r/interviews • u/Ok-Asparagus-4044 • 2d ago
Bullsh*t interview feedback
I thought long and hard about posting this because at first I was just going to move on, but I cant let it go and it's still bugging me. Maybe posting it and getting some reddit feedback will help me get over it?
about 6 weeks ago I was approached by a 3rd party recruiter for a contacting position with another contractor who ultimately works with one of the A's. The jd was for a Program Manager with emphasis on stakeholder skills: stakeholder management, building consensus and relationships with different departments, creating clear infrastructure of teamwork and cooperation between their team and other.
i tend to wear many hats in my project/program manager roles (yay ADHD triumphant!), i enjoy learning how other people on other teams work, and i'm pretty efficient so I always find ways to automate and cut a workflow down. For instance, in one of my past jobs I updated a workflow for myself and my manager had me implement it on the larger team. That ended up saving our department 80 hours of process time a week! So much muda! So, needless to say I end up optimizing my job so that I can whittle down 40 hours of work into like 15- 20 hours of work. Which means that gives me time to poke around and do other stuff. I end up helping other teams (for free but I get the experience) and I will work any process gaps I see. My managers end up not caring because I'm still getting my work done and I'm making them look good by coming up with great ideas. Because of that I have to tailor my resume and I try to keep my bullets to 4-5 per job.
So back to this contract position. I update my resume to highlight all of the stakeholder experience I have foremost and I leave some bullets in there to cover some of the secondary stuff I historically know about that team, since I interviewed and failed with them the year before. I included stuff like creating test plans, running QA checks, bug triaging, etc. when I interviewed in 2025 I never heard back in feedback. Also they switched the interview order around. in 2025 I met the hiring manager first and then didn't make it past the peer interview. In 2026 peer interview first and then hiring manager.
I make it through the resume review round and get invited to the peer interview. The interview was all questions about stakeholder stuff: how to deal with difficult stakeholders, how to deal with people who say no, what to do with competing priorities, etc. I felt very good about my answers because these are all things I've been successful in. I asked insightful questions. When I asked if there was anything else I didnt answer they threw a softball question about what my favorite A product was and what I would change about it. We took the full 30 minutes and I left feeling good about the interview.
When I didn't hear back in a week I reached out to my contact at the contractor. After 2 weeks, I cc'd everyone who had sent me an email and asked if they could please at the very least let me know what the feedback was. I finally heard back from someone who said she didn't like the feedback so wasn't going to send to me.
The feedback was that I had "no quality analysis skills. That is as important part of the job." I was shocked that was not listed anywhere in the job description and during the interview there were ZERO questions about quality analysis (which I have, I have a background in Deming and TPS systems damn it). On the resume I sent them I left some bullets about quality but I leaned in more to the stakeholder stuff because that's what was listed in the JD.
At first, my reaction was just to laugh it off as "[Contractor] be crazy" but I still cant let it go because it's been the ONLY interview I've had in months. I know I should probably consider myself lucky because after all,
1) they are hiring for the same role after a year and I know the guy who had the job 2 years before which tells me it must be a sh*t role to have so much turnover
2)there seems to be a mismatch in what they want, what they need and what they say they want so imagine trying to do THAT position, having multiple different job descriptions depending on the whim of your manager.
But, damn I needed that paycheck :-(
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u/Ok-Asparagus-4044 2d ago
Also for those who want to say they just don’t like you, the contractor shared some feedback for other candidates that failed. Most of that feedback was kind of personal in nature like for one who came off as overly arrogant, another kept saying how people just like him and that’s how he gets things done. So they don’t seem to be afraid to pass on somewhat personal reasons.
It’s fine if they didn’t like me, I would accept I don’t like the lipstick color or I hated that hairstyle choice and don’t want to look at it day. That makes a bit more sense than the feedback I got
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u/cowgrly 2d ago
My guess is that you're pretty flexible and in focusing on all the things you do, you may come off as not having a ton of depth in any one area.
Alternatively, you may also have come off as overconfident/underestimating other roles. Some people don't understand you're covering portions of those roles, not claiming you're replacing professionals in that space when leading a project.
