really good questions because you can't ask really good questions in the first round because that person's likely a recruiter who isn't sitting on the team. But the hiring manager is definitely looking for good questions. So really make sure you bring that. And huge congratulations on a second round interview. All right. Oh, Marcus says, thank you, I think you provided a solution to my question. Love to hear that. And Elsie says, thank you. Oh, I love it, I love it, I love it. Um, oh my gosh, so many good questions here. Um, so I've been unemployed for more than a year. I have an incoming interview. How would you navigate and answer that gap with a recruiter? So gaps are, are really common. The currency of today's job market is not length of experience. It is having new skills and having evolving skills. The only reason that people are afraid of gaps is because they worry that your skills have atrophied. So here's what you need to do. How have your skills not atrophied? Give examples of personal projects you've been working on, pro bono work you've done for small businesses, anything you've done. You need to show that your skills have not atrophied. You really have to think about it. I mean, if you're looking for a surgeon to do your surgery and the surgeon hasn't done any surgery in a year, or you want to choose a person who did a surgery last week, you're probably going to choose a person who's a little bit sharper. And so you need to think about that from the company's perspective. So make sure you're coming in with that energy. And, and make sure you have an answer to that question of what have you been up to, how you've been staying sharp. All right. So, Lavita says, the recruiter said I was the top contender, For a contract role, but someone else got it. Should I apply to a similar job, same department, but a different location as the direct hire with the same company? Absolutely. This is— this brings up a really good point. There's this attitude, and again, it's probably not you who are here today because, you know, the folks who follow me are quite grounded and quite open-minded and willing to take feedback and information. Um, there's this idea that if a company rejects you, it's their loss. They didn't see your value. They're stupid. They don't like you. If in Lavita's case that she was a top contender and someone else got it, first of all, can we admit that sometimes other people are a better fit than us? You know, maybe they interviewed better, maybe they have more skills. Maybe they're just basically the same as us, but just something pushed over the edge. Maybe they live closer to the office, whatever it is. Let's, let's admit that. But then also, if someone has taken the time to get to know you, that is a fabulous signal. I wouldn't take the rejection as a signal of they don't like me. I would take it as, wow, they committed sincere, significant resources to getting to know me. I'm going to keep going. The best possible thing you can do for your job search is to view any interview as a networking conversation. You view any interview as, now I have an in with this company. Now I can call back to these people who I have relationship with and potentially get in another interview process. So I think this is a really great idea and this is something I work with my clients on a lot is let's not work harder in the job search. If we already have a good rapport with the company, let's get reconsidered for a similar or the same role, or even a lot of times it's even better role, or sometimes the role will even be created for them. So Mary asks, how do you recommend approaching interviews for stretch roles, such as a higher level role with more responsibilities than your previous role? The most important thing, if you are at an experience disadvantage to other candidates, is to sell the companies on the future, not your past. So you're not going to win from your past because other candidates have have you beat there. But if you are focused on what is the company's challenges, you get to know them deeply. You talk about how you see yourself fitting into the role. You talk about the challenges you're seeing and how you would execute them. That is where they will say, oh my gosh, it feels like Mary's already on the team. Feels like she's already contributing. It feels like I can really see her in this position. So that's the game changer. So that would be a really big focus. Let's see. Oh my goodness. Okay. You guys are asking so many good questions. I am going to keep going down to get through as many as I can. So I did an interview 2 weeks ago. They were really excited about me. I've used your templates to follow up and ghosted. Well, I, I think 2 weeks is still still in the realm of, you know, that you can definitely— it's not too long. I think a lot of companies, especially it's still summertime, there's people probably out of town. So I would say keep following up. Um, but because, yeah, I think that, you know, they could be doing other things. You may be interviewed at the very beginning of the process. Um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't give up. Never, never self-reject. I messed up some really basic late-stage interview questions because they're they were so far in my past. Yeah, so it came across poorly, but it doesn't reflect my knowledge. Any way to recover from this? Got it. Yes, so this can be really tough because you have to remember things, especially as we get more senior in our career. I've actually found from both interviewing, uh, candidates and also, uh, training clients the more senior, actually, the more vague the answers get. Because when you're asked for examples, you give examples that are high level because you think, well, you're asking for an example, but this has happened several thousand