What to Do After a Bad interview

Interviews are all about leaving a good lasting impression, but things don’t always go as planned. Bad interviews happen to the best of us, but what matters is the next step you take. Eating chocolate and wallowing in self-pity for a few hours is a delicious choice, but it’s hardly a solution.

A bad interview can take on different forms. It can be anything from showing up late to being unprepared for some questions. You might have been plagued with nerves and failed to express yourself well. Your knowledge of the role and company was limited, and the interviewer did not look impressed.

Here are five tips on what to do after a bad interview.

• Don’t beat yourself up.

No, you have not jeopardized the bag. Resist the urge to overanalyze and consider everything beneath a microscope. When you are worried, you can blow things out of proportion and make assumptions about every pause or grimace. Give yourself some time to breathe, process what happened, and move on to the next steps with a clear head.

You can also listen to Black Sherif’s Kwaku the traveler and scream along with “No hands!”

• Reflect on the interview

You have acknowledged that something went wrong, now consider what caused it. Were you late because you underestimated the traffic? Did you forget that your network provider is unreliable? Were you nervous when you realized you did not read the job description well and did not do enough research about the company?

Whatever the reason, you have to acknowledge all the steps you took before you started reading this article and learn from them. You should read the job description and recall other information provided about the role and company by the interviewer. Note all the questions you were asked, the ones you answered confidently, and others you struggled with. Noting the questions helps you know how to prep better subsequently.

• Reach out with a thank you email

Self-awareness is key to dealing with your feelings following a bad interview. One way to express this is to reach out with a thank-you email thanking the interviewer for the opportunity and their time. It is also an opportunity to rectify the situation by expressing yourself concisely.

Your thank-you email should not be a play-by-play of everything you think went wrong. Instead, you should use it as an excuse to provide new information. You can include information such as a better understanding of a question you did not answer well enough and reiterate your continued interest in the role and the company. You can also request a second chance to express yourself and increase your odds. A quick 15 minutes chat might be what you need to turn this around and do some damage control.

• Ask for feedback and learn.

Ultimately, if your application was not accepted, you can reach out to the interviewer and request feedback. Detailed feedback allows you to find out what worked and what did not from the interviewer’s perspective.

• Move on to the next application.

The best part of a bad interview is that you know what to avoid moving forward. This is a learning experience to enable you to plan and be better prepared for the next.

Continue your search and prep for your next round of interviews by researching the role and the company. You should also review the questions you struggled with and prepare answers to them. To avoid repeating your mistake, you can practice your answer to other questions by checking out 100 questions that you should prep for.

Remember to extend yourself the grace of making a mistake and learning from it. There will be larger bags to secure, and when they come, you will be prepped and ready. I will be here cheering you on to victory.