Strange reason for being turned down. Any other good ones?

7 points by JGailor 14 years ago | 8 comments

This is a pretty weird one, as I've been programming for a while and haven't heard it yet. I have been interviewing w/ a local Bay Area startup that I was introduced to via a friends recommendation. It's a bit of a strange situation as I had just spent the past year working as a co-founder on a startup, and I made it clear that there was a strong chance that I would be applying to a startup incubator over the winter to work on a problem that I find frustrating and would love to see solved, so it might not be a long-term thing. They were understanding, so we met, and after a few good face-to-face meetings we had talked about a reasonable short-term engagement. At this point I usually ask the other side to think it over a bit and send me an email with an offer to start really coalescing the process, and to open up some space for any questions that might not occur during an interview.

After a few days, I got an email, and while it was very positive on my technical/engineering abilities, ultimately they thought I was "too mature" for the team and might not be a good fit. I was somewhat disappointed, as I liked these guys and thought they had an idea that I could really dig deep into, but I can understand the need to make sure the team is clicking at close to optimal efficiency as possible. I just have never had the "too mature" reason used before. My thoughts at this point are that either:

A) They felt that was an easy way to say they weren't really interested. Strange, but that's ok.

B) They were not happy with the potential for me to leave after a few months. Very legitimate, but there's always some flexibility and we could have talked some more about it and changed plans.

C) I just was too serious during the interview process, and didn't seem like I could work comfortably with the team. I think this is very possible, but usually when interviewing it seems hard to get too comfortable. There's a lot of evaluation going on from both sides, and you want to put your best face forward. For me that usually means trying to look capable and professional.

Anyway, I think they're a great company and will blow up in the next few years, but this just struck me as a strange one, so I thought I would cheer myself up and see if anyone else had any funny or weird stories about interviews.

hturki 14 years ago |

I think you're spot on with the "they think you're too uptight" hypothesis. Small teams can be really anal when it comes to culture fit, for better or for worse, and unfortunately when it comes to this people can be really prejudiced and ofter rely on more "superficial" factors such as gender and age. I personally work at a startup with a lot of pretty brilliant people, but that has a pretty bro-ey feel at times. I personally enjoy it (I did pledge a frat in college), but I see the term "culture fit" being thrown around when discussing potential candidates and do have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it does contribute to a sense of community and high morale, and hiring someone that would ruin that sense of community would be pretty bad, but on the other hand, we do end up turning away a few otherwise qualified candidates.

But long story short, they probably didn't hire you because of some shallow first impression (which doesn't automatically make them jerks since we're all guilty of this), but there was probably nothing you could have done so you shouldn't feel bad about it. It's just the way the world works sometimes.

masterzora 14 years ago | |

> but on the other hand, we do end up turning away a few otherwise qualified candidates.

I've had to turn down several otherwise-qualified candidates recently for culture fit reasons. While it would be awesome if all qualified candidates were created equal, their technical qualifications are only one piece of the puzzle.

In reality, the culture fit and the ability to work with the rest of the team is key in a small company. Everybody has to deal with everybody, so if anybody has issues dealing with anybody you can run into some major friction that'll cost you more than you gain.

At the end of the day, the way to look at it isn't "they're qualified but they don't fit the culture", but rather "they're not qualified because they don't fit the culture". It goes a long way toward eliminating the mixed feelings.

kinkora 14 years ago |

I have two.

The first is my own experience of being turned down for a part-time engineering role because the company didn't think it was safe or good for me to travel so much. From where i stayed at that time, it would have taken me roughly 90 minutes to get there and another 90 minutes to get back if i got the job. To be fair to them, I honestly felt they were concerned for my well being.

The second is from a previous company I worked for and I was asked to temporarily join a hiring team that were bringing in new recruits (mostly uni grads) to evaluate their technical abilities. There was a really young candidate whom I felt stood out but he had a quirkiness of pulling out a sesame street soft toy from his bag and stroking it every time he faced a "challenging" question. I had absolutely no issues with that but HR apparently felt that was too weird for them.

JGailor 14 years ago | |

That is definitely an interesting quirk.

The first one seemed pretty decent of them. It would have at least given me a warm feeling about not getting an offer based on concern for my well-being.

turbojerry 14 years ago |

I was once turned down for a job because I was "Too entrepreneurial", it still makes me laugh thinking about it.

DougSF 14 years ago |

If this is in CA, you may want to look into suing them for age discrimination.

http://ag.ca.gov/civilrights/lawleg.php

JGailor 14 years ago | |

Ah. I don't think it was a case of me being too "old" as maybe me being "too uptight" or something along those lines (although I'm still pretty young I guess I've recently slid outside that 20's sweet-spot, and as most of my friends will attest too I'm probably not uptight-enough at times).

It's sort of the reason why I found it to be such a weird response, only because it seems an interview is not necessarily the best place to judge how someone acts personality-wise once they've integrated into a team and become comfortable.

Someone else brought up the age discrimination thing to me, but honestly even if that was the case these are good people and I think as a founder of a company you do need to make the best decision you can for the well-being of the business.