Page 181 - John Kador - 201 Best Questions to Ask on Your Interview-McGraw-Hill (2002)

THE QUESTION LIFE CYCLE

sabotaged yourself in a number of ways that can be easily remedied.
You had a couple of misspelled words on your résumé and your
choice to wear sandals instead of shoes caused some of us to question
your professionalism.
WHAT THE INTERVIEWER ACTUALLY SAID: I appreciate your call, and
we were impressed by your credentials, but the truth is that another
candidate simply had a little more experience in the areas most im-
portant to us. Good luck in your job search.

Unless you have a personal relationship with the hiring manager, it’s al-
most impossible to get honest feedback about the selection process. And
the irony is, the more you need brutally honest feedback—the more
there’s something you can actually do something about—the less chance
you will get it. That’s because few HR professionals want to come clean
on the subjective reasons one candidate is chosen over another.
HR people can afford to be a little more honest about objective stan-
dards. Let’s say you lost the job because it called for five years of C++
experience and you only had two years. That they might tell you. If the
job calls for a commercial driver’s license and you don’t have one, that
they’ll tell you. If the job requires a Microsoft certification and you
don’t have one, that they’ll tell you. But you probably knew all that al-
ready. If you were rejected on any type of subjective basis, forget it.
Here’s where a recruiter intermediary can be helpful. No one likes
to give bad news directly to a candidate. But if an interviewer knows
the recruiter is willing to communicate the bad news, then the inter-
viewer may be more willing to tell the truth. Susan Trainer remembers
that a well-qualified candidate for a position as a hospital administra-
tor was rejected for a particular job for which he was well qualified.
When she inquired, the hospital interviewer disclosed that the candi-
date asked to smoke during the interview. It was clear that the inter-
viewer would not have revealed that critical fact directly to the
candidate. Trainer then had the unenviable task of confronting the can-
didate with the costs of his addiction. But the candidate learned, took
control of his addiction, and soon got a well-paying position.
Sometimes the subjectivity of hiring managers can be unreasonable.
Jason Rodd, senior consultant at TMP Worldwide, Inc., in Tampa,

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