times in my career. How do I come up with just one example? Or if it's, you know, when you do this, it's like, yeah, I did that 15 years ago. It's tough to get as detailed and you might fumble. So here's the thing is you could definitely follow up with some of that knowledge, right? And even admit like, hey, I wasn't, you know, it was so far in my past that the question, it didn't trigger my memory quite as well. But once I had time to remember, this was this right now. Typically, that doesn't necessarily get you ahead per se. I will say I have personally done that in my career and it just helps me sleep better at night. It just helps me think, well, at least now they know. At least now they know that I'm not a complete idiot and I got my point across. And it also shows a bit of humility. So you can kind of, you can, you know, and typically with my clients, I would help them to, to continue relationship building that email, craft it properly, make sure it's not too long because that's, That's a huge no-no, writing this like massive essay on what, what is actually true. No one wants to read a massive essay, so definitely don't do that. How do you recommend approaching interviews first? Oh, oh, we already did this one. Perfect. Let's see. Yes, Donna says I ask for feedback and typically don't get any specifics. Besides not a good fit or went another route. Exactly. Yes. And, you know, frankly, I, I've personally given candidates feedback and regretted it. And I see on LinkedIn all the time where someone like a company will shoot back an email saying something like, hey, you know, we rejected your application because you're missing this, you know, have a good day. And it gets blasted online and people get really upset. And I think, isn't this what people have been asking for? And the answer is yes. And someone probably like you who's more mature and thoughtful and feedback-oriented would accept that and be like, oh, well, that was a little harsh the way they said it, or I feel I don't agree with their reasoning. But now you know, and now you take it as that feedback. And so, yes, I— it's, it's really not worth it to give feedback. I've I've found personally in my own career. Unfortunately, it's kind of always backfired. I received an email from LinkedIn today that stated I should contact HR for any companies that would, that would be interested in. Is this a good idea? Um, I would say it's not a If, if it's exactly as you're stating, I would say that's not a good idea. First of all, if you're just simply interested in the company, you're contacting HR. That's a waste of everyone's time. If you ever contact HR recruiting, you better have an open role that you are targeting. They need to know it and you need to be concise, clear about why this company, why this role, like why, why you're a good match. Have, have your resume attached, have already applied, have the job rec that you're referring to. But if it's just like, hey, I'm just interested in this company, it's not great. Also, if you're reaching out to the HR, HR and recruiting, out of everyone in the organization, you really want to reach out to people who are most likely to respond or even see your message. I don't think it's a bad idea to target them, but they are one of the least likely to respond just because there are some of the people who have the most crowded inboxes out of anyone in the organization. So Aman says, I had a pre-screen and then an interview on Monday. Congratulations. It felt like a second screen just with program managers. I found out it would take 2 weeks to hear back for a second interview in person. How can I stand out. So I would definitely say we, we definitely don't want to follow up on the 2 weeks. Okay, there's no, oh, this person is so eager and on top of it, when they're following up before the 2 weeks if they've stated that it's 2 weeks, right? When I said earlier about being proactive is an attractive trait, not listening and not understanding the timeline is not an attractive trait. It's not a valuable trait. So we don't want to over, you know, to, to be like, hey, am I moving on before those 2 weeks? So, but make sure you've sent your thank you email. And then again, kind of one thing we talked about earlier is if you want to send some sort of work sample or something like that or something really, especially since you've been through 2 interviews so far, what have you learned? What can you share? What, what are, what's something additional that you can put the cherry on top? The reason why that's so effective is, first of all, it's showing your competency. Second of all, there's a psychological principle called the reciprocity principle, right? You may have heard of it. If I give you something, you feel a little bit indebted to me to give something back. If you're going above and beyond to put something together for the company, especially if it's bespoke to that company, there's going to be almost like this guilt or this feeling like, oh my gosh, how could we, how could we reject Iman? Like, he really wants this, he's really showing us this. And so that can really create this wonderful push towards further putting you in later rounds. Um, yes, this person says, can you please share the follow-up template to be used after an interview? Yes, let me, uh, I can try to find here. Let me I can re— I can re-put it in the chat. So here we go. All right, I re-put it in the chat so y'all can have it. Perfect. Here we go. So Um, so C Friend says, I've been interviewing for the past year for multiple organizations. I feel like I can't get past the second or third round, sometimes even the first round. Any advice of what to do? I do ramble sometimes. Yes, so first round is really getting, getting— okay, do you have the skills logistically, does this make sense? And