Truth about Rejection: It Is Not The Company - It's YOU!

There has been a growing trend of people taking to social media to blame hiring companies and their processes for their rejections from roles. The truth is, they should be looking at themselves. There are obvious reasons people don’t get hired for roles, and they usually stem from the candidate themselves. In this episode, we take an inward look at why candidates don’t get the positions they believe are a perfect fit for their backgrounds.  

·       Lack of Specificity – “The Fluff Factor”

·       Weak Communication Skills

·       Inconsistent Answers

·       Lack of Learning Abilities

·       Red Flags in Attitude and Behavior

·       Culture Clash

GLINTER SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTACT INFO
 Michael Glinter - Host
michael@michaelglinter.com  (Email)
http://bit.ly/michaelglinter (Podcast)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelglinter/ (LinkedIn)
http://www.facebook.com/michael.glinter (Facebook)
https://www.youtube.com/c/MichaelGlinter (YouTube)
www.michaelglinter.com (Website) 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the offer, the no-sugar added approach to the talent triangle with an honest approach to employers, employees, and recruiters. This is your host, Michael Glinter. Before we get into today's podcast, I want to go over a few things with you. First, I want to tell you a little bit about my background because I think it's going to be important with today's podcast. I was in staffing for 21 years. So for 21 years, I helped people find jobs. Understandably so, I know the struggles that one has when they're looking for employment and they don't get callbacks, they don't get feedback, they get rejected from positions. So I understand that. I understand that it's frustrating when you interview with the company three or four rounds and you don't actually get a callback, or they tell you that they moved with a different candidate, right? But at the end of the day, I think it's important to also look at what's real, what's the reasoning behind all this. The second thing I want to talk about before we get into this podcast is what I've seen recently on LinkedIn. You have to stop posting about complaining, essentially, about why you're not getting jobs. You have to stop posting, criticizing companies that interview you and reject you. You've got to stop posting criticism of the interview process. Here's the reason why. When a company looks at you, they look at your resume, they look at your LinkedIn also, they look at your posts. No company wants to hire somebody that's gonna publicly shame other companies. No company wants to hire somebody that's gonna go out and say negative things about other companies that they've interviewed with. And I get the fact that oftentimes you don't mention the company name, but it still puts a bad impression with the hiring authority. So please, I get it. You're frustrated. I'm frustrated. When I see a candidate or a client of mine that can't get work, it gets me mad. But at the end of the day, posting your anger and your frustration out on LinkedIn is not a good look and will never help you find work. It's always gonna cause a roadblock. So do yourself a favor. We'll talk a little bit about why people get rejected, but make sure that you don't use social media as a platform to complain because ultimately those complaints are being heard by your potential hiring authorities, and they're the ones that are saying no to you because of your social media posts. But let's talk about rejection. Over the years, I can tell you the biggest complaint that I hear from everybody. I never get feedback. I got a rejection email, an automated one or a prefab one saying that I was not selected candidate, but they're not giving me feedback on why. Let me give you the perspective from a recruiter standpoint. When I was in recruiting and I called somebody to let them know that they did not get the job, they always replied the same way. Well, that's ridiculous. I'm fully qualified. This job is perfect for me. I'm perfect for this job. They should have hired me. I don't get it. This is their fault, not mine. That's the first reaction I always got. People would automatically go into defense mode. They would automatically blame the company on the reasons why they were not hired versus looking inward at themselves to try to figure out why they didn't get the job. And it's frustrating from a recruiter standpoint or even from a hiring company standpoint, when you go to call a candidate that was being rejected and you get this litany of defense, this pushback, nobody wants to give candidates feedback anymore because of it. The reason why you're not getting feedback is because companies don't want to deal with your instinctive defensive reaction. They don't want to sit there and try to, you know, negotiate with you on why you didn't get the job. They don't want to sit there and try to explain themselves that you're not a culture fit. So at the end of the day, when you don't get feedback, you can blame all the people that are out there that use this opportunity to say, oh, it's them, not me. And that's the reason why you're not actually getting feedback. It's the reason why companies, generally speaking, go back and give you a generic response. The other reason why is because from an HR perspective, they've got to be very careful on how they articulate what the reasoning is, right? When you say somebody's not a culture fit, there have been dozens and dozens of lawsuits by people saying, well, that just means that they're racist or they're ageism or they don't like people of color or they don't like people that have a disability. And they use that as a propaganda, a propagate way to push back on the company just basically saying, you're not going to fit our team. So companies are very careful on how they give out information because they oftentimes will get irresponsible responses that are true. I've actually been told in a in a situation that the reason my client didn't hire somebody was because of age, but they ended up hiring somebody older. This is how bad it can get. So at the end of the day, the reason why companies oftentimes won't give you an answer is because they're worried about one, getting so much pushback from a candidate who just doesn't realize that there's just the reason behind them not getting hired. But then two, also people that take whatever general feedback they get and try to twist it and turn it into something