So I just had not my best interview… what should I be thinking and what should I do? was originally published on Intern From Home.
Everyone loves to talk about their successes: the interviews they got, the internships offer they received, and more. Far fewer people enjoy talking about the struggles they face when recruiting for an internship or job. But guess what: most people face many, many hurdles on the path to securing an internship or job.
This post talks about the side of internships that most other people try to avoid because it isn’t “fun.” We’re talking about what to keep in mind after an interview didn’t go well. In fact, it may have gone poorly. Perhaps it went very poorly. If you’re feeling that way, you should know that you are not alone. Most people will have countless interviews that do not go well.
Let’s set the scene: you worked super hard to write your cover letter, apply to a role or network your way into an interview process… then you did your research on the company, you prepared for the interview, and you did the interview… and the interview did not go well. It’s hard for us to tell you what separates a great interview from a not-as-great one, however you will probably have a feeling after the interview of how it went. It can take time to develop your feel, and it’s important to keep in mind that sometimes your feeling will not be correct. Specifically, you may think you didn’t do well, but you actually did do well and your interviewer was simply not telling you or giving you the reaction that they thought you did well.
Especially during times when you think you did worse than you actually did, it is especially important to handle yourself professionally post-interview. Why? Well, as an example, if you think the interview didn’t go well, you may be tempted to not send a thank you message. That thank you message can be the difference between getting the role and not getting it. Or, to come back to a concept we discussed in a recent post: you may be the first in line to get the role if someone else drops out of their position… but if you don’t handle yourself professionally or communicative effectively, the employer may no longer consider you eligible or want to give you the offer.
This post shares the first 5 things to keep in mind and do to handle the post-interview “it went so poorly” feeling. These suggestions are in order of when you should do them after your interview.
1. We all mess up interviews… cut yourself some slack!
Let’s face it: we all have off days. You may have just had an off day. Or you may have had something happen in your personal or academic life before the interview that through you off. Whatever the case is, it’s important to remind yourself that it’s okay. Not only is it okay, but it’s normal to have interviews that don’t go well. While it’s tempting to want to be harsh on ourselves after an interview that didn’t go well, it’s extremely important to be kind to ourselves. For one, you deserve kindness! Secondly, you want yourself to be ready to go for the next interview you have. If you’re still giving yourself a hard time about the previous interview that didn’t go as well, then the initially bad interview can lead to a negative domino effect. It’s much better to isolate that 1st not-as-great interview as an exception and to move on.
Remember that an interview does not define you. There is so much beyond an interview that makes you special. After all, an interview is a means to an end: getting an internship or job. Your friends and family appreciate you for who you are, regardless of your ability to thrive in an interview.
Also, while you might not want to hear it in the moment, having the experience of a not-so-great interview (or many of them!) will make it feel all the more satisfying and rewarding down the road when you have an interview you feel great about. You’ll be able to look back and say: look how much I grew from that prior experience!
2. Write down the questions from your interview right after and practice them before your next interview
While every interview is different, there can be quite a bit of overlap between the questions you’re asked. This is especially true if you’re applying to the same types of roles (ie: marketing internships at different companies). To this end, it’s helpful to keep track of questions you’re asked so that you can think about them in advance of your next interview (whether it’s an interview with the same company or a different company). The best way to keep track of the questions you’re asked is to immediately after an interview (either with pen and paper or on your computer) scribble down all the questions you can remember. You should attempt to do this the minute that your interview ends since it’s so easy to simply forget some of the questions or to even start to modify the questions in your head. You don’t need to get the wording of the questions exactly right and it’s okay if you forgot some of the questions.
When thinking about questions you were asked, it’s especially important to ask yourself about the question(s) that took the air out of the room. In other words, what were the questions (if any) where you had a really tough time answering and/or you felt like your answers were not at the level you or the interviewer wanted them to be? It’s okay if there’s several of these questions where you really thought you could have answered better/differently. What matters is to write them down and learn from them!
As you prepare for future interviews, you can pull up your notes with the questions you’ve been previously asked in interviews. If there were questions where you particularly struggled, then those might be worth spending more time on. On the flipside, if there are certain questions that you feel you have a strong answer to, then perhaps it is not worth spending any time working on them. In either event, your goal is not to memorize answers to the questions you’ve previously been asked. Rather, the goal is to reference prior questions in order to think about how you want to tell your story and also to think about different talking points that help promote your candidacy for a role.