are you an effective communicator? That's the first round. It's a pretty low bar, so I'm glad to hear that you're, you're clearing that most of the time. Now, we don't— most people don't clear 100% of them because we're not always the best fit for every single role, and that's just, that just happens. Okay, but when it comes to second and third rounds, that's when it's a matter of Exactly. Not rambling, being a very clear and structured communicator, giving really good examples, speaking to your vision, and also positioning a lot of your questions and your, your answers from the perspective of the company versus from the perspective of what you think is most, most interesting or most common or most valuable from your own experience. So I think you really need to shift into more of the, employer mindset. I will say, let me go ahead, I can share, uh, a class with for you. I do have a free class called Unshakeable Interviews Masterclass that there's essentially 6 offer blockers that are very common across job seekers, and you may be exhibiting one or more of those. And Just from this question, I can't tell you which of the 6 offer blockers it is. But once you figure out what that is, you can start changing your approach in interviews and it can make a huge difference. So let me go ahead and put that in the chat so you have it. The class is free. You can just kind of watch it and, and figure out which of those it is. It's normal to have more than one offer blocker. Um, that you shouldn't feel weird about that. So let me go ahead and put that in the chat here, and I'll also go ahead and put it on the screen so you all know what it looks like. Okay, let's get back to the other questions. So Nicholas says Ghosting has been a major issue lately. I have been all the way to a final interview and not heard back from companies. Oh my stars, that is awful. What would you suggest to minimize this phenomena? Okay, so here's the thing. It is embarrassing for companies to ghost. And I'm not— I mean that in the, the truest form of the word. The people are embarrassed. So likely what's happening here is the recruiter who is managing this relationship keeps going back to the hiring manager. Have you made a decision yet? Have you made a decision yet? No, no. I think maybe this— no, maybe this person actually— should we even hire this role right now? I don't think we can hire this role. Oh, this person's— this person's switching positions. So maybe we don't need this role. Maybe we do. Oh, we want to keep these candidates because maybe we're still going to hire them. It's embarrassing. It's a mess. It's a mess behind the scenes. And so the recruiter doesn't really know what to say. The hiring manager is giving them nothing. The hiring manager is dragging their feet. The hiring manager is also busy because their job is not hiring. They're— well, it should be, but their job is also to do other things. So that's currently being pushed off and it just kind of ends up falling to the wayside. And, and to a certain point where whoever's managing the relationship feels awkward about reaching out, and it's— it just all kind of falls to the wayside. So anyways, you always, whenever you follow up or you continue the communication, you never mention that they have not followed, that they haven't been ignoring you. Okay, that is the biggest thing. Um, I know in my coaching program I've shared some screenshots before of me following up with someone of where I'm like following up and I'm being hyper-positive and I'm like not acknowledging that she's ignoring me. And every time— and I also, my clients have shared photos of this too, of their own situation. You know, it's the first thing that the person says when they finally get back to you. They say thank you. They say, oh my gosh, thank you. Thank you for being, you know, for caring so much. Thank you for being so persistent. Thank you for being so patient. They like it. They respect you even more. But it's also because they don't say sorry, 'cause I don't put it on them that they should feel sorry. I don't make them feel weird when I'm following up. My clients, I make them feel weird. We had Kathy on, if you guys were at my last like big giant like reverse the search masterclass, she landed multiple job offers in the sporting industry. She didn't even work in sports before. Met basically top people at all different, you know, things. She just was the one who led all of the events and hospitality for the FIFA World Cup. Incredible, right? And she had, at the top of this year, she had reached out to people and she got zero responses. And I said, Kathy, follow up. And of course she followed up a couple of times with no guilt. She heard back from like, I think almost 100% of the people she reached out to. So anyways, following up is important. All right. So I'm in my late 40s and for the first time I faced ageism. Multiple times I've been told my voice sounds youthful upon meeting face-to-face. I'm not applying to management slash upper career positions. Okay, so I've done quite a few lives on this. It is one of my specialties. I have a lot of people who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who are my client, and they land jobs just as fast or maybe even faster than people in lower age brackets because there are very specific strategies that you can bring. I would say watch my live that is specifically called How to Land More Job Offers Over the Age of 40. Definitely watch that. But one thing I will leave you with here, and I can also, if you're interested in talking to one of our team members, you can go to www.madeline mann.com/coaching because we work with tons of people who are in this situation. Is, as I mentioned earlier, the currency of the job market is dynamic skills, is results. It is not wisdom. It is not