Learning From a Bad Interview Helps Your Next Job Search

Posted November 24, 2017

When an interview doesn't go well, you may have trouble moving ahead with your job search.

However, there are things you can glean from a failed interview. You just need a willingness to be honest with yourself and the desire to learn from the mistakes you made. The things you learn are often enough to boost your confidence moving forward.

With that in mind, here are a few tips on the best way to go back over your bad interview experience.

Write it out

Going over and over a bad experience in your head is more torture than a productive exercise. If you really want to get something out of your bad interview, write down everything that happened and get it out of your system.

Go through each part of the interview process, from preparation to the second you walked out the door, and score how well you did on each section. By writing out the interview bit by bit, you will be able to figure out when and why things went downhill.

Sometimes, you might have given a bad answer to an easy question. In other situations, you might stand by what you said, and maybe it wasn't the right employer for you. Even if you stand by your performance 100 percent, try to identify something you can improve on, and one thing you nailed.

Decide to move on

Once you have done a clear-eyed assessment of where you went wrong and figured out how to avoid making the same mistake next time, it's important to put the experience behind you and move on.

Remember, bombing an interview isn't the end of the world, and maybe you can even find some humor in what went wrong. Also, treat yourself and do something you enjoy.

Whatever you decide to do, don't stop applying to jobs and trying to nail the next interview. Momentum is essential, particularly if you think you did a bad job.

Talk to a pro

Sometimes, figuring out what went wrong and the way to correct it is easy. However, if you're clueless as to why the hiring manager in your last interview wasn't impressed, think about setting up an appointment with an employment specialist, like someone on our staff. Receiving an interview assessment by a professional is a straightforward approach to understanding what you're doing right, what you’re doing wrong and what needs to change. It’s a surefire way to step up your interview game.

Talking to a staffing professional can also help put things in perspective. Staffing experts have seen many highly qualified applicants get declined for positions, even after hitting a home run in the interview. The sad reality is, plenty of great candidates don't get the job regardless of their interview performance because of reasons beyond their control.

At Ambassador Personnel, we regularly help folks whose job search has just gone through a rough patch. Please contact us today to work with a full-service staffing firm if you're looking to get your efforts back on track!