Are you interview-rich but offer-poor? Here’s why, designers
Rejection is painful. It can spiral into disappointment and self-doubt. But don’t worry! If we remove the self-pitying stories, we’re just left with data. And while data can be difficult to interpret, it’s important to have. So here’s a guide for you to look at past interviewing experiences. I hope it helps you land that next role.
Not getting offers is a rejection — it stings
You build your portfolio. Maybe it’s taken years of projects. At the very least it takes months to get one that starts landing you interviews.
You show up on time, ready to talk. The questions are hard, but you’re learning. You appreciate that they’re being selective.
You study how to answer various interview questions. Behavioral questions, whiteboarding, portfolio presentations. You have good frameworks and rehearsed answers.
You invest hours of your time. The interviews are stressful, high energy. You’re on the whole time. you’re tired when you finish. Then it’s back to work, or family, or life.
Then the email comes. “We’re sorry…” “Your skills were strong but we decided to go in another direction….” “We’ll keep you in mind should other roles become…”
This is painful. Emotionally at first. You were excited about the role, the company, the team, the work.
Then disappointment. Maybe questioning, maybe self-loathing. Maybe you’re wondering if you were never good at design. Maybe you’ll never get picked. The money you spent on the BootCamp is wasted, you think. You’ll never get a job, have a new career. You’ll never get out of your current role.
Then you get another interview and start the process all over.
This is the cycle most of us go through interviewing. It’s a tough process, and no one is there to design or control the totality of your interviewing experience. Especially if you are looking to make a career, change, or don’t have a job — you feel like you are out in the wilderness.
It’s tough to troubleshoot
No one can tell you why you are getting interviews but not getting offers. You can ask, and you might get some feedback, but you never know how honest they are being.
You can’t trust what they are saying to you, not really.
You can troubleshoot with friends or peers going through something similar, but it’s so personal. They can’t live your life for you. They were not on the call with you.
Don’t worry! You can figure this out.
So here’s a framework to help you sort through some of the biggest reasons you aren’t getting offers.
Here’s a fairly complete list of causes, from easiest to fix to hardest
- Technical expertise
- Authenticity
- Fit of hard + soft skills
- Listening skills
- Determining what do they actually need (active listening)
- Fit of values
- Confidence
Not enough technical expertise or company knowledge
Maybe your past isn’t what they were looking for. In individual contributor (IC) roles, your technical expertise is very, very important. Don’t underestimate this.
How to diagnose: You will know by your answers to questions. If you are fumbling, or just plain can’t explain something as asked, chances are you are being rejected because of a lack of technical expertise.
If you haven’t looked up the company’s website, or looked up your interviewers on LinkedIn, this is probably a red flag to the interviewer that you aren’t hungry enough. If you aren’t looking up companies or teams before interviews, that’s a huge red flag — and a place to start gathering your knowledge before speaking to someone.
The good news is that there are loads of resources to help you improve your expertise. On this list, it’s the easiest one to remedy.
Too much authenticity
Sometimes, we’re just too authentic. Especially in an interview, we want to cultivate the parts of us that we bring into the room. Some people are great at this — they can sense when being relational comes at the expense of being perceived as an expert. Often, if we’re sharing our authentic struggles in an interview, it’s not a good look. Save this for your friends and family. At work, you need to shape the stories you tell.
It doesn’t matter what the conventional wisdom is on LinkedIn about ‘authenticity’ — there is such a thing as being too authentic.
How to diagnose: You are sharing too much personal information. If you share a struggle, you aren’t rounding it out with a positive note of how you overcame your struggle. You are focusing a lot of time on problems, and not nearly enough on actions, solutions, and outcomes. It’s OK to acknowledge that something was a struggle, but don’t stay there. If you are, then this is probably a place where you are getting blocked.
Do a retrospective of your past interview. Are you honoring your sad, low-energy side? Are you telling stories about struggle without talking about how you overcame your problems?
We’re all guilty of this, especially with so much career advice out there to be authentic.
Your skills aren’t a fit for the role
You might be highly technical, but the skills you possess aren’t a match. This happens all the time. Sometimes it’s a poorly written job description, or maybe you haven’t done your due diligence to understand the description.
