Today I am going to tell you 1 tip to improve your chances of clearing an interview, which hardly anyone talks about! I’ll get right to it:
If you feel that you haven’t answered a question in a behavioral interview to the interviewer’s satisfaction, it is ok reach out to the recruiter after the interview to ask if you can provide additional supporting context via email.
Not every recruiter will be open to that, but it is worth a try.
I have a first hand experience of it! I was interviewing with a company last year, and one of the rounds was with a Product Manager. The last question was something on the lines of “Tell me about a time when your product manager disagreed with you and you had to get their buy in to prioritize your project”
For some reason, my answer wasn’t resonating with the interviewer. It wasn’t clear to him how my case was convincing enough. We ran out of time and I wasn’t feeling good about my performance.
I didn’t want that one question to screw up my chances, so I reached out to the recruiter, told her that I probably wasn’t able to articulate one of my answers properly and asked if it’d be ok to send her an email with some clarifications. She said ok, so I sent her my polished answer and after a few days, I got an offer!
There’s a bonus tip here.
How you phrase your answers or follow ups matters!
Don’t put the blame on the interviewer. Don’t say the interviewer didn’t understand. Say you were not able to convey your point properly.
Now I am not saying that I got the offer because of that email. But it didn’t hurt either! There’s no way for me to find out whether that interviewer said yes because of my email, but it must have helped. If you feel that the interviewer could be on the fence, you could sway their vote in your favor by doing something like this. You are also showing how serious you are abut that company.
This won’t work for every situation. If you didn’t answer the question at all, don’t try this. You can’t send a coding or design question like that, or you can’t do that for more than 1 question. But think about situations, where following up is not the norm, but doing so within limits could help you get what you want!
I hope you find this useful. Please comment and let me know if you have experienced any similar situation!