The most common reasons I saw candidates lose offers after great interviews

In my 15-year career, I've interviewed nearly 10,000 people as a recruiter and as an interviewer. As I write this, I'm thinking back on the interviews that stand out, some for good reasons and some for bad ones.

In those interviews, candidates rarely lost the opportunity because of their skills. Most lost it because of their behavior. By the time you're in the room, the company has already decided you have the basic skills to do the job. Now they're figuring out what you're actually like and whether you'd be a bad coworker. Four reasons stand out.
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#1: The candidate was rude to others during the interview.

This is my least favorite one to coach, because being kind isn't something I believe a person should have to be told. When you see a person, you treat them with basic human decency. But you'd be surprised at how often I saw this one.

Before COVID, when interviews were in person, I went to the receptionist before every debrief and asked how the candidate had behaved with them. Every single candidate. More often than not, the candidate was rude or dismissive to the receptionist but tried to be kind to the interviewers. In their minds, there was a hierarchy, and the receptionist wasn't on their level. These candidates were also often rude or condescending to female leaders. And they lost the opportunity, because honestly, no one wants to work with a jerk. If you can't treat the receptionist or the female interviewer nicely, how will you treat coworkers or staff you perceive to be below you?

So be kind to everyone, and leave the chip on your shoulder at home.
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#2: The candidate appeared disinterested in the whole interview.

One that stands out is a software engineer. He was in the final round of interviews with our team. His future hiring manager asked him why he wanted to work at the company and what got him interested. He said, "Well, one of my good friends works here and another just got an offer, so I figured I'd interview here as well." That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Throughout the interviews, he had seemed less interested in the questions than Penny was in Leonard in season one of The Big Bang Theory.

When you are interviewing, research the company and the people interviewing you. When they ask why you want to work there, tell them about the recent news or product that got you excited and why it made you want to be part of the organization. Yes, we are all collecting a paycheck, but there's a difference between someone who cares about the work and the people they'll do it with, and someone who doesn't.
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#3: The candidate was unprepared.

I remember these interviews well because they often ended way ahead of the scheduled time. Being prepared doesn't mean memorizing answers and parroting them back to the interviewers. It means you know your own stories, can answer questions about your experience, and have data and details for each scenario. If you need help preparing your stories, you can download the DRIP worksheet here!

If your interview finishes in 30 minutes instead of the full hour, it's a sign of one of two things. Either you gave them all the information and they had no follow-up questions, or you didn't answer the questions well, even after they dug for more.

Prepare! Prepare! Prepare! I don't care who says what, you need to know your own stories on the most common behavioral interview question topics.
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#4: The perpetual "not my fault" candidate.

I've had a few of these over the years! Sometimes, when we dug deeper, we found they didn't want to admit any role in the mistakes because they didn't want to come across badly. Other times, the candidate refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, sometimes things are out of our hands. But there are still lessons to learn from other people's mistakes, and hindsight is often 20/20.

The "not my fault" candidates are often also the ones who aren't coachable and who are lying. If you can't look at a failed project or task and see what you could have done differently, you're telling the hiring team you can't take responsibility or be coached. It's also a red flag because when a team project fails, everyone on the team shares some of the responsibility. If you say "not my fault" in every situation, they'll assume you're lying.

So own your mistakes. If it was truly out of your hands, talk about what you would do differently in a similar situation next time to try for a different outcome.

This isn't an exhaustive list of every reason you aren't getting offers. It might be out of your hands, and there might be a better candidate out there. But the mark of a human is our ability to introspect and learn. AI can't do that the way we can. So I want you to replay your last interview in your head and ask yourself whether you did any of these. If you did, ask yourself how you can change things. Maybe you can, maybe you can't, but you won't know unless you think it through.

My pro tip: don't be any of these four candidates. That will help you much more than any advice I can give you.

Until next time, Stay Caffeinated!