My bad job interview went viral on LinkedIn, but I still don’t have a job

I recently interviewed for a job, and got rejected within the same week. Honestly, I was gutted. Partially because I thought I had kind of smashed it in the Zoom interview and was able to prove I had the required experience. But mostly because the job looked amazing. It was in a major media agency, with opportunity for upward progression.

In recent years, I’ve been hopping between short-term contracts, the occasional corporate comms job, and a heap of freelance writing gigs. But as I reach the tail-end of my 20s, I’m doing my best to settle into a role that people will take seriously.

What was worst of all about the rejection was the reason the employer gave. Over the phone they told me that my answers hadn’t seemed genuine and that it looked like I was reading off a screen.

In hindsight, my undoing was the years of experience I have in doing job interviews. By this point in my career hustle, I can see where the misperception that I was “reading off a screen” might have come from. After all, how many different ways can I say that a corporate comms job from 2023 gave me valuable workplace experience and taught me strong time-management skills? But it also felt like I was being punished for being overprepared. So I did what anyone in this situation would do: complain about it on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is generally considered a work hustle hellscape – like Facebook but instead of people sharing photos of their children, they humblebrag about expenses-paid work trips – so I wasn’t expecting much. Most of my posts on LinkedIn come and go without any more than eight reactions, and maybe a couple of comments. No harm done, then, to bash out a post and hopefully commiserate with other jobseekers about my shitty interview experience and the unhelpful feedback. I never imagined my post would go viral.

The reaction was immediate. Within an hour my post started snowballing and people from all over the world were chipping in with their two cents on my interview experience. Most wanted to tell me I had dodged a bullet, or shared their own job interview traumas. Some were less sympathetic, and suggested I should work on my presentation.

You might imagine that being swamped with notifications and comments about my actions from across the UK, America, and Europe would be overwhelming. And it was a little bit weird to be getting IT consultants in Ontario and retired doctors from Michigan telling me their thoughts about my experience. Nothing unites generations like crappy workplace war stories.

But without shame, I can tell you this was exciting. As a writer who has been unemployed three times in the past year and has fought to get my name selected for round upon round of interviews and call-backs, this was exactly the kind of attention I was looking for. As those engagement numbers kept shooting up, going to sleep each night carried a startling sense of anticipation – I almost couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning to check my phone for the latest.