People miss out on getting job interviews (and ultimately jobs) for many reasons.

We’ve already spoken about why you didn’t get an interview and why you didn’t get a job you were interested in here and also here.

Working in recruitment has shown me an interesting side of human nature…people often complain about not getting an interview and/or not getting a job and will specifically complain about how they were “a perfect fit” for the job and use this as a justification as to why they should have been hired.

Interestingly, I don’t know of any of these job searchers who can tell me about any of the other candidates who were interviewed for the same job or of the person who was ultimately hired…and yet they confidently declare that they were the “perfect” candidate for the job.

Notwithstanding the fact that they are slightly biased in that they clearly favor themselves and their experience and skills over the other candidates, candidates who as I just mentioned, they know nothing about.

The point is that people make statements regarding their candidacy for a job without knowing all the facts. In many cases, you never find out exactly why you don’t get an interview or a job that you wanted but to suggest that you are a perfect candidate means that perhaps the only person who thought this was you.

As with the links to previous posts that I mentioned above, you can read these posts to check out some popular reasons why people don’t get interviews and why they go to interviews and then don’t get the job.

Your attitude might be a big part of it.

People usually don’t like when other candidates attend an interview with a chip on their shoulder or who portray themselves in their resume with arrogance.

I recall reading a resume of one guy who wrote his career summary in the third person and referred to himself as a “boy wonder” which got many of us in the office laughing and not for a good reason. Statements like this – even if somehow true – don’t add anything to the conversation, at least nothing positive anyways.

Attitude and personality is a big determining factor in any job search and the way you project yourself to others can often be misconstrued and not necessarily for the right reason.

If you find that you often tell yourself or other people that you were the perfect candidate for a job that you either didn’t get or weren’t even allowed to interview for, it’s possible that your attitude is an issue and that perhaps your opinion of yourself is a bit higher than it should be.

One of the interesting things about skills and experience is that it’s usually most visible to the people you are currently working with.

People who work with you are going to be more aware of your skills and experience than people who don’t know you and can only get second hand knowledge about it ie. by reading your resume, by interviewing you, by doing references with people who’ve worked with you. At the end of the day they will have to make assumptions about you and your work since they didn’t actually witness it firsthand.

Sometimes the hardest part about interviewing and job searching is convincing a new employer who doesn’t know you that you’re the best person for the job or even that you are someone who they should interview.

Resumes often (usually?) get speed-read by hiring managers who might spend a few seconds glancing and flipping through your resume to look for certain words, phrases, technologies, accomplishments, certifications, etc to stick out. The reality is that many times, hiring managers look for reasons not to interview you and to not hire you, just to weed the list down and get to a short list.

If you work in a large company – or least a company that offers opportunities to move to a different job, role, division, department, etc – you can often find it easier to conduct a job search by walking down the hall and meeting with and speaking with hiring managers in other parts of the company.

This assumes of course that you have a good name within the company.

I remember at the first company I worked with – a large company with several thousand staff – it was fairly common for people to stay with the company for a number of years and move from one department or division to another. It offered a number of opportunities for people to move to different roles rather than having to leave the company and find such an opportunity with another company.

I noticed that people often desired to move to a different division in the company and when a job became available, were moved to a new area that they were interested in. Often, the person’s manager accommodated staff and helped them transition from one area to another to avoid losing this person to a rival company.

From a personal perspective, I’d thought about moving from the company’s marketing department into their sales department so when they posted a job for a new sales person I figured I’d apply and give it a shot. I was working closely with this particular sales department as it was so I also went to speak with the sales manager directly to let him know I was interested to work in their group and asked them what I’d need to do to be considered.

As it turns out, he let me know he was (happily) surprised that I was interested to work in his group but that they had already identified a more experienced person in another group (another area of marketing) that they were most likely going to hire. So even though they had posted the job internally, they had already lined someone up for it which was unfortunate for me.

Still, I let them know my intentions and it seemed that their response was a positive one. They were well aware of my work since it benefited their group directly so I had already built up a pretty good name.

I ended up staying in my marketing job for another year before moving back home again so I never did get to pursue a sales role with the company but I think had the chance arisen, I’d have had a pretty good shot based on my track record within the company.