Small factors can prevent you from getting the job

Your education is top-notch, your experience impressive and that suit you wore for the interview? Impeccable. And yet, you continue to hear “we went with someone else,” even though you left the final interview completely confident the job was yours.

While there are always intangible qualities in people that are liked or disliked by others, it’s hard to admit when the qualities in the “dislike” column prevent you from getting that new opportunity. But it happens. And in some cases, it’s not preventable.

“Certain people just rub us the wrong way,” says Brian Metcalf, a Boston-based recruiter for several financial technology firms. “It might be the volume of your voice. It might be your haircut.”

Metcalf says he isn’t talking about legally actionable decisions, like gender or race. He’s focused on the things people do and say that might take them out of the running.

Unlikeable traits

So are you doing anything that might be unattractive to potential employers? It’s hard to tell. Lisa Zimmer, a social worker from Tulsa, Oklahoma, says for the purposes of getting hired, people don’t necessarily need to figure out what’s wrong with them, they just need to figure out what they’re doing wrong — if anything — over the course of a 60-minute interview. “Did you scowl when asked a certain question? Did you cut people off when they were talking? Did you keep looking around? ” Zimmer says. “Job interviewers are human.”

Zimmer suggests doing a mock interview with a friend using, if possible, questions you’ve been asked during interviews that led to nowhere. “Sometimes a tricky question catches us off-guard,” she says.