How do you find out if you’re bad at interviews?

“three women sitting beside table” by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Being good at interviews has many nuances. If you got to the interview stage, the employer probably already wants who they think you are.

All you need to do is show them that you’re who they think you are, this is pure sales.

If they feel you are too different in person from the way you sold yourself on paper, it’s not gonna work out.

This can be:

Claiming experience in X, but not being able to elaborate much

Not being receptive to feedback

Showing too little real world experience

Showing signs of immaturity or low emotional intelligence.

But this depends, if it’s for a Junior role, they won’t expect a lot of real world experience, and they will allow some immaturity(hoping you’ grow out of it)

All you need to show is that you receive feedback well and learn well. That’s usually all it takes to land a junior role for a reasonable employer.

Being good at interviews is basically sales. And this is useful for the job itself. You’re going to have to negotiate with co-workers, and you’re going to have to sell yourself in order to get a promotion and do work with more impact.

If you tend to always pass the interview, but feel that your salary is always low and you don’t get promoted, you’re bad at sales, and it’s impacting your interviews, and likely many other aspects of your career.

Things that validate your soft-skills:

This is incredibly hard to self-assess. If you think you have soft skills, but you keep blaming others for your problems, then I’d say you don’t have soft skills, as it starts with yourself by working on your emotional intelligence.

Things that don’t validate soft-skills:

Lots of friends

Lots of followers on social media

Everyone likes you(“liking” is like words written in sand, what you’re looking for is respect).

Receiving feedback

“people fist bumps on top clear glass jar” by rawpixel on Unsplash

When receiving feedback about your work, it’s about your work, not about you as a person. Keep that in mind, and your work will likely improve drastically.

If someone offers some feedback and they’re met with 0 consideration, they will keep a note that you’re not someone that can work with others, and especially not someone who is receptive to learning from more senior co-workers.

Learning requires admitting to yourself that you don’t know something.

Interviewers are very good at detecting this, and it’s not the quality of someone they want to hire.

Do you remember the last time you got some feedback? (either solicited or not)

How did you react to that feedback? Did you take it into consideration?

The best and most direct feedback often sounds like an attack or an insult. If you’re not sure if it’s wheat or chaff, ask them to elaborate. The genuine feedback giver will remain calm and help you out. Don’t call them names and tell them that you didn’t ask for feedback. That's a huge red flag, especially if you do it on a public forum such as twitter and it stays there forever for everyone to see.