more of a discrimination thing than anything else. Let's talk about now why people get rejected. I can tell you over the years, one of the most common approaches to any company's interview process is what's called the STAR method. Many of you probably heard it. For those of that you don't know what the STAR method is, I'm going to explain it to you. STAR stands for situation, task, action, and result. What the STAR method is designed to do is to help companies understand what was the situation that you were handling or approached with, like the dilemma, what types of tasks and actions that did you take to resolve it or to improve the situation, and then what was the end result? The biggest reason why companies use this method is because it makes them understand or helps them understand if you actually did something and how you actually did it. Why do I say that? Because I can tell you over and over again, candidates love to say they've done something, but they actually really did it. They love to say they, you know, improved a process. But when the company asks them, explain to me, what did you do to improve the process? They can't actually give them an answer. And so, generally speaking, the biggest problem with most candidates in the interview process is they can't put proof to the pudding on how they did something and why they got to the result they got. And so I can tell you, if there's anything you can do better in an interview process, it's stop talking in generalities. Meaning you got to go into specifics. If you tell somebody that you implemented something, and because of that implementation, you improved a process or a result by a certain percentage, you've got to explain to them how you did it. You're gonna have to walk them through what different things that you did to actually create that result. If you can't go through that type of depth, if you can't tell them how you got to that result, they're not gonna believe you actually did it in the first place. And that's probably one of the biggest reasons why companies reject people. It's because when they get an explanation from a candidate, that candidate can't describe how they did something. Or they try to describe how they did something when they really didn't, and it doesn't actually make sense. I love the one, I love the situations where a candidate then tries to explain what they did to increase the process. And when they try to explain it, it actually has no relevance or doesn't actually make sense. There's there's no, it's not actually how somebody would do it. And so companies can detect it. We call it the bullshit meter, and ultimately decide, okay, we're not going to take this person because they're lying to us. So it's really important. Practice the star method. Look it up online. There's all kinds of ways you can practice on how you would present this type of an answer. Another big issue that a lot of companies have is people not being able to give or use good communication skills, not be able to give them a proper answer. What that means is either they're very short, very, very, you know, blah, right? They go like, okay, tell me a time you did X. Well, I helped an employee grow. Okay, well, help an employee grow. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? You know, you're not really giving us any detail. Or on the flip side, they do what's worse is they go off on a tangent. I love it when someone's asked a question. They they don't actually answer the question, but they go on a three or four minute, you know, you know, blob of words that don't even have relevance or go off in different directions, right? They don't actually answer the question, but they start giving all kinds of information that wasn't even asked by the interviewer. It is so important when you're interviewing with a company and a hiring manager or an interviewer asks you a question, answer the question. Don't use that as a platform to start pitching your background. Don't use this as this an opportunity to start talking about how great you are and not actually answering the question. Just answer the question. Your answer should be no more than 60, 90 seconds. The interviewer has a list of questions they want to get to. And by you taking up five, 10 minutes to give them all kinds of information they don't need, they're losing out on the opportunity to ask those questions. So make sure that you use strong communication skills. Make sure you listen and hear what the question is, and then you come up with a response just to that question. If they want more information, I promise you they're gonna ask for more information. So don't start giving them things that ultimately they don't want to hear. The next one is good. This is when you're interviewing with a bunch of people, right? You you so you've interviewed on the phone with somebody, they take you to the next round, and then the next round you interview with five different interviewers. And when the interviewers all ask you the same question or similar question, you give them inconsistent answers. So maybe they ask you, why did you leave your job? And in one guy, you tell them, Well, I left for better opportunities. Another guy, you tell them, well, I I didn't really like the direction of the company. On another interview, you tell them, well, you know, I wasn't really aligned well with the culture. You know, none of these answers are actually consistent. You're basically making stuff up. So it's really important to make sure that when you're asked similar questions across different interviewers, you're consistent with your responses. Another one could be asking how you led a project or how you supported a project, and your answers to those questions are inconsistent with what you either put on your resume or with other people that you've talked to. Make sure there's consistency. And you know, the reason why this is a concern for a company is when they hear inconsistencies, they don't believe you. They actually think you're lying. People that aren't telling the truth are not gonna are are gonna give inconsistent answers because they don't they don't remember what they said with the last guy. But people that are being honest, their answers are always gonna be the same because they're being honest. So just be straight up and up front. If you don't have experience in something, if somebody asks you a question and you're like not even sure what it is, be honest with them. Listen, it doesn't mean they're not gonna hire you. Actually, I can tell you, companies