i got rejected mid interview
this entry is kinda embarrassing for me to share. hence i'm doing it.
i had successfully cold emailed the ceo of a company and secured a meeting. then i got rejected mid interview by him.
what bothers me most is that i made such noobie mistakes. as warren buffet said, It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes. hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.
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my biggest issue was this: i wasn't specific. i said i want to make myself useful. which i do. but that's not valuable to someone. useful how exactly?!
there's a rule that people don't remember a story if they can't visualize it. the same applies here. if the person (interviewer) doesn't understand your value within the first minute and can't fantasize about what you'd be doing at the company, you're fucked.
first impressions last. instead of explaining how i would add value to the company, i told him that i want to get better at marketing first. this does NOT put a productive image in someone's head. i squirm thinking back about this. aaaggh. what i said immediately put him in the frame of "OK, we have to upskill this guy from zero. for what? i don't want to do that."
i would've been better off explaining wtf i'm good at and what i want to do. but since i didn't, he couldn't see the value add and cut the meeting short.
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something we both noticed is that i asked lots of questions. which isn't necessarily bad. but in an interview about me, it seemed sus. at some point in the conversation he was like, "okay, but let's know more about you."
i've realized i default to asking questions because i'm afraid of what i might say. and listening is so much easier than talking.
lesson: lead with value THEN ask questions!!
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the ceo said i'm probably going to be a founder in 10 years. but the problem is, this means he interpreted me as wanting to get upskilled by them in order to use that somewhere else. that's NOT the way you want to come across in an interview. he even said: "why would we upskill you for you to move on and do your own thing?" i stared at him and answered, "that's not necessarily true." but i knew deep down that my heart wanted to agree. i don't know how to think about this: should i have been more or less honest?
takeaway: know what you want before pitching yourself. real intentions always shine through, whether you intend them to or not.1
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this is a characteristic from the ceo that i want to emulate: he was very straight to the point. halfway through the interview he said "why would we want to hire you? i see no value add here." he didn't waste my time nor his own, and i respect that a lot. he was concise, comfortable, and honest. i aspire to be the same way. but how do you become that way? you care more about being useful than being liked.
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a valuable part of this experience is that i got rejected. as a byproduct i feel a bit down right now. i'm shocked that he rejected me so early. but i forget that i need to get used to rejection anyways. no one ever got what they wanted by fearing rejection. this was just practice.
so why do i feel down now?
because of expectations. expectations...
i started fantasizing about roaming their offices and working overtime and being aligned with their mission. that's the problem. all of the bad feelings inside of me right now are 100% in my control and grew out of my expectations and fantasies. had i initially treated this as practice, i wouldn't have felt this way.
lower your expectations or higher your performance. or both.
claude gave me this useful heuristic: "before any pitch, write one sentence: i can do X for you, which gets you Y. if you can't write it, don't go."
next.