I’ve conducted many dozens of job interviews in the past
several years. I’ve hired some great folks as a result of
these interviews, but my experience rejecting candidates
is also pretty extensive.

I’ve gained some decent insight
into why candidates fail, and it often comes down to some
interviewing skills for which all good interviewers expect,
regardless if they know it or not.

You may be a promising candidate, but you may be getting
rejected because of bombing out on some of these skills.
So, if you’re getting a lot of rejection calls from
interviewers and you’re not sure why, these tips may be
helpful. Here are my top three reasons for rejecting
candidates.

1. Failure to Display Any Passion. To be successful in
almost any professional role, you need to have a high
degree of passion. That’s not to say you need to be
bouncing off the walls with energy, but if you look like
you’re about to fall asleep in the interview, you’re not
giving the interviewer the impression that you’re going to
dive into the job with any degree of interest or
professional curiosity.

Passion can be demonstrated in your body language,
inflection of voice, the light in your eyes, and the way in
which you show excitement when you tell that story about
when you saved the day in your last job.


2. Failure to Connect With the Job Description. All
too often, candidates come into an interview thinking they
know what the job requirements are just by reading the
job title. Most job descriptions do a halfway decent job of
explaining some of the main skills and/or experience
needed to be successful in the role. It’s unfortunate that
candidates often ignore this information and try to spend
most of the interview talking about skills and experience
that have no relevance to the job.

It’s OK if you lack some (or a lot) of the direct experience
listed in the job description, but if you make a conscious
effort to connect your experience to the skills I’m looking
for, that’s a huge plus. This shows that you took the time
to read and understand the job description, understand
the skills I’m looking for, and properly prepared for the
interview.


3. Failure to Ask Questions. I interviewed a promising
candidate a few years ago who was well on his way to
getting an offer. His experience was relevant, his
leadership and communication skills appeared strong, and
he was knocking the interview questions out of the park.
Towards the end of the interview, as I always do, I left
plenty of time for questions. He had none. He didn’t show
the slightest bit of curiosity regarding how our
organization was structured, how the team worked, what
challenges we were working through, … nothing.

Unfortunately, his resume ended up in the “rejected” pile.
An internal candidate may be able to get away with this
depending on the circumstances of the relationship with
the interviewer, but there’s no excuse for an external
candidate to not have any questions. Even if the
interviewer spends a large amount of time explaining the
ins and outs of the job, there are still hundreds of
questions a candidate could ask.

Having no questions
gives the interviewer the impression that the candidate
doesn’t understand the job well enough to ask intelligent
questions, doesn’t have any professional curiosity, or
doesn’t even care about how things are done at the
organization.

A good candidate will have many questions written down
in advance; ready to pull one out when the time is right.
Ideally, the questions will come naturally during the
course of the interview, but there’s nothing wrong with
referring to your notes to jog your memory.

The majority of the interview rejections I’ve given have had
one or more of these three failures. Notice that technical
competency isn’t on the list. For most job positions, a
baseline technical competency is a requirement, but there
are so many other traits that can predict whether a
candidate will be a good fit for the job.

The next time
you’re preparing for an interview, practice demonstrating
passion, connect your experience with the job description,
and prepare to ask questions. You’ll have a much greater
chance of landing that offer.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140901013327-8289532-top-three-reasons-why-i-didn-t-hire-you?trk=tod-home-art-list-small_1