This Is How to Get Your Next Job

Why They Aren’t Hiring You

I asked employers this simple question: Why didn’t you hire the last 10 people you interviewed? And you know what every one of them said? It was because of how the job applicant seemed based on how he or she acted. Before, during, or after an interview. Sometimes it was what a person did or didn’t do, or said or didn’t say. In an e-mail. On the phone. Or face-to-face. It could happen in the first three minutes of an interview. Or as one manager told me, in the last three minutes of walking an interviewee toward the exit.

Fair or not, the employers said the behaviors people exhibited were very revealing. The behavior influenced them so much that it predicted not only what kind of employee someone might be and whether ...