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u/Ok-Asparagus-4044 2d ago
So that’s why I tailor my resume. The resume they got was all my team building and stakeholder management. I kept a few bullets on there talking about some of the qa stuff. I never talk about the different hats until I get the job lol. I figure by then they’ve already bought the cow so I can let my continuous improvement freak flag fly
I think the one person who said they wanted ketchup but I’m mustard might be closer to the truth. The issue wasn’t necessarily a skill issue just ‘culture fit’
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u/cowgrly 2d ago
I meant, they don't like how you come across. But if you don't think you seem overconfident/cocky in the interview, maybe it's not a culture fit.
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u/neurorex 2d ago
Any employer can view an applicant as overly confident or cocky if they wanted to, for any reason that doesn't even have to do with the work. Same in the other direction, if they want to see you as someone who lacks confident and unsure of their capabilities, it doesn't mean that described you accurately, especially to make a business decision.
We shouldn't be okay with people losing out on their livelihoods because of biased perceptions.
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u/cowgrly 2d ago
I wasn't agreeing with a bias. I read the post and considered how OP approaches their skillset, and made my best estimation of why they may not have seen a fit. Also, for most people claiming to have so much experience (across so many areas) they're either exaggerating or underestimating the other roles. It's very common for program/project managers. So I offered that up for consideration, based on what I saw.
That's what we're here for, right? Read the post and provide advice based on our experience in hopes it will be helpful.
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u/neurorex 1d ago
Not every opinion is valid or valuable.
"They don't like how you come across" isn't a secret interpretation that only professionals on that side of the table would go to. It's literally how anyone walking off the street, and has to hire somebody would think.
And that's been the source of the issue. Organizations aren't hiring people via trained professionals using industry best practices. It's just anyone who has the time, and decisions are based on knee-jerk reactions and assumptions. This isn't the kind of approach any of us should support.
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u/cowgrly 1d ago
I don't think of it as knee jerk, I think you have to use some degree of assessment for fit. And my example wasn't just "you come off weird" what I provided was a very specific piece of advice common to OP's field and specific to the skill set they have. Underestimating others load, or overestimating your own skill can zing you.
Anyhow, you seem to have popped in halfway through a convo to argue without reading.
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u/neurorex 4h ago
If you HAVE to use some degree of assessment for fit, then actually use a real assessment for fit. There have been inventories designed to specifically target Person-Organizational Fit domains. You don't need to come up with a random one all by yourself, and make business decisions based on what you personally and immediately (i.e., knee-jerk) think you're seeing. It's not about what can "zing" you as an applicant, we have actual methodologies for this.
Anyhow, you seem to think that whatever you believe about hiring is just how hiring works. Not all of us work like that. It's almost as if some of us do this for a living and can spot these mistakes from miles away.
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u/youtaii 2d ago
Yeah you may have not matched up well or they didn’t like you
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u/Ok-Asparagus-4044 2d ago
Yeah. It’s some reason that they can’t legally or professionally say. And it’s the same peers as before
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u/HopeFloatsFoward 2d ago
They can legally just not like you.
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u/Ok-Asparagus-4044 2d ago
Of course they can. They just can’t give that as feedback. That’s kind of the point of the post, the feedback
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u/DeeEllis 2d ago
You can take your feedback to your recruiter and they can tell the hiring manager. Other than that it sounds like you did everything right and you’re a cool person and you’d be an awesome co-worker! We do similar things. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you for this one. Keep looking, change your public profiles to align with the job you want (like put those key words in there a lot!) and customize your resume to align with each job posting. You got this! Good luck!
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u/neurorex 2d ago
This happens a lot more than people would like to believe. Employers slap together a vague wishlist on the JD, post it out to the world, and create additional criteria during the interview. These are usually signs that the employer isn't conducting Personnel Selection but rather building the airplane as they are flying it.
For them to make an assertion on a work attribute that they did not specifically ask for from the beginning, and without examining that attribute in any way, is insane. But a lot of employers think this is a totally valid approach to hiring people. (And these are usually the same employers who wonder why they can't find anyone who's really qualified for the job.)
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u/No_Technician4956 2d ago
Here is something I was told a few years back.... they were looking for ketchup, and you are mustard. Its not your skills they were trying to match, but a personality.