I’ve worked in non-EA roles where I was a hiring manager and we had many high-quality applicants for a single role. For example, hiring post-doc chemists is humbling when you see 50 CV’s of people who have each done incredible work and are far more qualified than I am.
At first, it seems like an abundance of choice. But what is surprising is that we almost never reject someone without a real reason. Sure, “there were better candidates” can be true, but usually I can put my finger on a few reasons why we decided this. You are probably a great person, but if you don’t get hired, it’s very likely that someone can tell you exactly why—what was it that that other candidate had or did differently?
So feedback is super useful—but only if you can get good, honest feedback—and you’ll only get this if you are very receptive, not defensive and totally respectful of the interviewer’s time.
For good, motivated candidates, I often offer to do a 30 minute feedback session after their last interview. I will get quite granular “when we asked you X, you replied Y, and it wasn’t a very convincing answer, we would expect a candidate of your calibre to have given answer Z” or “we had 4 applicants who had done full post-docs in small-angle light scattering, which is the core of the role, and it was always going to be difficult for you without this experience.” And also very basic things like “If you start to feel tired, have a strong coffee. We’re judging you against other candidates who are fully focused, if you’re tired, it’s just harder.”
When I applied for my first job in a full-time EA role, a very helpful hiring manager, Michael Aird, did exactly this, and gave me so much good feedback and tangible advice that it really step-changed my approach to EA job-seeking.
I still got plenty of rejection though :) - I was even rejected as an attendee for EAG London even while I was doing an incubator with AIM ! So it’s also great to get used to rejection and learn from it!
This is a great post!
I’ve worked in non-EA roles where I was a hiring manager and we had many high-quality applicants for a single role. For example, hiring post-doc chemists is humbling when you see 50 CV’s of people who have each done incredible work and are far more qualified than I am.
At first, it seems like an abundance of choice. But what is surprising is that we almost never reject someone without a real reason. Sure, “there were better candidates” can be true, but usually I can put my finger on a few reasons why we decided this. You are probably a great person, but if you don’t get hired, it’s very likely that someone can tell you exactly why—what was it that that other candidate had or did differently?
So feedback is super useful—but only if you can get good, honest feedback—and you’ll only get this if you are very receptive, not defensive and totally respectful of the interviewer’s time.
For good, motivated candidates, I often offer to do a 30 minute feedback session after their last interview. I will get quite granular “when we asked you X, you replied Y, and it wasn’t a very convincing answer, we would expect a candidate of your calibre to have given answer Z” or “we had 4 applicants who had done full post-docs in small-angle light scattering, which is the core of the role, and it was always going to be difficult for you without this experience.” And also very basic things like “If you start to feel tired, have a strong coffee. We’re judging you against other candidates who are fully focused, if you’re tired, it’s just harder.”
When I applied for my first job in a full-time EA role, a very helpful hiring manager, Michael Aird, did exactly this, and gave me so much good feedback and tangible advice that it really step-changed my approach to EA job-seeking.
I still got plenty of rejection though :) - I was even rejected as an attendee for EAG London even while I was doing an incubator with AIM ! So it’s also great to get used to rejection and learn from it!