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"I doubt they were very good technically at all."
This attitude may be why you didn't get the job. I wouldn't want to work with you if that's what you think about software engineers who don't want to/have time to put into programming outside of work.
It's great that you love programming so much, but for many of us, it's a job. A lot of people are great at their jobs without feeling the need to do more of the same outside work, and that's okay.
If you're willing to look at things from a different angle, maybe consider if you brought any of the arrogance you've displayed in this post into your interactions with the interviewers. I started having more success in interviews when I showed I could reflect on my past choices and behaviours, showing that I could learn from my mistakes. (And I'm not saying not to be proud of what you have achieved, just consider that you are imperfect and employers want people who can recognise that).
Someone who is aware of their limitations is a good thing. Self awareness is hard to teach. I would far rather have someone on the team that can collaborate and communicate effectively than someone who needs to be the best in the room. One or two people that cant work well with other people can tank an entire project.
If this is what you believe and cannot see their perspective, this may explain more than you think. That said, without trusted knowledgeable insider feedback you cannot be confident as to why they took another person over you. Everything else just means "no" or "not right now". Don't burn bridges, keep in touch, sometimes what you think will happen does. And you can seize that opportunity.
Yes obviously I don't know why they got picked over me. I can think of many reasons of why they got picked but I prefer to focus on the technical aspect where they had nothing to stand on.
Thanks for the good advice to not burn bridges. That's the last thing I want to do right now with this current job market.
The thing is, technical skills can be taught, they can’t teach how to be someone they want to work with 8-10 hours a day.
If you brought this weird superiority thing into the interview, it’s no wonder they went with other candidates.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I was reading this post, you know. You can have all the best technical skills in the world, create all the projects, love coding to death...but if you can't interview well you ain't gonna get the job.
If there are 3 almost identical candidates interviewing it will come down who had the best connection / chat / rapport with the interviewers. Maybe the others who got the job are more personable than you and maybe the panel liked them better?
Its not personal OP just take it on the chin and focus on those particular things for the next one
I see on this site (not so much this sub) all the time people saying smalltalk/soft skills are worthless. Well, erm, here’s where they come in extremely useful.
They are absolutely not worthless - I secured a new job in February and my manager explicitly said I stood out because I communicated well in the interview and had plenty of good examples of working well as part of a team. He then said he regards the soft skills as just as important as the technical ability - probably even more so because the technical skills can be taught over time whereas it is much more difficult to teach someone to be easy to work with.
It was not my intention to give any superiority vibes.
My point is that I have put the time to showcase my love for the craft while the others candidates not. That is what this rant was all about.
It's hard not to get superiority vibes from a person who is literally saying they are more worthy of a job than three people they've never met, because of one specific metric that might not even be part of their hiring criteria.
Just seen in one of your comments that you do know two of them, but the point still stands. Why do you think having a GitHub profile makes you better than them? Do you really think your code is so good that an employer will overlook any other criteria that you were less good at?
In my thinking, it's just a way of showing I like to code, build things, solve problems, like to learn and I'm here for the long run so I'm a good investment for their entry level position.
Opposite of not doing it and just taking my word for it.
For a senior dev my code would be garbage and I doubt they would waste time looking at it, but its better than nothing.
I got good advice from this post even if people are quick to call me an asshole and the way I worded it, they are right.
Next time I'll be better prepared.
That's a good take away. I know it sucks to be rejected, and probably sucks doubly to be called out when all you wanted to do was vent about something you felt was unfair, but at the end of the day the people who got the roles were probably putting in just as much effort as you were, just in other areas of their life. Who knows, someday you might end up working with them and find out they're top rate programmers.
If you did get to the final stage of interviews you clearly have potential. Just try to remember that you're not generally more deserving than anyone else of a job.
(I would say that depending on how bad the code is, it might be worse than nothing. I doubt that's the case here, but if I saw nothing resembling good practices at all I'd probably be more wary than if I'd not seen anything)
"Yes obviously I don't know why they got picked over me. I can think of many reasons of why they got picked but I prefer to focus on the technical aspect where they had nothing to stand on."
Go and email their HR and ask for feedback on specifically why they picked someone else over you. You can ask that and if they are good employers they'll respond.
Also, software engineer/IT is highly competitive now. It's not 2014, where tech jobs are still booming big time. Now 2024 in the UK you're competing against remote workers and positions being outsourced to elsewhere cheaper. Not to mention few employers left due to brexit.
