“Well, at least now you have an answer the next time someone asks you about your biggest mistake.”
A man who told an interviewer he didn’t make mistakes was called “arrogant and conceited” by a career counseling specialist at Ask a manager.
The anonymous reader, who submitted his query to the website in what seemed like an honest attempt to assess what was wrong with his response to an interviewer’s question, shared his personal anecdote.
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It’s worth noting that the same post is trending on Reddit, where several users of the website called out the man’s complete lack of self-awareness when it comes to gauging his skills on the job along with his assessment of how things went down in his interview.
The applicant opens his article by saying, “I was rejected from a position for not answering an interview question,” while mentioning that he possessed all the skills necessary to excel in the job he had applied for. The job seeker even claimed that both the hiring manager and the recruiter “loved” him.
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The problem arose, however, during the “last round of interviews” process, where the applicant mentions that he found it strange that the boss’s boss, whom he refers to as “grandboss,” was there to interview him for the position: ” I had a final round of interviews: a colleague from the hiring team, a colleague from another team with whom I would work closely, the manager of both teams (hence my future grandfather, which seemed strange to me), and finally a test with the hiring manager I had already spoken to.”
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He added that while he didn’t think it was a relevant point to mention, he is “a man and all the people he was interviewed with were women.”
The applicant said that every interview he had went swimmingly, until it was time to talk to Grandpa. Since he didn’t understand why he was interviewing him, he asked him why he was there to interview him in the first place.
“I asked him why he was interviewing me, since it was a technical position and he was clearly some sort of middle manager. He told me he had a technical background (although he had been in management for 10 years, so it’s not like his experience was even relevant), but that she was interviewing for things like communication, ability to prioritize, and interpersonal skills, I still thought it was strange to interview with my boss’s boss.
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He went on to say that the woman’s questions were boring, but he “got through them,” until he got to one particular question in which she asked him about the biggest “mistake” he had ever made at work and what he did. to rectify it. the situation. According to the plaintiff, she said that she had never made a mistake before.
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“I told her that I am a professional and that I don’t make mistakes, and she argued with me! She said that everyone makes mistakes, but what matters is how you handle them and prevent the same mistake from happening again in the future. I told her “She maybe made mistakes as a developer, but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. She seemed fine with it and we moved forward with the interview.”
However, the applicant thought that his answer must have been incorrect, because he ended up receiving a message from the job recruiter who told him that he had not gotten the job. Baffled by how he wasn’t given the position, he asked the recruiter why he lost the position.
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Your answer? There were “other candidates who were stronger.” Not content with this answer and the sneaking suspicion that “grandpa” was the reason he didn’t get the job, he then asked the recruiter if the big boss was to blame.
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The recruiter’s response was similar to the above: “The hiring panel made the decision to hire someone else.”
The requester was still not satisfied with this response and wanted to know if it would be wrong for him to message Grandpa, whom he was stalking on LinkedIn.
“I looked up Grandma on LinkedIn after the rejection and she was a developer at two industry leaders and then an executive at a third. She was also connected to several well-known C-level people in our city and industry. I’m thinking about emailing her on LinkedIn to explain why her question was wrong and ask if she will consider me for future positions at her company, but my wife says it’s a bad idea. What do you think about me sending her an email to try to explain?
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He Ask a manager The expert did not hold back in his response to the applicant, stating that the poor behavior and communication skills they displayed in his interview with someone who was “several levels above” him is likely a telltale sign of how oblivious he is when It is about your general interactions with others as a whole.
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According to the career expert, the job seeker most likely had no idea how bad things were going for him.
Not only did the expert recommend that the applicant refrain from messaging “Grandpa” (as it would likely get him blacklisted from any and all future jobs in his industry), but he also explained why the man’s response was so terrible.
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“Managing someone who is convinced they don’t make mistakes is a nightmare, and absolutely impossible in hiring, since you’re announcing that you will resist feedback and won’t or won’t be able to learn and grow. That’s on your own.” “It would have torpedoed his candidacy, and that’s before we even get into the muck.”
The expert ended his response to the job seeker with a little advice to not be arrogant and try to listen to others: “I’m not sure what your work life has been like up to this point. I assume that OR you are at the beginning of your career and you still don’t understand how the job works, or you’re more advanced but haven’t been aware of how much deficiencies in interpersonal skills can hold you back, but this should be a wake-up call so that treating people with contempt and arrogance doesn’t stop you. will give the results you want.”
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Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the applicant followed the manager’s advice: in his follow-up message he revealed that he got several more job interviews and that, while people liked him at first, he didn’t get the job. Which led him to the inevitable conclusion that “grandpa” had him on the blacklist.
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So, he ended up messaging both his grandfather and other people in his industry to see if they were talking badly about him.
“I followed your advice not to email my grandmother on LinkedIn, until I discovered that she seems to have gotten me excluded from our field. Despite numerous resume submissions and excellent phone screens, I haven’t been able to get a job. I know my resume and “Cover letters are great (I’ve taken your advice) and during phone screens, the interviewer always really likes me, so it’s obvious he’s told all his friends about me and they’re excluding me.”
He continued: “I emailed her on LinkedIn after realizing what she had done, and although she was polite in her response, she refused to admit that she had told everyone my name. She suggested that it’s just a ‘tough job market.’ ‘And there are a lot of really qualified developers looking for work… but it seems too much of a coincidence that as soon as she refused to hire me, no one else wanted to hire me either.’
“I also sent a message to the hiring manager on LinkedIn asking him to tell his boss to stop talking about me, but I didn’t hear back,” he added, noting, “I’m considering emailing some of his LinkedIn connections to “I found out what it says about me, but I don’t know if it would help.”
