Dealing with interview feedback

In some ways even more nervous an occasion than then interview itself is when you receive feedback. It can be quite painful sometimes listening to someone's professional opinion of you.

So, when you get feedback after a job, then what should you do?

Well normally you will be given feedback over the phone, or possibly by letter. If it is the letter it will often be quite generic and non-specific so the first step is you are highly recommended to phone the person who interviewed you (where possible) and speak to them directly for more specific feedback.

When you get feedback it is important to try to view it constructively when it is 'negative' in character, and this can be acquired skill as many people are naturally quite defensive of their abilities and therefore do not take well to criticism.

Note down each piece of feedback that you are given. You then have two choices: do you think that the feedback is valid (being honest). If the answer is no then it is your right to ignore the comment and block it out. And there are real occasions where this happens.

Unfortunately less and less companies appear to send trained interviewers out to those who do graduate interviews, and many who perform interviews are actually quite unprofessional and do not ask the right questions or act in the best manner to find the most talented individuals.

If you got asked genuinely stupid questions in the interview ('if you were doing the interview, what would you ask yourself?') then take less notice of the feedback from that interview as you would a professionally managed one by an experienced interviewer.

Now, if you consider a piece of feedback to be valid, then feel free if not immediately obvious to ask what a good answer would have been, or what behaviour / action they would have liked if it was a comment more to do with how you said something or how you acted rather than what you said.

Note down all the feedback and then write down what you think you could do to address it.

View it as developmental and then you know that when it comes to another interview you can work on trying to improve those aspects.

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