Comment by 9x39
21 hours ago
I've rounded lots of sharp edges off my personality over the years, having been rejected a lot and having made unforced errors.
The problem with advice here is that, if you're right and there's something personality-related and it's not just fierce competition or tiny sample size, we can't really tell through a post. I'm talking about the je ne sais quoi of you, the body language, the attitude, the unwritten vibe you give off, and posting videos here is uh, well, yeah, unlikely.
So, I'd echo the advice of others to talk to your friends and ask them to give you feedback. Hopefully they're observant and willing to be blunt.
I'll opine, though - have you tried a little masking and humility? I ask because if I had to guess based on probability, the archetype of the highly intelligent, technically excellent nerd tends to also run adjacent to underdeveloped social skills, or at least indifference to using them. Arrogance, defensiveness, ego abound. That's what I coach my team and friends on who have cracked this type of discussion open.
If you were going to mask for an interview, coming across humble/hungry/smart (smart is probably not a problem for most here, but humble?...). Consider mirroring with the interviewer. Stay detached and practice this, especially when a finger is pointed at you or you don't ace a question, or they disagree.
In all, it's probably the stuff you can't describe easily without being next to you. You may not even realize the signals you're putting off, if that is even what's going on.
I know the struggle - my wife has been turned down over and over and over, and she takes it personally, but she's also going for jobs that clearly have tons of great applicants. Is it her attitude? Did she make a mistake bringing up that experience? Or maybe...or maybe it's just out of our control, and we have to stick to the plan and stay in the market. The losing move is not to play.
Yeah, none of this is bad advice at all.
In my normal personal life I tend to be pretty sarcastic and self-deprecating. My therapist says it might be a defense mechanism to avoid actually confronting problems; if you make a person you're talking to laugh then they usually think everything is fine and stop worrying about you.
I try not to do that during interviews. I don't think I'm coming off like I'm trying hard to be smart or brag, but it's very possible and likely that some level of my normal insecurities are bleeding through, and that happening even subtly might be enough to poison it for me.
That's definitely a tough one. In an interview you are literally selling yourself. You don't want to be off-putting with outsized arrogance, but you also don't want to be so humble that people question your actual skill level.