Rejected: Passed-over candidates have a tough time continuing job search

“We decided to go with someone else.” If you’ve ever heard those words, they’ve likely been used when someone told you that you weren’t getting the job.

John Fath, a project manager in financial technology, says he knows that phrase a little too well. “I’ve been the last man for three jobs in the last few years — three jobs that I really wanted and three jobs where I knew I would do great things,” says Fath, 45, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and two sons. “It’s a tough thing to hear, especially when you know you’re so close.”

Fath says it’s easy for people to tell him he needs to get up and fight harder for the next job, but he doesn’t think they realize how hard it is to do just that. “I had three different interviews with a firm I really want to work for, including a final interview in Dallas with three partners,” Fath says. “They flew me there and put me up in a great hotel and it just seemed like all signs pointed to me getting the job. Then I didn’t. And now I’m supposed to fly back home and get started all over again? That’s a tough thing to do.”

Specific needs

Even though his interviews in Dallas went well, Fath says he felt the job offer slipping away when they asked specific questions about certain processes. “I didn’t answer those too well because I don’t deal in that specific area right now,” he says. “I could tell that there were people in the room who were expecting that I knew those very specific answers, and I didn’t.”

Christine Emmanuel, a career coach in New York, says those specific questions are usually the factors that separate the hired from the unhired. “As you move up the chain of authority you’re likely to run into people who aren’t concerned about your work ethic and your accomplishments. What they want to know is do you know how to help them keep making money or make more money and will they have to wait around while you learn on the job?” Emmanuel says. “I find that a lot of candidates try to fake their way through an answer instead of being honest and offering an alternative response.”

Emmanuel suggests saying something like “That sounds like a very specific issue. I’m not going to pretend that I know all the minutiae of what you’re talking about but I can give you an example from my previous job where I did this, this and this.”

Basically, you’re telling them that you understand the importance of the small steps. “Companies want big thinkers and great leaders but in an era where things can change overnight, executives want to know there will always be people who know how to run the shop,” she says. “I’d say 50 years ago, there wasn’t a manager in this country who couldn’t get on his hands and knees and fix whatever needed to be fixed but that changed in the ’90s. Managers became the vision guys. They became the people with the MBAs who thought of new ways to solve problems without having any real experience with those problems in the first place.”

Assert yourself

Another factor in not getting that final offer may have something to do with a job candidate’s final interview. “Most people know that they should definitely ask for the job but many of them treat that aspect of the interview as the closing, the final thing they say on the way out,” says Hannah Barowitz, a Los Angeles-based corporate speechwriter. “The fact that you want the job is something that you should emphatically state in as many ways as you can without being annoying. When they ask you a question, your answer should stress or emphasize how you would love to have the opportunity to fix this or improve that. Every answer, every time.”

Barowitz says there’s a difference between seeming desperate and confident. “No one needs to seem like they’re begging for the job but you have to seem interested,” she says. “I’ve talked to people who think that being flippant about a new position makes them appear strong. Like ‘hey if you give me the job, great. If not, I’ve already got a great thing going with my current employer.’ That’s just stupid. Why would I hire that person?”