tenure. It is not length of experience. So you need to bring in this eagerness and this hunger to learn, this hunger to contribute, and this clear Show that you have been iterating on your skills. We don't care about, you know, your, your degree from 20 years ago. We care about what have you done in the last 12 months? What have you done the last 24 months to stay, uh, on the ball with what is happening in your, in your profession, in your industry? All right. Does applying to two jobs at the same time at the same company make you look desperate, says James? It depends. It's not necessarily the— it's not necessarily the word desperate I would use, but it does, it does basically show— okay, so it depends. That's the first thing I'll say. The second thing is we have to look at the actual jobs you're applying to. If they're approximately— like, let's say you were applying to, oh, the HR business partner for the finance team, or the HR business partner for the engineering team. Those are both HR business partner roles. It's just the client group focus is different. And it would make perfect sense for you to apply to both. Okay, that's one thing. But if it was HR business partner finance and program manager. No, you're, you're showing that you have no focus. And you— if you're good at everything, then you're great at nothing. And companies want people who are really good, especially right now in this environment. They're not hiring as many people, and so they're not going to take a, a risk on someone who's just mid at their job. They want to get someone who's great. So Thermama says, I had a colleague who filled their gap by calling it a career sabbatical on LinkedIn. She described it as taking time to consider her next move. What do you think of that? It's, it's neutral. It doesn't help, um, but it doesn't hurt. It, it tells me nothing. It doesn't— like, think about it yourself as Again, let's say you're looking for surgeons to do your surgery. Do you care that, that the surgeon, you know, said that they were taking— maybe, maybe it is good, right? Maybe, maybe the year off allowed the surgeon to, to rest and, and be sure that she or he was ready to come back and do surgery, right? But in the end, you just, you care about the results, right? So what What in the past year is going to show that, that you can get results? That's, that's really all they care about. But yeah, sure, you can, you can call it that. It's not gonna help, it's not gonna hurt. Okay, um, so Fiona says, I've been through the second round at an org and the same company is hosting a conference very soon that I'll be attending. How should I proceed? Yeah, I'd probably even tell them Um, I would tell them ahead of time, since you're already in the interview process, that you will be attending, that you hope to see them there, that, you know, you look forward to it. Um, I would even, I would even try to maybe reach out to the people who have already interviewed me and say, hey, I'll be there, be great to meet up, or just say hi, will you be at the booth, or whatever it is. I wouldn't necessarily follow up on that and expect it. It's more of— again, it's more of showing the effort and then going, ooh, it feels harder to reject Fiona now because she's showing that she's so proactive. Uh, so it's— I wouldn't necessarily like say, I really need to meet up. I mean, it would be great to meet up. I really hope they would, but I wouldn't chase it down because it's more of the act of being proactive. And then once you're there continue to build relationships. I wouldn't necessarily talk about the rule per se, um, but I would say more focus on befriending. Okay, so I'm seeing some repeated questions here that we've gone over today, so I'll go ahead and move to ones that seem to have some, some new topics. Okay, so, um, Shushanette says, how can I tell why I didn't pass an interview? It's the hardest part to do. You are 100% correct. It's because you're missing so much information. You are missing You know, who, who are the other candidates? How did those other interviews go? Maybe they're interviewing someone internal. Maybe they're interviewing someone. Maybe even what they put on the job description, they ended up deciding that wasn't exactly what they were looking for. Even if you were that perfect fit, maybe they've changed their criteria. I will say with, with some pretty strong certainty, when I listen to my clients' interview recordings, of these interviews they have with companies, I can pretty much pinpoint why they don't land jobs. With— when I listen to an interview recording, I'm usually pretty sure whether or not they're moving on to the next round just based on the recording and whether or not they get the offer, even without hearing the other candidates' interviews. Why? Because there's very clear indicators, both from the way you answer And then the way the interviewer interacts. And one of the biggest indicators is their follow-up questions and the questions they ask in the interview. I can read into those very deeply in a way of like, I have interviewed so many people that I understand the psychology of why did you ask that follow-up question? It was because they missed this. It was because this, this is, this is also missing from their, their resume and all that kind of stuff. Now, I will say, when I've given my, I've given my clients this feedback, they have said, wait, I was in the interview and they listened to the recording of the interview and I didn't even pick up what you just said. So I just want you to know it is very, very difficult. And sometimes if you don't have a coach or anything like that, you just need to keep moving forward and you just need to keep elevating your skills and, you know, keep watching my YouTube channel. I have tons of free videos. I put