Really messed up in an interview.... wwyd?

[lifesabitchandthenyoudie]

Argh I've realised where I c*cked up to a question; feeling really fed up because I'd got the answer prepared but I didn't connect it with how they worded it and just rambled some waffle that I thought sounded ok - but now I know what they were looking for!

I really really want to email them with 'in response to your previous question, this is how I should have answered...' in a (vain) attempt to at least not look quite so dumb! And maybe rescue the situation?

What do you think? Please stop me from making an even bigger twit of myself!

@lifesabitchandthenyoudie

Thank you guys!

I agree I'm overthinking, but then again I note that several who have interviewed people have suggested I do; I like the follow-up email idea, I think I'll draft one, sleep on it (and check this post in the morning) and maybe send it then...

NO don’t

Can you say anything about the industry? If corporate/private sector, definitely don’t. I would think this is someone who will think it is ok to f something up and then apologise later. Unless your answer was so utterly staggeringly bad I would not even consider doing it. You may be correcting something that no one saw as a problem. This is not a ‘nothing to lose’ scenario

@SparklyLeprechaun

If a candidate did that, I'd assume they went home and googled the answer.

I have to agree, I'm afraid.

I've interviewed many people and we score the candidates on each question of the interview. We would not consider additional material after the event as it would not be a fair process.

Slightly different process but we were interviewing companies as part of a tender process where this happened.

I was impressed with the reflection and the company was awarded the contract. I don't think you've got anything to lose.

@Jacaranda75 brilliant- I'd have hired you for that (and then left balloons on your desk your first day)!

Op depends what the question was. To be honest, I'd follow up - you should always email a thank you anyway. You can either address the question directly or just casually just mention some aspect of the job that excites you in such a way as to give the right info.

Good luck!

you see, @BobbieT1999ob, you've hit the nail on the head there! If the employer's response is positive then that's the kind of employer I want to work with.

I've emailed... just thanked them and elaborated on the answer to the one question, as in excited to be able to add these skills to the team. I will report back in due course!

Thank you all for your input x

I can't believe any interview board would change your mark on receipt of an email like that tbh. Maybe they should have emailed you all the questions and given you two days to email them back your perfect answers. Then, maybe they should do that for everyone, only fair

But best of luck, op!!!

I work in the public sector and this would not be looked upon favourably. All candidates are offered the same opportunity and it would be unethical to accept information after the event from one candidate and not give others the same opportunity.

@Jacaranda75

This happened to me. I’ve posted about it loads of times. I was interviewing for a local government administration job. One of the interviewing panel asked me some questions about me as a person, then another member of the panel asked me if there were any new skills I would like to acquire. Obviously in relation to the job. I was still in the ‘talking about me as a person’ mode and declared that I would like to learn to make balloon animals from balloons.

I will never forget the looks in their faces. And I didn’t get the job.

Hope you have better luck than me, OP .

Absolutely brilliant. They should have given you the job just on the balloon animals🤪

Good luck OP!

@Jacaranda, that's amazing!! How dare they not employ you after that!

Best of luck!

Sometimes things work out better than you expect - I had an interview and cancelled an hour before. I had good reason, had been in hospital the night previous and literally hadn’t slept, couldn’t string a sentence together! Didn’t hear a thing from them to rearrange and actually even started another job.

Queue 6 weeks later, found out the job was still available and made contact - they had actually hired someone and they hadn’t ended up being suitable. I ended up getting the job in the end!

The balloon animal story is my favourite .
It gave me a proper belly laugh. Thanks :) You should start seperate thread about things people have said in job interviews that were major stuff ups. !

Yes as PP have said, send a nice follow up email thanking them for their time and consideration and briefly summarise your suitability again, try to weave in some points on the answer that you missed, if it’s relevant/important. Don’t email to say “my answer to question 3 should have been”. Lots of people mess up one answer!

Got a nice email today to say thanks, but no thanks. Which is fine, and I have no idea if the email did anything bad or good; but I feel better that I tried to fix my error (in a totally not obvious way ).

Thanks again for your input!

Good luck with your job hunt. Least you won’t have any regrets that you didn’t make the contact.