good morning John I'm gonna tell you
super embarrassing story about myself
that was right out of college I applied
for a job at the nonprofit where
Katherine my wife now was working and I
didn't get an interview that I went to
go visit her this is kind of a weird
situation there were a lot of people who
lived on location at the job and I was
there visiting Katherine was working and
I was sort of like bumbling around and
to the people who worked there who have
met before are talking about the worst
job applications they've ever received
and one of them starts talking about
this terrible cover letter that he
recently read he's a couple years older
than me which at this point seems like
infinitely my superior he's tall he's
tan he's handsome he's fit and he is
going into a lot of detail and it is
becoming very clear that it's my cover
letter so I just stand there and listen
to it and suddenly I'm feeling like I
I'm in the job interview that I was
hoping to get except instead of them
asking me questions they're just telling
me all of the reasons why they didn't
even want to talk to me I'm obviously
not gonna tell him what's going on
it was one of the finest humiliations of
my life he had no way of knowing it was
me
so I didn't see it as a cruelty I was
just hearing his very raw unfiltered
somewhat mean dissection of my cover
letter and he went he went in a lot of
detail but also no one ever tells you
why you didn't get the job you might
hear like we had a huge number of
qualified applicants and that's true as
a person who hires people that is often
the case it's the real reason like the
moment when we were like let's not put
that one in the interview pile you just
don't get told and there's two reasons
for that one is because sometimes it's
dumb and sometimes like you're just you
have a lot of applications to go through
and you don't have a lot of time to do
it and so you're making quick subjective
decisions that might not be the right
ones but you have to make a call and to
providing that detailed feedback to
every single person who applied would be
a huge amount of work and managers have
other work to do so despite the fact
that this was one of the cringy esteem
out a little bit on top especially after
Katherine told me that he was a jerk and
she didn't like him so much so that she
would actually sneak into the kitchen
sometimes and squeeze his pears just a
little bit if you listen to dear Hank of
John you've heard this story before so
at least I didn't have to be afraid of
the guy stealing my girlfriend maybe we
don't talk enough about why people don't
get a job and maybe we should talk about
it more
so I asked on Twitter people who have
hired people what are some unexpected
ways a candidate has disqualified
themselves from / decreased their odds
of getting a position they applied for
and then I made and asked reddit post
with the same question and have gotten a
lot of good and interesting replies John
the most common one is people who are
rude to like office staff or assistants
before they meet the interviewers like
why and then there was a post from a guy
who kept not getting callbacks over and
over again and he was getting really
discouraged until he realized that his
gmail profile picture was him doing a
bong rim and similarly a lot of hires
talked about how people put like lazy
procrastinator in their social media
BIOS cause the self-deprecating Twitter
BIOS during the job hunt y'all then
you've got people not hiring someone
because their handwriting is bad like
I'm sorry is this a calligraphy job it's
2018 this is what computers are for and
one person didn't hire somebody because
they said their favorite movie was
Bridge to Terabithia
it's got 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes
it's okay for somebody to like a movie
that you don't like I feel like these
threads are really helpful to read if
you're a person who might be or is
looking for work they show B two things
one is that the job of the applicant is
to make it very easy for the person
doing the hiring to make the call give
them lots of signals that you understand
the problem they need you to help solve
and will be good at solving it and will
do so happily and second it becomes very
clear that you aren't figuring out how
to get the job you're figuring out how
to increase your chances of getting the
job cuz the dumbest little thing can be
the thing that gets your application put
in the wrong pie and you're never going
to know what that thing was unless you
happen to be in the room when the hiring
manager starts yucking it up about how
bad your cover letter was John I'll see
you on Tuesday