# Stuart's story: The job he was relieved not to get - **Episode:** [196](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/196.md) (2025-05-13) - **Type:** news-roundup - **Tags:** job-search, rejection, personal-story - **Time:** 23:15–27:39 (start 1395s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/196?t=1395](https://truthliesandwork.com/196?t=1395) --- [23:15] Al Elliott: Have you been in a situation where you've gone, ooh, this is not good, and therefore I don't want to pursue this? [23:20] Stuart Mace: I was actually relieved once where I didn't get offered a job. In fact, it's more than once, but one time springs to mind when I was in the same recruitment process but was rejected 3 times for the same job in the same recruitment process. And when I did get to final stage and I was told I hadn't got the job, I was actually relieved. Um, but I've also had other experiences where I've gatecrashed somebody else's interview because the recruiter has given me the same link through Teams, uh, as the other candidate, uh, interviewing. Uh, and when I've joined the interview 3 minutes early, the previous candidate is still interviewing. This is pretty recent. I tried to get hold of a recruiter 48 hours. They gave me 48 hours notice of an interview and to prepare a 20-minute presentation. And I had questions. I tried to get hold of the recruiter throughout that 48 hours by email and by phone. I didn't hear from the recruiter until I was actually on the interview. And the recruiter phoned me twice whilst I was interviewing with the time that they had set up. And I then phoned the recruiter after the interview. And I still haven't heard from that person 4 months on [24:38] Leanne Elliott: Wow [24:39] Stuart Mace: But having said that, there have been some good experiences along the way [24:42] Al Elliott: Well, tell us about those [24:43] Stuart Mace: So one of which has been fairly recent, which was an organization where, or the process, should I say, where it just made you feel empowered that you wanted to work for them. And it really is something which I think is not too difficult to do. And I think there's You know, there's some sort of synergy here to dating, dare I say it. And I think your guest a couple of months ago, or you had on, is it John Turnoff, mentioned this when it comes to looking at sort of how you put your best foot forward and display and make that other person or make the candidate experience or the recruitment journey feel empowering and that you want to be with that organization. So, the application process was fairly simple. And I think that's something we need to sort of look at because it can be You know, very laborious and time-consuming for sometimes for no reward. But this process was literally a 3-minute process where you could obviously update, upload your CV, but it gave you an opportunity to give a 2-minute video of yourself and why they want, why they should hire you, or they wanted to learn a little bit about you as an individual, which I quite enjoyed and thought that was quite different. So I looked at doing that. Response was really swift. Within, within 19 minutes, I was selected by the recruiter to, to have a call with the recruiter, which I did. Very professional documents that came across telling me about the organization. Recruiter was very professional from a point of view of made me feel relaxed, quite at ease. We had some small talk, but they asked pertinent questions with regards to what I could do for the organization as opposed to what I have done in the past, which I thought was a good take. It did involve then looking at doing some psychometric testing, verbal reasoning and numerical reasoning, which again, there are things that I do like. I understand some people don't enjoy those, and obviously reasonable adjustments can be made, but I do find them quite intriguing. I got the results directly, so I knew what score I had, so there was nothing hidden [26:53] Al Elliott: Yeah [26:54] Stuart Mace: know if there was a pass mark or not, but I was told that I sailed through and that I'd smashed it and that I could then have that interview with the hiring manager. And all this was done within 8 days of me applying for the job. And again, the hiring manager, his first question to me was, tell me about yourself, which was again something I enjoy because it's not necessarily a competency-based interview. Tell me about your, you know, about what you've done in a working environment. They were more interested in, uh, in who I was and what, um, what my, um, motivations and, uh, and passions were. So there are some, yeah, there are some good experiences, but I generally find they're more bad than good