Let’s face it: Sometimes job interviews just don’t go quite as well as you’d hoped (and sometimes they go disastrously worse). It’s bound to happen, and there’s no use beating yourself up and sulking over it when it does.
But what should you do after a bad interview? Jacquelyn Smith recently wrote an article for Forbes, 7 Things You Can Do After A Really Bad Job Interview. Here are some of Smith’s tips.
Acknowledge your mistakes. While it’s never a good idea to make excuses, if you made a big mistake that you know the interviewer caught, you can use your thank you note to explain what happened. Smith’s example was that if you misunderstood some of the questions and therefore felt your answers were poor, let the interviewer know.
Inform the interviewer of information you forgot to mention. During the stress of an interview, sometimes you forget some key information about your qualifications that could lead to you being hired. Unfortunately, this doesn’t usually hit you until you’ve already left the interview and are thinking of all the ways you could have better responded to the questions. In your thank you note, you can also detail anything relevant that you’d like the employer to consider.
Learn from it. Instead of getting angry with yourself, think of the bad interview as a lesson learned. Write down everything you feel you did wrong. Reflect on what you could have done differently and make a note of everything you need to improve upon for next time.
For more tips on what to do after a bad interview, read the rest of Jacquelyn Smith’s article here.
Have you ever had a really bad interview? How did you handle it?