3. Send a thank you message to your interviewer, even if you didn’t feel the interview went well
Even if you feel like the interview went poorly, you should still proceed with the assumption that it went okay. Relatedly, as with any interview that went well, you should be sending a thank you note to the interviewer. While this is not commonly done by job candidates, it is much appreciated by interviewers. You might be wondering: I know I’m not getting the internship/job, so what’s the use in sending the thank you note? There are 4 reasons:
-
It’s the right thing to do. The other person took the time out of their day to interview you, and you should show your respect for them and their time by writing a quick thank you message.
-
Your thank you note could shift how your interviewers felt about you. Even though you didn’t think the interview went well, perhaps it went better than you thought and the company is considering whether to make you an offer. The thank you note that you write could be what pushes you over the edge and helps you get the offer.
-
A thank you message could be what helps you get an offer from the company, even if it’s a delayed offer. In this case, the thank you email is especially important since the company may have forgotten about the candidates by the time they realize they need to make the hire, and they might start by looking at their last communication with the candidates… which would be your thank you note after the interview.
-
Whether you receive an internship/job offer or not from the person that interviewed you, they can become a part of your professional network… which you want! The thank you note can be the first written communication exchange between you and your interviewers. From there, you should keep in touch with the person (which we’ve written a detailed guide on how to do).
4. Acknowledge your efforts and what you did well, including a 2 minute period with only encouraging thoughts!
Our brains are programmed to have a negativity bias. You might be wondering what the implications of this are for interviewing: in short, we dwell on what we didn’t do well (/ what we wish we could go back and change) and we don’t give ourselves credit for what we did do well. To overcome the negativity bias, we suggest that you take at least two minutes after each interview where you ask yourself to list everything that you did well during the interview. During these two minutes, you should try to avoid focusing on anything that didn’t go well, and you shouldn’t even be focused on places of improvement. While there are times to think about how to improve, this time is not one of them. Rather, this is the time to give yourself credit for everything you did well. While you can do this just in your head, we suggest writing down a few of the things you did well.
You might be feeling that nothing about that last interview went well. It was all bad. If you’ve been there before, well guess what: so has pretty much everyone else. In this instance, there’s only one thing you need to remind yourself of: how awesome you are for even doing the interview. You likely have lots of peers and friends who didn’t even put themselves out there to do the interview. You should be giving yourself credit for giving it a try.
5. Ask yourself how you could have done better and take notes on your reflection
After acknowledging what you did well, it can be helpful to ask yourself where you think you could have improved. No matter how many interviews you’ve done or how much you practiced, there are always places where we can improve. Your goal when asking where you could have done better is not to judge yourself or to give your interview a score/rating, but rather to simply think about the places where you could have said something differently.
When thinking about how you could have improved, many people focus 100% of their effort on what they said. While the contents of your words are important, your delivery is as well. What do we mean? Well, did you display a sense of composure and critical thinking (great) or did you immediately answer the interviewers’ questions before thinking (not as great)? Did you speak in specific about passions or prior experiences (great) or did you speak generally (not as great)? It can be helpful to write a few notes down after the interview where you keep track of how you think you could have improved. Then, when preparing for future interviews, you can review what you want to work on… it makes a lot of sense to review these notes at the same time as you review the questions from your prior interviews.
Remember
While it’s great to try to learn from each interview (and there are learnings to be had from most interviews), it’s not helpful to try to be perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect interview. Your goal is to learn from each interview and to move on.
We’re not saying it’s fun to have an interview that doesn’t go well. However, there’s lots to be learned from an interview that didn’t go well. Most importantly, you need to remind yourself that you are not alone when an interview doesn’t go well… most everyone feels this. Together, we’ll overcome these challenges. And in our next post, we’ll share some more important things to keep in mind after an interview that didn’t go as well.
Did you enjoy this guide? You’re in for a treat: this is just one of dozens of guides created for students about how to handle the recruiting (aka: getting an internship/job) process. To see all of the other guides, subscribe to Intern From Home’s newsletter (it’s completely free!) where we talk about all things from using LinkedIn to preparing for an interview to making the most of your role.