appreciate people that can accept where their weaknesses are, but also show the interest of learning about it. So you may say, well, you know, I haven't really done something like that before, but I would love to work with you to learn more about how to go through that process. Or I would love to work with you on how I would handle that if it comes up in your organization. So showing the interest to grow, right? That's gonna make people more happy than you trying to lie or say make something up that isn't actually true. Companies want people that are gonna learn and adapt. They want people that can reflect on their mistakes. If you can't explain what you've learned from past challenges, if you can't talk through on how you've grown, companies are gonna be concerned that you're gonna be very rigid. So, you know the question, what's your biggest weakness, or what was one of your biggest challenges in your last position? The reason why companies ask this is not because of the negative connotation behind the challenge that you had. It's really on how you accepted it and how you developed beyond it. They want to hear that you actually learned something, right? They want to hear that from that experience, from having that weakness, what did you do to further develop yourself? What did you do to take that and find a way to develop where you can make yourself stronger? Or another example is if you were dealing with a problematic situation and it maybe it failed. Maybe you tried to fix the problem and you had to do two or three tries, or maybe you weren't sure how to approach a problem and you had to ask your boss to help you for the first time so that you can learn how to resolve it. These are all things that being admitted to an organization could be a benefit because companies want people that are willing to accept their weaknesses, they're willing to accept their mistakes, but also show the interest of wanting to do better. People that don't show the willingness to grow, people that don't show the willingness to do better, people that don't show the willingness to accept feedback, these are the people that are not getting callbacks because companies don't want people that are not willing to grow. And that includes everyone. I don't care how old you are or how many years of experience you have. I can tell you, I have seen fault in people all the way up to C-level executives. They make mistakes too. So you have to accept the fact that you're not perfect. I accept the fact that I'm not perfect. I've taken criticism before, I've accepted feedback. But at the end of the day, if you can't accept that feedback and you can't explain how you've taken it and learn from it, companies are gonna hesitate to hire you because they're not gonna think that you're gonna accept feedback well and they're gonna you're gonna do well in their environment. Let's talk about um red flags when it comes to attitude or behavior. One of the big things we tell people is you never want to blame or say negative things about your previous company, previous employer, previous boss, right? It's the blame game, right? This is goes back to why we don't give candidates feedback. Well, it's the company. They they screwed up. I'm perfect for the job. They just don't know what who they're talking to, they don't know what they're interviewing for. Nobody, nobody wants a complainer and wants a blamer. Nobody. I don't care who you are, and I don't care if you're right. You you've got to accept the fact that everybody looks at things differently. And instead of blaming others, you have to find a way to cultivate that information, cultivate what happened, and turn it into a positive for yourself. Turn it into how you can bring that positive energy to the table to resolve issues. Acting defensive when challenged is not an attractive quality. You need to hear people out and listen. When you get feedback, in the rare occasion that you do get feedback from a company or a recruiter, stop fighting it and learn from it. Stop arguing with them that they're wrong. Instead of arguing with them that they're wrong, how about you try to figure out what you can do better the next time? How about you actually accept the feedback and write down the things that you need to do in order to really truly better yourself and prevent a situation like the situation you were in from happening again? These are all very important qualities, not only for a candidate who's interviewing for a job, what comes out in an interview process, but quite frankly, companies don't want to hire people that are not gonna accept change and ability to change and their their willingness to learn and develop and their willingness to accept the fact that they're not always perfect. What about the culture clash? You know, I use an analogy. I I was gonna end with this, but I'm gonna say it now because it's an important analogy, and and I want to reflect on or I want to uh help people understand the the similarities. What is marriage? Well, marriage is when two people, two individuals, they meet each other, they learn about each other, they grow close, they realize that they're meant to be together because of their you know physical, uh emotional, uh intellectual attractions and their qualities, and they get married, right? They both partners go to a ceremony where they have a priest or whatever person propagating, facilitating the wedding, and they both agree, I want to be with that person, right? Both people decide that this is the right situation. Both people decide that they are attracted to the other person and they think that the other person's the good match for the future. Now, hold on to this for a second, right? We know what a marriage is, okay? We know how important it is for both parties to put their put their foot in the ring. What exactly is the interviewing and hiring process? What are the similarities? Well, I can tell you, it's exactly the same. When you go interview for a company and you decide you love the company, they gotta love you too. You can't just say, I'm picking you as my employer, and then they hire you. On the flip side, they're gonna like who you are. They're gonna feel like they drive with you. They're gonna feel like you bring qualities to the table that they like. They've gotta look at you and say, Okay, yeah, I can see myself having this person on my team long term. It's the same on the flip side. I've had candidates where the company was in love with them. They wanted to hire them. They would make an amazing offer, but the