Why You Were Turned Down: You Put Too Much Pressure on Yourself

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

This show points to how, sometimes, people put too much pressure on themselves.

I‘m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, and I coach people and organizations to be more effective. And that can basically translate into helping with a job search, with hiring, being more effective in the workplace, being a more effective manager—a whole host of different things that translates into coaching people and organizations to be effective in their work environment.

I’m also the head coach for JobSearch.Community

And I want to start a series about why people get turned down for jobs. ‘Cause Lord knows, in my career in search, I heard a million reasons. And I’m not going to go through the ones like you weren’t qualified, you made mistakes on the interview, nothing along those lines. I want to go through some of the other reasons why people get turned down.

And one reason—and this is a hard one for people to hear—but they put too much pressure on themselves. They over-prepare, they overthink situations instead of being themselves.

Now, I’ll give an example from someone I coached recently who came to me because he would get through three, four, five rounds of interviews, get to the final, get turned down. And, you know, he gave me a story about how he had been on one interview, prepared for 10, 12 hours, came in for the final round of interviews, and people said, “Wow, no one’s ever prepared for like this before. You were terrific!” And then they didn’t hire him.

Why? Why didn’t they hire him?

And part of that involved the amount of pressure he put on himself to perform. You see, people want to hire individuals that they know, like, trust, and respect. They’re not hiring data robots. They’re not hiring people who purely are going to regurgitate facts to them. They want to hire effective people who they like.

And by over-preparing, you put too much pressure on yourself so that it’s hard for them to really connect with you person to person. You see, when organizations hire, they want to believe that they can trust someone. That person also needs to be qualified, obviously. They need competence, self-confidence, character, chemistry, maybe a little bit of charisma. But it all translates into, you know, you add this up, you put it in the pot, you cook it for a while, and it translates into, “We trust this person can do the job.”

By putting too much pressure on yourself, you’re not yourself. You’re not performing at a high level. You’re able to give them a bunch of facts most of the time. Sometimes you’re going to freeze. And you just need to relax and trust that you have the background that can do the role. And if you can’t, then you shouldn’t be hired. It’s okay. But when you put too much pressure on yourself, you’re not at your best.

I’m Jeff Altman. I hope you found this helpful. Visit my website, TheBigGameHunter.us, where I’ve got thousands of posts that you can watch, listen to, or read that are going to help you be more effective in your job search, in your work environment, with hiring, and a host of different things.

Also want to mention, if you’re interested in 1-on-1 coaching with me, contact me through LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter. Mention that you saw the video, ’cause I like knowing that I’m going to help some folks. Once connected, we’ll set up time for a free discovery call.

So again, JobSearch.Community. Join me there, take some coaching from me.

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