Unshakeable Interviews Masterclass. I can put— I can re-put it again in the chat if you'd like, for you to make sure you are figuring out what are your offer blockers are so that you, so that you don't fall into one of these traps. I know it's super hard. So Stock Operator says— Stock Operator Edward says, in second or third round interviews, is it better to keep your answers short, like under a minute or two, or is it okay to go into more details depending on the question asked? So yes, I mean, you— it's like, it's the answer is both, right? You should typically aim to keep your answers under 2 minutes, like most of the time, the majority of the time. Now you, you want to think about When it comes to some of the bigger questions, um, like if you think of the, the core of your, your skill set, such as, you know, tell me about— I had a client who does marketing operations, like, oh, tell me about, you know, uh, the operations you built out for a certain campaign, and you know, what, what, what were the strongest points and what were the weakest points, whatever. That's like the core question about the entire job. That one may expand past 2 minutes, but also you can also give a pretty decent answer that's an overview. And if you give enough details, you kind of give enough of an overview, they can then drill down into what they actually want to hear, such as you might say, and for that campaign, I made sure to build out SMS, social and direct mail components. Now, do you need to then talk about SMS, social and direct mail components in your answer? That's probably in itself going to add 5 minutes to your answer if you go through each one and how you did it. Maybe, maybe not. But, but also just by listing it now, the interviewer hears that those are options and they might say, hey, I know you mentioned SMS. Can you, can you dive into that more of how you did that? You say, sure. Right, so, so helping them in that way could be really great. Mm, this is interesting, says Catherine. On a— on question 4 out of 5, the question was so obvious I blanked into finding a proper example. I asked to get back to 4 after 5. They did that. But I was not any better after, and I feel that tanked me. Okay, so this is the thing, Catherine. I want to just hold your hand for a second here, because what you're saying is truly my biggest downfall in interviews too, which is you're saying the question was so obvious that you couldn't think of an answer. And that's— so basically, so I have two psychology degrees. I'm obsessed with psychology. I think it's so valuable. And one of the things is when it comes to your memory, we have all of these paths in our memories and they light up when we're told something. Um, and unfortunately when we're given too broad of a question, our mind breaks. Like, have you ever seen those videos where it's like, name a white person and people are just like, name a white That, that's like too broad of a— I don't— and they, they like freeze and they'll freeze for like a minute and a half. And, and it's so funny because we're all just like, what? Like, name a white person? Like, yeah. And they'll just say something like Abraham Lincoln finally or something like that. And but that's, that's the issue. And so I'm guessing this question you got was like, um, name a good experience you've had in your career or something cool, something something so broad, I wouldn't know how to answer that. Name a good experience in your career. What if I said, give me a nice childhood memory that you've had, right? You probably be like, I have no idea. But what if I asked you, what's a really great memory of going to a theme park as a child? Do you have any great theme park experiences? And you might be able to say, oh yeah, I went to Disney World, blah, blah, blah, right? So that's the issue. And so it's not really your fault. It's super difficult. The only thing I can say is that when this happens, you have to default to your prepared examples. So going into an interview, and I have a video on my channel called, uh, about the Story Toolbox, about behavioral interviewing and all of that. Go to that video, it will help you. So what I would do, like, let's say it was like, name a positive, um, work experience. So what I would do, I would look down at my list of like story titles. I never write out scripts. I only would write out story titles of my past experiences and I would just quickly pick one, right? And I would think, which of these are positive? And I'm just gonna morph it to the question, right? And so maybe it's like, well, when I helped the CEO to build out our core values of the business, that was super positive to me because it made such a big impact on the organization for years and decades to come. So the way we did that is blah, blah, blah, right? So I made the intro match the question and then I get into the, to the description afterwards. But you basically just take something and then you change the intro to match it when you get asked these like super vague broad questions. Yes, Jean says feedback opens companies to liability because Madeline just explained, too public. Exactly. Exactly. Nice. Edward says thank you. Steve Dog says this question applies to me too. I love that. Okay, this is so good to hear. I'm seeing a thank you also from Amanda. That's so great to hear. Okay, all right, so, um, when was— when did you apply Question. Oh, the question was, when did you apply sound judgment? My real answer, all the time. So what would be a good next time? Exactly. So again, when did you apply sound judgment? Um, you know, I could try, I could try to change this to, you know, if the values one was at the top of my mind, is, you know, a time I applied sound judgment was when I realized we had to build out company values and that it was currently a