Job-Rejection Debriefing

On a Friday morning in January, I was one of 12,000 people to receive this email:

By the end of the next day, my resume was finished and I’d sent it to a number of personal connections. One of those connections led to the job I wound up accepting1, and another led to a really interesting experience trying to get a job at CarGurus. I had many interesting conversations and technical assessments, and was feeling optimistic about my chances, but did not get the job.

When the CarGurus recruiter sent me the email letting me know that they weren’t going ahead with me, she offered a followup phone call to provide feedback. This is unusual, and laudable, in our industry. I took her up on it.

After that call, I reported back to a group chat where I hang out with a bunch of really smart and kind nerds.

My friend Tars2 snapped back with

which, being me, I took as a challenge.

Lyrics

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWell a couple of days ago I got an email telling me that my CarGurus candidacy was dead, and I would never be permitted on the premises. The recruiter said that she would like to have a chat with me, and we could debrief and give feedback. And I said, "Yeah I need that!"

But I waited in dread to hear what she said. When I was in bed, the voice in my head said, "Am I too much of a hothead? An old pothead? Am I ill-bred, all my skills dead in the twilight of a fine life, with no future, and just hindsight?"

I don't know.

But the recruiter called and told me that my tech skills impressed, and that, despite the lack of recent Java experience I'd confessed, I had done well in the salient portions of my interviews. And, furthermore, I put them at ease with my amusing schmooze. So that was something of a relief, to hear I'm not quite ready for pasture. And so I was more relaxed to hear the answer when I asked her what the reason was they didn't want to bring me in the fold, if it's not that I'm an asshole or my neurons are too old. She told me that they were concerned the role was not a fit for what they understood my needs to be. And I had to admit that I had represented myself as ambitious, and that I had given signals that I didn't want to code, that I was driven, or that somehow I thought coding was beneath me, which it isn't. But I can see how in the moment that impression had arisen. I had wanted to project my leadership ability, and I had inadvertently implied the role was not for me.