How to diagnose: If the interviewer is asking about something unrelated to the role, or something you can’t readily answer, you may not be a good skills match. For instance, if your background is in qualitative research, and they are asking about A/B testing, then it could be that your skills are a mismatch.
In a way, this is good news — it’s certainly not a reflection of your experience or personality. It could be that you are applying for the wrong kinds of roles, or that your skills don’t match the current market for roles — but a relatively easy fix by getting more training.
Hello! You aren’t being a good listener
You might not be listening in the right way, and this can have all sorts of downstream consequences
How to diagnose: Are you doing all the talking? If you are, that’s a sign you aren’t practicing your listening skills. If the conversation feels more like a pitch than a conversation, then you are probably not listening well enough.
Listening (and note-taking) has all sorts of benefits for you. You’ll be able to understand the structure of the company (see expertise, above) and you’ll be able to triangulate the actual needs of the team, which we’ll talk about next.
You aren’t what they actually need
Sometimes the interview is about understanding what your potential employer is looking for. I mean, really looking for. Not what the job description says. Not what they are telling you on the surface. Their deepest needs are based on fear, opportunity, or otherwise.
How to diagnose: It’s getting more difficult to do our diagnoses. Start with listening. Are you talking too much? If you are, then you’ll never know the actual needs of the team.
To answer this question, you’ll need to get good at listening. Listening between the words, not taking things for granted or at face value.
The job description might, for example, say they are looking for a sr. UX designer. However, the actual needs of the team are for a skilled practitioner who is easy to work with. It could be that a past member was difficult and damaged some relationships. No one ever says this stuff in job descriptions. Even in interviews, this kind of direct communication is rare.
How do I possibly find this out you might ask.
Starting with knowing this reality is a good step. Build this into your listening practice.
You aren’t a values fit
Sometimes we crave stability and consistency. If this is you, and you apply for a startup, they may notice that your values are misaligned for what might make you successful in a role.
Remember, this isn’t about actually being successful. It’s about perception. So much of acing the interviewing is becoming a master are understanding how you are perceived.
How you diagnose: Notice how your interviewers are speaking to you about the job. How do they describe the environment you’ll be working in? Do the questions they are asking you have a coloring that feels like there’s something behind it. EG they might ask you what is enough research. There might be a clue here that they have a time-based or quality-based value — IE fast research, or not too fast but thorough research.
Really listening to the questions, and to the assumptions behind the questions can help you understand if there are values underlying the questions (there almost always are).
You don't have enough confidence
This is difficult to understand, and difficult to change. But changing this will change your entire world where interviews are concerned.
Why it’s a problem: You might wonder why people care about confidence if your job is to research, or to create prototypes. In other words, why should individual contributors (IC) care about confidence?
We are judged by the amount of confidence we have in ourselves.
We need to be our biggest advocates. Interviewers look to you to have confidence in your own work. In the absence of confidence, interviewers will either assume that you didn’t do the work (the team did) or that you did the work but ultimately got lucky. In both instances, the assumptions they make about your lack of confidence are about your ability to be successful in your new role.
How to diagnose: You typically know by the absence of rituals in the lead-up to the interview. Do you give yourself a few minutes to warm up your energy before speaking to someone, yes/no? Do you practice breathing exercises, yes/no? Have you rehearsed or practiced answers to questions that you know are coming, yes/no?
You can also tell by thinking about a few behaviors during the interview. During the interview, are you focused on having good posture, yes/no? Are you making sure to take time to think through your answer during the interview, yes/no? Are you taking care to think about the pace of your answers — IE are you speaking too fast (common) or too slow, yes/no?
Finding the problem is 80% of the work
By doing an exercise in diagnosis, you will be doing some hugely valuable work. The truth is, when we understand the problem, we are already on the way to a solution — it’s just how our brains work. We are natural problem solvers.
So spend the time to understand where you’re going wrong — chances are that you’ll be amazed at the progress you make as you start diagnosing issues in your interview process.
I hope this helps! Good luck on the next round :)