mess, that we were not hiring the right people because we were— it was all about who seemed similar to the team versus who held the same values. And so I really pushed the team that, hey, let's, let's get in a room and let's figure out exactly what our core values are. Right. Again, you just curve it. If you're kind of like running out of things, you just curve it to that, to that example. So this person asked, I've seen job posts on LinkedIn where I may have applied, but then a week or two later the same post is reposted with another 100 applicants. Is it normal for the company has yet to find anyone for that role that's listed? So first of all, yeah, if there's 100 applicants, only a dozen or so of those are actually viable typically. But also at the same time, I wouldn't focus on when a role gets reposted. A lot of those get reposted automatically, so I would just ignore that, that signal. Interviewed, and at the end of the interview, one of them was like, the job duties will complement my skills, but it's more detailed, and most of the team did not come in with education. Is this positive? Okay, so they said The job duties will complement my skills, but it's more detailed and most of the team did not come with education. I think it's, it's kind of neutral to me. I mean, I think that it's definitely positive to say that the job duties will complement your skills. The part about it being more detailed or the team didn't have— didn't come into the education. I mean, it's not always a super great sign to be very different from the team. But in other ways, they could be saying your education is a huge asset. The other part of the team doesn't have that. So you're right, it is, it is a little bit difficult to understand without further context. All right. Okay, oh, here's one. Okay, I was looking for a question that hasn't already been answered. So, so Carolyn says, I'm at the, I'm at the reference check, what happens next? So for reference checks, typically a reference check is done once they are either they've already chosen you or you're in the final 2, 3 candidates. So it's because it's— I mean, it takes a lot of time to reach out to these people, talk to them, all that kind of stuff. So it's a great sign. So typically the next step would be an offer if the references work out, if they don't need to further learn more about you. So yes, I would say ideally an offer is, is around the corner. Catherine says, thank you, I need to prepare that sound judgment question or other with pivot. Yes. Um, oh yes. So, um, uh, Thermama says, I may have missed this, but how do we identify our blockers? So it's talking about offer blockers. So these are things that are stopping you in the interview from getting the offer. That I created an entire class. There's 6 different offer blockers. You may have one or more of them. I'll go ahead and pop it in the chat again. It's called the Unshakeable Interviews Masterclass. Um, you can go ahead and take that class figure out what your offer blockers— I'm interested to hear what each of yours are. And like I said, you know, for those of you who are looking to land an incredible job, your time is extremely valuable. You do not want to deal with the nonsense of this crazy job market. You don't want to miss out on these incredible opportunities. You see these opportunities pop up and you say, that is my dream job, and it quickly goes away. And you're thinking, how, how do I get the attention? How do I actually land these amazing jobs? How do I, uh, hit my compensation requirements? How do I hit my location or remote requirements? Uh, we have a program that from start to finish, it takes the mental load off for you. Uh, we are helping to optimize your resume. Your LinkedIn profile so you're attracting opportunities. We apply to jobs for you. We make sure you're prepped for the interview. You go to the interview. Me and the other coaches are listening to your interviews, giving you the feedback that you finally have always wanted your entire life. You get your job offers. We are in your corner. We're saying, hey, wait, wait to negotiate on the call. Let's convene. Let's tell you exactly how to negotiate this offer so that you can sleep at night knowing you got maximum compensation while still maintaining the relationship at the highest level possible. So if you're interested in that, we do have a couple spots open in our coaching program right now. I hope I didn't misspeak. I'm pretty sure there's a couple open. If not, I would definitely say get on the calendar as soon as possible because July was pretty chill and now August is like Everyone is now looking for coaching and all that. So I will definitely put it in the chat so you can go ahead and grab a time if there's any open with a member of our executive team. We can figure out exactly if coaching is right for you. Okay. I just put in the chat. I'm seeing lots of love. If you could put a Wi-Fi high five in the chat and then I'll be here. Again next Tuesday live. I love having your questions here live with me, sharing all kinds of insights. And you always have such a, like, so many great complementing questions and also a lot of similar questions, which means that I hope that this session is valuable for you as you hear all of people's different different questions as well. So, ah, thank you for this session. Wi-Fi high five. Yes. So good to be here with you all. Definitely join me again next week, as well as I also have a live session where I'm talking about how to get sourced on LinkedIn, how to get more networking opportunities on LinkedIn. If you just go to theselfmademillennial.com/insights, in, you'll get that. That's going to be a fully live session. I'm only doing it once, probably only do it once this year. So definitely join that and I will see you next time. Bye.