candidate turned them down. Why? Well, because the candidate didn't see themselves working for the guy, didn't see themselves working in the environment. Marriage as a personal level is exactly the same as marriage from an employment level. Both parties have to want it. So I get this complaint all the time, Michael, I love the organization. I'm a perfect fit for the job. Why didn't they hire me? Because they didn't think the same of you. I get it. It sucks. Nobody likes to be turned out. Remember that time that you uh actually proposed to somebody and they rejected your proposal? Or the time where the woman didn't show up to the wedding, stood you up. It's the same thing with hiring companies, and the same thing with you as a candidate. If both parties don't agree that it's gonna be the best fit for them, then of course, in good faith, they shouldn't decide to be together. And so why am I telling you this is because over and over we go back to the sense that candidates oftentimes like to say it's not them, it's the company. But at the end of the day, yeah, maybe the company doesn't see you fitting within the culture of the team. Maybe the company sees things about you that they know that will not work well with the team dynamic that they have. Or maybe it's the flip side. Maybe the company thinks you're the best thing since sliced bread. But then when you look at the team, the dynamics and what's going on within that department, you realize this is really not a fit for me. I can't work well in this environment. I don't like one of the interviewers. He was kind of a jerk. I can't be a coworker to him. God, we would never get along. It happens all the time. I'm gonna tell you a quick story about a guy. He was interviewing for a Fortune 100 company. I'd rather not say the company. Um, he really wanted to work for this company, though. He's always wanted to work for this company. It was like one of his target employers. So he went through a round of interviews, actually, six of them on one job. Crazy, I know. He went through this round of interviews, six interviews for one of the jobs that he was interviewing with the company, and they rejected him. They said he wasn't the right candidate, right? So then he applied to a different job within the company, went through a bunch of rounds of interviews, and they reject him again. He calls me up six months later and says, Michael, I need you to create a resume to help me gain employment with this one employer that I want to work for. And I'm thinking, oh, wait a second, you've already interviewed with them. They said, No, what does it have to do with your resume? Oh, there's got to be something wrong because they're my target company and I'm perfect for them. So I said, Okay, well, let me do this. I know one of the executives at the company. Let me call. Let me try to find out why you keep getting rejected. Before we go down this rabbit hole, let's see why you're not making it to the finish line. And when I called the executive and he looked up and talked to the hiring managers from the pe the jobs that he previously interviewed for. They all said the same thing. He wasn't the right culture fit for the company. Wow. What does that mean? He could have interviewed for 10 jobs, probably not gotten them. Because every single one of the interviewers, every single one of the hiring teams would have figured out the same thing. He wasn't a culture fit. But at the end of the day, whoa, wait a second. How is that possible? This is the company that I should be with. This is the company that I've been wanting to be with forever. How could they say that I'm not a fit for them? This goes back to the marriage analogy. They don't have to like you. If they don't think you're a fit, they're not going to hire you. So come to reality here for a second. Just because you get rejected for a job doesn't even mean that you interviewed poorly. It doesn't mean that you screwed up. It doesn't mean that you gave a bad answer. You may have given all the right answers, but you just may not have fit culture within the team or the company or what they're looking for. At the end of the day, my favorite phrase, I'm sure some of you are laughing already. It's really important to understand that there's reasons behind rejection. It's not random. It's not because someone's having a bad day. It's because there's something that's happened in the interview process that's caused the company to say, hmm, they're not a fit for us. Or, and on the flip side, if you're a company and you get a candidate that rejects you, understand it may not be something you can control. They may not want, just want to work for you. They may not want to work in the company or the environment. At the end of the day, stop dwelling on it. I tell people all the time, and they get pissed at me. I can't tell you how many people yell at me about this, but I say, listen, you got rejected, move on. If they're not going to tell you why, they probably don't want to tell you why. Because there's probably not a finite black and white answer. At the end of the day, move on. If they don't tell you that you did something in the interview process that screwed up your chances, you probably didn't do anything wrong. Move on. And stop posting about it on social media. People see it. People see when you complain. People see when you're complaining or talking about other companies, even though you're not using their names. And guess what? They don't want you to do the same with them. So not only are they not going to talk to you, they're not going to hire you. I want to leave you with just one thing. Moving forward, when you're interviewing with companies, talking to people, trying to get opportunities, don't take it personally. Be honest. Make sure you show clearly how you do things, talk through the specifics. And at the end, if they don't pick you, they don't pick you. I realize that's hard to swallow, but at the end of the day, there's nothing you can do about it. Just move on, use your energy to move on to the next thing and keep moving forward. Because eventually you're going to find that one job, that one hiring manager that's going to work well with you. Please remember to subscribe to my podcast. Also, please, please feel free to share, like, send, tag your friends. Let them have the opportunity to listen and understand and get a better viewpoint from the people that we talk to. Also, please don't forget if you have any questions, you can email me at any time. And I hope you guys had a great day.