Why Do I Keep Failing At Job Interviews?

Oct 1, 2019

So you’ve attended several job interviews now but you haven’t landed yourself a job yet. You’re probably thinking to yourself: Why do I keep failing at job interviews?!

Don’t worry, we have the answers.

By the end of this post, you’ll have a better understanding of why you keep failing job interviews and we’ll give you some actionable tips on how you can finally outperform the other candidates and land your dream job.

1: Nerves get the better of you

Interview nerves can really have a negative impact on your interview performance.

Nerves will make you come across as being less confident.

Confidence is key when it comes to performing highly in interviews.

Unfortunately, we notice job seekers who continuously keep failing job interviews become less confident over time.

If you don’t come across as being confident in yourself and your ability to excel in the role, you’ll find it difficult to convince the interviewer to have confidence in you.

The best way to beat your interview nerves is to adequately prepare for your interview.

Being adequately prepared for your interview will allow you to walk into the interview room knowing exactly what to expect and knowing exactly how to answer any interview question in a way that will impress the interviewer.

It is important to note that confidence is not just conveyed by what you say. Your body language also gives away your level of confidence.

Action point: Learn and practice some body language tricks that will make you come across as being more confident during your interview such as:

Maintaining a good posture i.e. sitting upright instead of slouching in your chair.
Using eye contact effectively, i.e. getting the balance right between giving your interviewer’s eye contact without continuously staring at them.
Keep your hands out of your pockets
Keep your head and your chin up

On average, people only spend 36 minutes preparing for their interviews and that is simply not enough.

We will share some tips and advice on how you can ensure that you are fully prepared for your interviews.

We collaborated with StudentJob UK to write a post about getting rid of nerves before an interview so if you’ve identified being nervous as being a reason why you keep failing job interviews, be sure to check out that post.

2: Nobody has ever taught you how to prepare

We always tell our interview coaching candidates to not beat themselves up if they tell us that they keep failing interviews.

This is because the chances are, they’ve never been taught how to interview before.

Most things that we want to get really good at in life require some guidance either from a coach, teacher, trainer or instructor.

Think of it this way, If you wanted to get really good at singing, you’d get a vocal coach. If you wanted to become a pro at Tennis, you’d get a Tennis instructor.

Getting really good at performing highly in interviews is no different.

Hiring an experienced interview coach can really help to give you the edge over the vast majority of the competition who wouldn’t have even taken adequate time to prepare for their interview.

Here at Graduate Coach, we have been teaching students, graduates and career changers the art and the science of succeeding in interviews for the past decade.

We offer face-to-face interview coaching as well as an online interview course. If you are looking to give yourself the best chance of passing your next interview and gaining lifelong skills, get in touch with us.

You know the saying – fail to prepare, prepare to fail! But before it’s not just about preparing for your interview, first, you need to know how to prepare for interviews.

If you do feel as though you always prepare for upcoming interviews but you’re wondering why you always fail in interviews, maybe you need to brush up on how you prepare for interviews as well as what you prepare.

3: Memorising interview answers is not working for you

This point follows on from the point above.

Many interviewees approach their job interview preparation by writing down answers to questions that they think they might be asked and try to memorise them.

An interview is not a memory game.

If you adopt this approach of trying to memorise answers, you’ll probably get flustered and lose your composure if you forget your answer.

Also if you put a lot of energy into memorising a set number of questions, if you are asked something that you haven’t prepared for, it can result in your mind going blank. Which many people find difficult to recover from in interviews.

You should go into your interviews feeling confident that you can give impressive answers that demonstrate the extent to which you will excel in the role.

This should hold true regardless of what question or scenario the interviewer throws at you.

There’s nothing wrong with taking notes into your interview with competency-based answers written down.

3: When was the last time you researched the company properly?

Researching the company is often overlooked when preparing for interviews.

This is because job seekers tend to focus mainly on the role they are applying for.

However, the interviewer is not just assessing your ability to do well in the role that you are applying for.

They are also assessing that you are the right fit for the company.

Afterall you could apply for a similar role at another company, so you need to go to your interview knowing how to clearly articulate why you want the role at the company you have applied for.

Knowing how to tailor your answers in a way that demonstrates that you are the right fit for the company involves carrying out in-depth company research.

Researching the company involves a lot more than just skimming through the website.

Take the time to read through the company values and make sure you are able to demonstrate these values and what they genuinely mean to you.

Also, read through the different services the company offers and the clients they work with. Doing in-depth research on this level will give you an idea of how you’ll navigate and progress in your career within the company.

Being able to state how you envision being able to navigate and progress in your career within the company will impress the employer.

After all, hiring new employees can be very expensive and the interviewer needs to make the right decision.

As well as hiring the person who will perform highly in the role, the hiring team will be looking for people they’ll be able to retain.

Therefore, if you express your suitability to the company culture and your eagerness to progress in the company, you’ll stand out for the right reasons.

This point is explored more in the next point about showing empathy in interviews.

4: You’re not empathising with the interviewer

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

It’s vital that you truly understand what the company needs and show that their needs are equally important to you.

This ties into the point above about researching the company.

You won’t be able to understand what the company needs if you only have a surface-level understanding of the company.

Good candidates will empathise with the interviewer by genuinely showing that they are confident that they are the right fit for the company and the role.

They will confidently demonstrate that they know what the company’s mission is and that they will come into work every day to contribute to the company achieving its goals.

5: You don’t know what questions to ask

At the end of every interview, you’ll be asked if you have any questions.

If you keep failing your interviews, the chances are, you are not leveraging this time at the end of your interview.

There are a wide variety of questions that you can ask at the end of your interview.

It is important that you put some thought into what questions you will ask.

If you really want to stand out in your interview it is important to learn the art of asking for the job.

When was the last time you actually asked for the job?

This might seem strange, and it does take some practice to get right.

But being able to sincerely state at the end of the interview what getting the job will mean for you and asking for the job will definitely make you a memorable candidate.

You keep making the same mistakes

If you keep failing interviews, it is possible that you are continuously making the same mistake.

After every failed interview, it is extremely important that you request feedback.

Companies do not have to provide candidates who were unsuccessful after interviews with feedback. Some companies do not offer feedback. However, some will if you ask.