I did ask them but all I got was "you did very well on the cultural interview, they liked you, the technical interview you did very well, its just unfortunate we had very strong candidates".
Fair enough, there's always someone better.
But then I find out who the very strong candidates were. Sorry if it sounds arrogant or I give superiority vibes. I don't know how to put it gently.
I should have probed deeper to find out what didn't stick with them about me.
Then you are arrogant. You have absolutely zero evidence that their technical skills are inferior to yours except your speculation just because they don't have anything to show to YOU. They can easily show their work ONLY to the employer. Not everyone have to be a show off like you are. Stay humble kid. You lack wisdom and are arrogant. You don't believe in other people's judgement on you and other candidate's skills. Why even find an employer? Just work for yourself lol
Just breathe, take a break and then apply elsewhere. Sometimes it's just a numbers game.
I'm coming up to my 1 year anniversary since being made redundant and still no job in sight. Was rejected yesterday, no bad feedback just went with an internal candidate, the market is terrible but keep applying.
I would hazard some caution here: (i) you're basing success on your own pre-determined metrics, these aren't necessarily the same as the employer's; similarly, (ii) you're judging the other candidates on those success measures and only the information publicly available to those success measures, you have no idea how they've performed in private; (iii) unless they've explicitly said it's because of cultural fit, you have no evidence of that given points i and ii. They said you performed well, but it doesn't mean others didn't perform better.
As a side note, as someone who hires fairly frequently, I hate when interviewees tell me what their skills are (e.g. "I'm good at working in a team", "I'm good at communicating") rather than demonstrating it with examples. It just smacks of saying buzzwords.
STAR method really helped improve my interview skills. I was able to rehearse and prepare more effectively and its very helpful for thinking about past projects and situations you can discuss during an interview.
Proved their point in this rant. You sound insufferable and if you have been posting your ‘thoughts’ on others in the industry then they likely seen them. They seem to have dodged a bullet.
Real talk OP - As someone who has recently spent months looking for a new job as a software engineer I know the job market is bullshit at the moment and I sympathise. That said, your reaction to this setback of "I don't think the others were even technically good" and "I honestly think I was discriminated against" are indications that your attitude stinks. Putting others down and blaming everyone but yourself are indications of a toxic employee and someone I certainly would not like to work with.
Yes it sounds like you have good technical skills and practice a lot which is great. However, did you go and research your employer and interviewers well? Did you ask thought provoking questions about the company or projects? Did you actually sound like you were excited to work there? Did you ask the interviewers what excites them about working there? Did you ask about learning and development opportunities within the company? Did you ask why the position became available?
These are all things which are a tell that someone has done their homework wants to work there and has a good attitude to their work. Just because you spend a lot of time coding does not by default automatically make you better than everyone else. Learn from your experience and do the above next time.
Yes I'm sure I didn't do as well as them in the cultural fit interview.
But to get chosen over someone who didn't even put the time to publish a basic portfolio stings me really hard.
How do you even get to the interview phase?
I'm not ashamed to think that something is not right and something was not fair when in this job market they're asking for entry level junior positions with +3 years of experience.
I always preferred to recruit people who had non-techie interests outside work and devoted all their tech skills to the job they were paid for. I probably wouldn’t even have interviewed someone with all that outside stuff.
Attitude aside, how do you *know* that the other candidates didn't have a portfolio?
It's quite possible that they've been working on stuff that's not on Github and/or would be frowned upon being put public.
While I've been lucky enough that my two previous positions use Github so I can maintain my green pips, I also keep a private portfolio page with project briefs, videos and screenshots and that's where the good stuff is. It can be hard to keep adding personal projects to your portfolio once you're working fulltime too.
I personally know 2 of them which is why I was so upset finding out they got the job.
Yes you are right on the github. You can be active locally and have version control without uploading it to github.
But I guess you would want to showcase it when you're looking for a job to stand out.
This was for a junior position so all the more difficult to standing out and get that sweet interview if you don't showcase some code.
I am a senior software engineer and I am on the hiring panel for other engineers. While I do look at projects people may or may not do I also don't really care that much, what is to say they haven't been copied and pasted to begin with, I'm sure yours are real. Firstly if said engineer has real world experience (i.e. not their first job) I definitely don't care or expect them to have a portfolio, personal projects are often not even close to a commercial application. I am more interested in how a person would consider solving a problem then actually solving it. Secondly I am hiring a person that I actually want to work with, if you come off as stand offish or a know it all, I can guarantee I wouldn't put my vote in to hire you. We have a junior on our team that I personally mentor, are they the best dev? Nope actually they are a bit slow, are they good to work with? Hell yes and they try very hard to solve the problem and communicate issues, I have all the time in the world for this person.
