Some thoughts after an interview

This past week I attended an interview where I performed rather poorly. I still can't shake off the bad vibes. The first interviewer left me confused and I never recovered. I blame myself for being under-prepared. Moreover though the position was for a software engineer, it was clear that I had no passion for it at all. When the first guy asked me what I really wanted to do, I launched into my favorite spiel about working with customers which really confused the guy. The position was a hard core development position and I really have no love for that kind of work. Sitting and coding in a cube just bores me to death these days.

The first guy wanted me to write code, which was fine, but he was a stickler for exact syntax - and called me on several minor mistakes. That kind of frazzled me, but that cannot be an excuse that a professional like me can bandy about. There were a couple of tough technical questions that I wasn't good at answering.

The next three guys were far more tolerant and easy going and I thought I did well . The last interview of the day was with the VP of Engineering. I made the fatal mistake of telling him that my Java skills were a little rusty. I don't know why I said that. He immediately probed me on that and from then on the interview went downhill. He was short, brusque and tough with his questions and I knew then that I stood no chance of being considered for that position. The thing that really hurt was when the VP told me that I was not a good fit for the engineering position and that my customer facing experience was so thin that he had to basically hire me on faith and he was reluctant to do that.

As I left I thanked him for his time and complimented him on the sharp team he had. All the guys who had interviewed me were really sharp and that is often an indication of a company that has a good chance of succeeding.

Driving back home, I was actually glad for having gone through such a tough interview. It hopefully will force me to be better prepared for future interviews. But I wish I had done well. I was really disappointed with how I performed and that bad tasted has stayed with me for the past few days.