After the Job Interview: Managing Expectations

It went well, perhaps better than well. Perhaps other people in my position might say, “It went fantastic!” But I’ve had interviews I thought went fantastic only to learn a week later, after following up and following up that while the interview itself was fantastic, my fit for the company was not. 

Tom and I have a good laugh this time last year, when I came back from a handful of in-person interviews, glowing as though I had the offer letter in my pocket. The mouse was trapped. The west was won. The job was mine. 

“They loved me,” I would say, and launch into a starry-eyed delusion about with whom I’d get along best and would be taking my coffee breaks with (as though I were applying to jobs at Wal-Mart). 

Tom would raise an eyebrow and say, “Well, that’s great, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” 

And then a week or so later my indignation at them not having called me back and offered the position on a silver platter would have turned into an ill-tasting recalibration of my expectations. I took it personally, thinking they didn’t like my personality – because none of the positions I applied for required hard technicals skills (of which, I have written ad nauseum that I have few) – but as time went on and things like this happened again or not at all, I learned to let it roll off my back. 

People have been telling me from the day I started striving for anything to manage my expectations. In applying for college and graduate school, in hunting for jobs, in searching for apartments, in dating, in marrying! Manage those expectations. 

So when the girl who interviewed me today asked me what, from all my past experiences, I felt I could bring to the position, which is part account management, part sales, part being scrappy and fast and results-driven and smart, I wondered what on my resume couldn’t answer this question. She explained the job to me as she experienced it so far: people in this position were expected to be better than excellent communicators. They were liaisons who wanted the two key groups of people they worked with to get what they wanted out of the service the company provided. What could I bring? 

She was a bright-eyed petite blonde with side swept hair, a sweet smile and an adorably scratchy voice. She who wore a chambray shirt as did, coincidentally, the rest of the company. 

“It’s Chambray Friday,” she had joked. 

“It’s also Brooklyn,” I thought.