You thought you did everything right. You successfully jumped through each hoop of your job search, getting what you thought was positive feedback along the way. The hiring manager and team seemed to like you, and brought you back through two more rounds of interviewing once you cleared the initial phone screen. But now you’ve just learned from your recruiter that someone else was offered the position.
What went wrong? When you don’t land a job that you wanted, it’s easy to feel a sense of personal failure, or even shame, about your performance. You might think that maybe you could have answered that last interview question in a different way, or that you should have made better eye contact with the interviewers. You might start second-guessing any number of details, from what you wore to your meetings to whether you should have hired a professional to revamp your resume.
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But the fact is, while your job search performance is certainly a critical factor in ultimately getting hired, this is one case where it really isn’t all about you. There are a number of factors that go into a company’s hiring decisions that may not have much to do with you at all. So before you sink into disappointment about how you wish you had done something better, take some time to understand the wider context of the candidate selection process:
Some things are simply out of your control. Yes, as a candidate, you’re responsible for doing the best job you can in each step of the interview process. From preparing a stellar resume that contains quantitative proof of your results, to understanding the company well enough to ask the right questions, to thoroughly preparing how you’ll respond to classic tough interview questions, you certainly want to do whatever you can to give yourself an edge over the other applicants.
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That said, even if you ace your interview performance and have the seemingly perfect work history for the position, it doesn’t mean that you’re destined to get it. There are many factors behind the scenes that can affect hiring decisions, from internal candidates who may already be favored to win, to the hiring team looking for a specific quality in employees that isn’t defined in the job description. You might also be one star among many — there’s just no way to know how hot your competition is, or how well someone with a very similar background and skill set did during their meetings. When that happens …
It all may come down to perceived “fit.” There are a few different types of “fit” that may come into play in hiring decisions. One aspect involves culture fit — recruiters and hiring managers are charged with finding candidates whose work style, attitude, engagement level, personality and other hard-to-define attributes are just right for a particular organization. This means that while you might be the candidate who had the strongest answers to your interview questions or connected best with the hiring manager, you still might not be considered a top candidate if you come across as a poor cultural fit.
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Other types of fit that you’ll likely be evaluated for include team fit and manager fit. Many interview formats involve being grilled by an entire team or group with whom you would be working. In such cases, when multiple players are weighing in on who they think is the best fit to work with them or the group, you might end up with the short end of the stick if even one of those contributors doesn’t feel that you’re the right fit. Manager fit, of course, is how well your potential future boss feels that she can work with you. You may have the most impressive industry background of all the applicants, but if you’re a poor fit with the hiring manager, then you aren’t likely to end up with the job. So it all comes down to the reality that …
It’s important to grasp the big picture. You may enter the job search battlefield feeling confident that you’ll be able to beat out your competition. You may be at the top of your game in terms of skills and experiences required, and your list of credentials may virtually mirror what a job listing describes. Yet because of the factors above, the wider context of the job search and interview process may leave you as an also-ran rather than the victor.
While it may be discouraging to recognize that no matter how well you do in your interviews, you still might not get offered the job, this information can also help you put rejection into perspective. A healthy approach is this: Do what you can to be the best candidate you can be. But at the end of the day, if you don’t reach your goal of landing the job, don’t be too hard on yourself. If you stick with the process long enough and keep putting your best foot forward without personalizing the results of the process too much, you’ll be that much closer to finding the right fit for you.
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Didn’t Get Hired? Don’t Take It Personally originally appeared on usnews.com