TLDR: You were not discriminated against they just found a better fit.
Not from a software background but as someone who has hired hundreds of hard science and engineering people you should know that soft skills or “cultural fit” is pretty much the only important element of an interview for a technical position.
Firstly, You don’t get an interview if you haven’t got the technical background. It is easy to see this in your CV.
We all know that we cannot accurately evaluate your technical skills in an interview, no test or question will add anything meaningful and will likely just add a random factor to the selection process.
So we’re looking for “is this someone that I want to work with?” “Are they a good communicator?” “Could I see them mentoring and helping others?”
It’s all about the soft stuff.
In reality, it’s not always the person who is the most technically capable who gets the job.
There will have been numerous conscious and subconscious factors that went into the decision making process. It could be the selected candidate is someone the hiring manager views as a person they’d enjoy going to the pub with after work or it could be a decision based on the existing employees and specific gaps in soft skills that needs to be filled within a particular team, you just don’t know.
Having spoken to hiring managers, know that you may regard having a portfolio of fun projects as vital but you’d be surprised how many organisations are willing to train people in house because they know they’re capable of that and look more for personality and soft skills from candidates as they can be harder to instil. At the end of the day, you can only address what’s in your control. I know it probably very frustrating to go through but keep applying OP, something will eventually click.
I worked for someone who was big on "hire for fit, train for skill". He also believed in "throw you in at the deep end and you either sink or swim". Place was a bloody shambles of people on long term stress leave, and no-one's element of work fitted with anyone else's. I lasted four months.
This "hire best for bantz, and they can learn 4 years of experience from a two-hour teach yourself book" is one of the reasons there's a productivity problem in the UK.
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"I doubt they were very good technically at all." This attitude may be why you didn't get the job. I wouldn't want to work with you if that's what you think about software engineers who don't want to/have time to put into programming outside of work. It's great that you love programming so much, but for many of us, it's a job. A lot of people are great at their jobs without feeling the need to do more of the same outside work, and that's okay. If you're willing to look at things from a different angle, maybe consider if you brought any of the arrogance you've displayed in this post into your interactions with the interviewers. I started having more success in interviews when I showed I could reflect on my past choices and behaviours, showing that I could learn from my mistakes. (And I'm not saying not to be proud of what you have achieved, just consider that you are imperfect and employers want people who can recognise that).
Someone who is aware of their limitations is a good thing. Self awareness is hard to teach. I would far rather have someone on the team that can collaborate and communicate effectively than someone who needs to be the best in the room. One or two people that cant work well with other people can tank an entire project.
And your attitude is why you won't get hired Humble yourself, it'll serve you well.
If this is what you believe and cannot see their perspective, this may explain more than you think. That said, without trusted knowledgeable insider feedback you cannot be confident as to why they took another person over you. Everything else just means "no" or "not right now". Don't burn bridges, keep in touch, sometimes what you think will happen does. And you can seize that opportunity.
Yes obviously I don't know why they got picked over me. I can think of many reasons of why they got picked but I prefer to focus on the technical aspect where they had nothing to stand on. Thanks for the good advice to not burn bridges. That's the last thing I want to do right now with this current job market.
The thing is, technical skills can be taught, they can’t teach how to be someone they want to work with 8-10 hours a day. If you brought this weird superiority thing into the interview, it’s no wonder they went with other candidates.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I was reading this post, you know. You can have all the best technical skills in the world, create all the projects, love coding to death...but if you can't interview well you ain't gonna get the job. If there are 3 almost identical candidates interviewing it will come down who had the best connection / chat / rapport with the interviewers. Maybe the others who got the job are more personable than you and maybe the panel liked them better? Its not personal OP just take it on the chin and focus on those particular things for the next one
I see on this site (not so much this sub) all the time people saying smalltalk/soft skills are worthless. Well, erm, here’s where they come in extremely useful.
They are absolutely not worthless - I secured a new job in February and my manager explicitly said I stood out because I communicated well in the interview and had plenty of good examples of working well as part of a team. He then said he regards the soft skills as just as important as the technical ability - probably even more so because the technical skills can be taught over time whereas it is much more difficult to teach someone to be easy to work with.
