Don't be overconfident during an interview

As a recruiter, you can imagine that i have conducted thousands of interviews. Thankfully up until now a lot of people i have interviewed consider me friendly, without attitude and that i help them decrease their stress. If that's the case and they don't lie to me i feel quite honored and happy hearing something like that.

Now as i said above i have conducted thousands of interviews and there you meet different kind of people, with different kind of personalities. I can talk about that for ours but today's topic is overconfidence. Note that there is a thin line between being simply confident in your skills and being overconfident and i have my fair share of both.

Overconfident people tend to talk with an attitude and believe that everything is easy for them. These kinds of people always tell me how certain tasks are a piece of cake for them and that due to that they deserve a great salary. Being overconfident means that sometimes you are unaware of making mistakes as you believe you are a genius or something.

So besides the fact that people like these can't work well in teams, as they act smart and they bring chaos with them. Most likely and this applies to each and every single one of us, there is a smarter person out there. For overconfident people that scenario doesn't apply in their brains.

Sometimes either because i want to get them back to reality or because i am just too good and try to give them a chance, i let them know that we will proceed to the next phase which will be a test based on their skills. Note that tests are not usual "crap" that you logic but actual exercises where we can assess their actual skills and knowledge.

Now the vast majority of them, even though they tell me that they will complete it easily, they either fail or they just have a score like 60-65/100. This is the first reality check. The second one if for those that let's say have a 60-65/100 and based on our needs we may have another interview with the Manager of the department.

This is quite interesting for them as they are basically getting destroyed since they were asked very specific questions about their knowledge and skills which actually highlights the exact opposite, that they lack knowledge. To tell you the truth i don't think they will learn their lessons and most likely they will blame everyone else but themselves.

The top worst candidate that we had like this, was a person who managed to have a test score of 60/100, and had a final interview where basically everyone said that he is quite average and based on his working experience and what he was saying he should have been way better. At the same time we had people that had 75 to 85 and ofc a better final interview.

When we decided not to proceed with the overconfident guy and ofc i let him know about that he didn't take this lightly. He replied back, asking why he was rejected while he stated himself and i am not joking, that he knew that his test and interview were average. I honestly didn't know how he could see it and realize what he just said and i basically explained that we had candidates that received a better score and we decided to proceed with them.

Overall, i would suggest to everyone to have confidence in their skills during an interview but before that, you should be certain that you actually possess certain skills and at what level each of your skills is. Try to find that thin line don't be overconfident as chances will not be in your favor. At the same time though, don't be the exact opposite and act like you don't deserve the role! Get to know yourself, your weaknesses and strengths and from there on everything will get better!

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