is there a hidden message in that email from your interviewer?
- “My interviewer said she looked forward to talking soon. Is that a sign I’m getting the job?”
- “My job interview seemed to go great – but then they said they’d get back to me even if I don’t get the job. Is that a bad sign?”
- “They said they were looking for someone with more experience – should I not have even applied in the first place?”
Job looking is so anxiety-producing that it drives in any other case cheap folks to hunt – and persuade themselves they’ve discovered – hidden that means in essentially the most mundane of communications with employers. We’re used to seeing such a over-analysis in different areas of life, like relationship (“when he said he likes kids, was he signaling that he wants to settle down quickly?”), however the stress of job-seeking brings out a few of the worst.
At Slate at this time, I wrote about how folks parse the phrases of each communication from employers, attempting to ferret out indicators about their probabilities … and why it’s extra dangerous than useful to them. You can learn it right here.