It was not my intention to give any superiority vibes. My point is that I have put the time to showcase my love for the craft while the others candidates not. That is what this rant was all about.
It's hard not to get superiority vibes from a person who is literally saying they are more worthy of a job than three people they've never met, because of one specific metric that might not even be part of their hiring criteria.
Just seen in one of your comments that you do know two of them, but the point still stands. Why do you think having a GitHub profile makes you better than them? Do you really think your code is so good that an employer will overlook any other criteria that you were less good at?
In my thinking, it's just a way of showing I like to code, build things, solve problems, like to learn and I'm here for the long run so I'm a good investment for their entry level position. Opposite of not doing it and just taking my word for it. For a senior dev my code would be garbage and I doubt they would waste time looking at it, but its better than nothing. I got good advice from this post even if people are quick to call me an asshole and the way I worded it, they are right. Next time I'll be better prepared.
That's a good take away. I know it sucks to be rejected, and probably sucks doubly to be called out when all you wanted to do was vent about something you felt was unfair, but at the end of the day the people who got the roles were probably putting in just as much effort as you were, just in other areas of their life. Who knows, someday you might end up working with them and find out they're top rate programmers. If you did get to the final stage of interviews you clearly have potential. Just try to remember that you're not generally more deserving than anyone else of a job. (I would say that depending on how bad the code is, it might be worse than nothing. I doubt that's the case here, but if I saw nothing resembling good practices at all I'd probably be more wary than if I'd not seen anything)
"Yes obviously I don't know why they got picked over me. I can think of many reasons of why they got picked but I prefer to focus on the technical aspect where they had nothing to stand on." Go and email their HR and ask for feedback on specifically why they picked someone else over you. You can ask that and if they are good employers they'll respond. Also, software engineer/IT is highly competitive now. It's not 2014, where tech jobs are still booming big time. Now 2024 in the UK you're competing against remote workers and positions being outsourced to elsewhere cheaper. Not to mention few employers left due to brexit.
I did ask them but all I got was "you did very well on the cultural interview, they liked you, the technical interview you did very well, its just unfortunate we had very strong candidates". Fair enough, there's always someone better. But then I find out who the very strong candidates were. Sorry if it sounds arrogant or I give superiority vibes. I don't know how to put it gently. I should have probed deeper to find out what didn't stick with them about me.
Then you are arrogant. You have absolutely zero evidence that their technical skills are inferior to yours except your speculation just because they don't have anything to show to YOU. They can easily show their work ONLY to the employer. Not everyone have to be a show off like you are. Stay humble kid. You lack wisdom and are arrogant. You don't believe in other people's judgement on you and other candidate's skills. Why even find an employer? Just work for yourself lol
Just breathe, take a break and then apply elsewhere. Sometimes it's just a numbers game. I'm coming up to my 1 year anniversary since being made redundant and still no job in sight. Was rejected yesterday, no bad feedback just went with an internal candidate, the market is terrible but keep applying.
I would hazard some caution here: (i) you're basing success on your own pre-determined metrics, these aren't necessarily the same as the employer's; similarly, (ii) you're judging the other candidates on those success measures and only the information publicly available to those success measures, you have no idea how they've performed in private; (iii) unless they've explicitly said it's because of cultural fit, you have no evidence of that given points i and ii. They said you performed well, but it doesn't mean others didn't perform better. As a side note, as someone who hires fairly frequently, I hate when interviewees tell me what their skills are (e.g. "I'm good at working in a team", "I'm good at communicating") rather than demonstrating it with examples. It just smacks of saying buzzwords.
Interviews are often scored these days (use the STAR method for your answers) It sounds like they just outscored you. It happens, keep plugging away.
STAR method really helped improve my interview skills. I was able to rehearse and prepare more effectively and its very helpful for thinking about past projects and situations you can discuss during an interview.
Proved their point in this rant. You sound insufferable and if you have been posting your ‘thoughts’ on others in the industry then they likely seen them. They seem to have dodged a bullet.
