Dear Candidate,

When you first walked into the room, I was pleased to see you dressed appropriately for the interview. However, this feeling was short lived. You were extremely nervous. I understand that Candidates are nervous but you could have surely looked at me instead of constantly looking down.

A little smile and an eye contact would have surely made both of us more comfortable.

I started with a standard question: tell me something about yourself. I start with this question so that the Candidate gets comfortable answering this easy question. Also, I want the Candidate to highlight the key areas around which I can ask further questions. However, you just started telling me about your brothers and sisters and mother and father.

For god's sake, I am here to hire you and am not really interested in knowing about your family, unless there is something unique about it.

Then you talked about your educational background, which I can read from your resume itself. Unless you want to highlight some aspect of your education, please spare me the agony of hearing what I have already read!

Now, your interests: listening to music and surfing the Internet! Tell me, is there one student in your class who does not listen to music and surf the Internet. I am interested in knowing something about you that gives me data points on how you will behave at the workplace. Something about your personality that gives me pointers on how you will go about handling pressure, managing different tasks, interacting with different people etc.

But all you are telling me is that you listen to music and surf the Internet.

Then I ask you a direct question: tell me about your strengths. I am hoping that now you will tell me what you are good at.

You tell me that you are hard working person. "Hard work" is not a bad personality trait at all. The problem is that 19 candidates before you who I interviewed also told me their strength is 'hard work'. I am not sure

whether you are really hard working or you are just saying that because everyone else is also saying it.

When I ask you for proving that what you are saying is actually true, all you give me is a lame example about clearing an ATKT. This incident actually puts more doubt in my mind than convincing me about your hard working nature.

So far, there is nothing special about your candidature that gives me the confidence to hire you. So I ask you about your achievements in life. And you tell me that you won a prize in some skit competition in your school. Did you ever think your prize in skit competition would help me decide whether you will be the right candidate for this job or not.

So I give you another opportunity. I ask you about some recent achievements. The answer is: some JAM competition. If a prize in skit competition in school and a JAM event is what you have achieved in life so far, I am scared to hire you.

I give you a last opportunity by asking a desperate question: why should we hire you. Your answer tells me that you are keen on this job and you had done some homework on the background of my company. I feel happy because I like candidates who are keen to work with us and give the right reasons for that. However, I need to also know whether you are a suitable candidate for this role or not.

You again talk about your hard work which is something that I am not convinced about.

Overall, I liked your enthusiasm, your appropriate dress and your preparedness about our company's background. However, I am not at all sure about what kind of a person you are and what I can expect once you start working with our organisation.

Whenever I am in doubt, I take the safer option of NOT HIRING a candidate. So please go back and prepare more on what you are good at and how your skills make you a suitable Candidate for this job.

Regards,

The Interviewer