Not every interview will make you leave the office excited about a job offer. Whether it is red flags from the manager or your own mistakes, you may find yourself in the aftermath of a bad interview. What do you do to recover without letting your experience negatively affect the rest of your job search? There are a few things you can do to recover and move on, so let’s get started.
Take Time to Feel Sorry
It’s okay to feel sorry for yourself. And it’s okay to take some time to wallow in your own self-pity before picking yourself up and brushing yourself off. This time of internal reflection is important so you can determine what happened and how it made you feel. If you can’t process these feelings, you may find yourself making the same mistakes again.
The real key is knowing how long to beat yourself up about it. If you’re still thinking about it 6 years later, that’s not healthy either. So take time now to feel stupid and then develop a plan of action moving forward.
Now Learn From the Experience
So, what happened exactly? Try to pinpoint the very moment the interview spiraled out of control. Was it something you said? Something the interviewer said? Was it a trigger you weren’t quite prepared for? Any of these things can set you off and create a firestorm that can rage out of control.
But once you know what it is, you can take the time to learn what that means. For example, maybe you said something entirely inappropriate without evening thinking. And, when it didn’t go unnoticed, you began to feel the embarrassment creep in. That caused you to stumble throughout the rest of the interview. It may have ruined the chance at that job, but it doesn’t have to ruin the chance at any other job. As long as you know what happened and own up to it, you’ll be okay again.
Practice to Improve and Not Let it Happen Again
Whether or not it will affect your current situation, one tactic is to write an apology email. Describe the behavior and how and why it affected the interview negatively. Then own it and apologize. And, more importantly, you can either choose to send this email or not. The act of writing it will help you begin to move past it.
But once your behavior was identified, you can also work on trying to curb it. Practice for future interviews knowing what happened and what to traps to avoid in the future. Ask someone else to help you out by doing mock interviews and giving you feedback.
Work With a Top Staffing Agency in Washington DC
Are you ready to get back on track with more interviews? Contact NRI Staffing, now hiring for jobs in Northern Virginia and beyond.