Your attitude in this post demonstrates why did not get the job
Real talk OP - As someone who has recently spent months looking for a new job as a software engineer I know the job market is bullshit at the moment and I sympathise. That said, your reaction to this setback of "I don't think the others were even technically good" and "I honestly think I was discriminated against" are indications that your attitude stinks. Putting others down and blaming everyone but yourself are indications of a toxic employee and someone I certainly would not like to work with. Yes it sounds like you have good technical skills and practice a lot which is great. However, did you go and research your employer and interviewers well? Did you ask thought provoking questions about the company or projects? Did you actually sound like you were excited to work there? Did you ask the interviewers what excites them about working there? Did you ask about learning and development opportunities within the company? Did you ask why the position became available? These are all things which are a tell that someone has done their homework wants to work there and has a good attitude to their work. Just because you spend a lot of time coding does not by default automatically make you better than everyone else. Learn from your experience and do the above next time.
Yes I'm sure I didn't do as well as them in the cultural fit interview. But to get chosen over someone who didn't even put the time to publish a basic portfolio stings me really hard. How do you even get to the interview phase? I'm not ashamed to think that something is not right and something was not fair when in this job market they're asking for entry level junior positions with +3 years of experience.
Technical skills get you the interview Soft skills get you the job
Might not be a public portfolio that you are able to see. Surely you would know this given your very very impressive skills 🙄
I always preferred to recruit people who had non-techie interests outside work and devoted all their tech skills to the job they were paid for. I probably wouldn’t even have interviewed someone with all that outside stuff.
Attitude aside, how do you *know* that the other candidates didn't have a portfolio? It's quite possible that they've been working on stuff that's not on Github and/or would be frowned upon being put public. While I've been lucky enough that my two previous positions use Github so I can maintain my green pips, I also keep a private portfolio page with project briefs, videos and screenshots and that's where the good stuff is. It can be hard to keep adding personal projects to your portfolio once you're working fulltime too.
I personally know 2 of them which is why I was so upset finding out they got the job. Yes you are right on the github. You can be active locally and have version control without uploading it to github. But I guess you would want to showcase it when you're looking for a job to stand out. This was for a junior position so all the more difficult to standing out and get that sweet interview if you don't showcase some code.
I am a senior software engineer and I am on the hiring panel for other engineers. While I do look at projects people may or may not do I also don't really care that much, what is to say they haven't been copied and pasted to begin with, I'm sure yours are real. Firstly if said engineer has real world experience (i.e. not their first job) I definitely don't care or expect them to have a portfolio, personal projects are often not even close to a commercial application. I am more interested in how a person would consider solving a problem then actually solving it. Secondly I am hiring a person that I actually want to work with, if you come off as stand offish or a know it all, I can guarantee I wouldn't put my vote in to hire you. We have a junior on our team that I personally mentor, are they the best dev? Nope actually they are a bit slow, are they good to work with? Hell yes and they try very hard to solve the problem and communicate issues, I have all the time in the world for this person. TLDR: You were not discriminated against they just found a better fit.
Was salary ever discussed? Could possibly have been that the other three just went for much lower offers?
Nah salary is usually a discussion which is had after an indication of intent to offer
Not from a software background but as someone who has hired hundreds of hard science and engineering people you should know that soft skills or “cultural fit” is pretty much the only important element of an interview for a technical position. Firstly, You don’t get an interview if you haven’t got the technical background. It is easy to see this in your CV. We all know that we cannot accurately evaluate your technical skills in an interview, no test or question will add anything meaningful and will likely just add a random factor to the selection process. So we’re looking for “is this someone that I want to work with?” “Are they a good communicator?” “Could I see them mentoring and helping others?” It’s all about the soft stuff.
In reality, it’s not always the person who is the most technically capable who gets the job. There will have been numerous conscious and subconscious factors that went into the decision making process. It could be the selected candidate is someone the hiring manager views as a person they’d enjoy going to the pub with after work or it could be a decision based on the existing employees and specific gaps in soft skills that needs to be filled within a particular team, you just don’t know. Having spoken to hiring managers, know that you may regard having a portfolio of fun projects as vital but you’d be surprised how many organisations are willing to train people in house because they know they’re capable of that and look more for personality and soft skills from candidates as they can be harder to instil. At the end of the day, you can only address what’s in your control. I know it probably very frustrating to go through but keep applying OP, something will eventually click.
I worked for someone who was big on "hire for fit, train for skill". He also believed in "throw you in at the deep end and you either sink or swim". Place was a bloody shambles of people on long term stress leave, and no-one's element of work fitted with anyone else's. I lasted four months. This "hire best for bantz, and they can learn 4 years of experience from a two-hour teach yourself book" is one of the reasons there's a productivity problem in the UK.