Rejection

Mod Note (Andy): Make sure to check out the comment inside the post by @M- Weintraub"

So, it's been a while since I've provided content to this wonderful website (sorry Patrick). But, I figure now would be a good time.

I just received a nice "Your no longer being considered for this job" update on a job I interviewed for a couple weeks ago. So while I'm still disappointed I figured I'd ask the group, what are some of your best rejection stories, whether it be a job or a girl or really anything.

Edit: Fortunately, I was searching for a new job while I'm currently employed but I will continue to look. Which leads me to my last point, make sure that you always have a plan B, C and D.

Keep the stories coming.

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I was let go from my first job late last year (mostly not my fault) and I figured, "screw it, top firm and great group out of college, I'll live." As the weeks went by and the air became colder, my bank balance withered and reality set in that I had failed at something. I hadn't been able to secure a job and I wasn't doing enough to get back in the game.

I hit the pavement hard looking for work, and interview after interview went by with nothing to show for. Eventually I spent a weekend overhauling my resume completely; I rewrote every word on it and thought of better ways to convey every single idea behind each line in it. I scored a super day with a BB for a new group in their finance division, and the job would pay fairly well as per my source on the inside.

On the day of the interview, I learned the subway had a massive delay from where I lived. I was 2 hours early though, which left an hour for the commute and an hour of buffer time. I hopped into a cab determined to be on time and said "I'm good." The cabbie was about to hop on the east side highway but I warned him of a delay I saw on my phone, and we saw that the west side was a better idea. But before we got there, the on-ramp was blocked -- construction. No problem, we head southbound to the next entrance. My cab gets onto the 9A around Dyckman, and there's a huge traffic jam. Stop-go traffic all the way down to 42nd street, my exit.

We decide to take the local route. I'm beginning to worry that I'll be late. Traffic isn't the nicest at any time of day in Manhattan but this time it was really bad. Red lights made sure we stopped for a minute every single block on the way downtown. 20 minutes prior to the interview, I called my contact at the firm's HR to inform her that I might be up to 10 minutes late. I got off the cab near Grand Central and literally ran to the building, already 5 minutes late. At this point, I knew I would almost certainly be dinged, but I wasn't about to give up.

I get in and meet my first interviewer. The guy is relaxed and smiling - he's having a great day and assured me the lateness was no problem. First interview went great, second the same. Third round with the group's VP, fourth round with the MD, and the last round with the guy doing the hiring - my would-be boss. In walks a pasty-skinned, glasses-wearing, mop-top hair guy who looks like he barely has enough muscle on his bones to carry a shirt on his shoulders. Politeness wasn't his strong suit and the tension in the room went from nonexistent to thick as the Spaghetti Monster's balls in a second. The guy opens with a flurry of questions that there was just no way I could answer (knowledge of the subject matter was far beyond my experience). I immediately sensed that this guy just didn't want me on his team. Why I was selected for a super day at all is beyond me.

I was at the end of my wits as I left the building. Months into unemployment, my bank balance dipping low, and my career obviously suffering, I felt like shit. I went to a friend's house with a bottle of whiskey, smokes, and some halal food and decided to vent for a bit. But before I left, my friend showed me some shit I didn't think would affect me the way it did: a Taylor Swift video.

"Shake it Off" was all I needed to see to be reminded that not only does shit happen, but that little shits like my interviewer are all over the place and need not be acknowledged. Maybe it was the whiskey talking, but I felt a lot better about things. That week, on my birthday, I stayed in while sending out emails, applications, and making calls. I later had a drink and a cigarette with my mom, and decided to give it a break for a week. Remove myself from finance for a moment.

A month later I had 4 offers, one of which was for my current gig at a F100 firm, $10k above my optimistic base salary and with a generous $10k bonus. I just kept up the work and approached interviews a lot less nervously, much more confidently, and focused on why I was the right candidate. The change in my attitude did everything. The only downside? "Shake it Off" gets stuck in my head every time I hear or think of it. Including right now.

bfin : Good luck. Hoping that you find the right opportunity.

 

What a crazy ending. At first I thought it would be a BB outcast comes back but the-would-be boss pulled a fast one that could only be rivaled by Paulson himself. Congrats on your new job. Sounds a lot better than working 80-100hr weeks for that prick.

 

Thank you @m-weintraub. Also, this story is one for the ages.

The answer to your question is 1) network 2) get involved 3) beef up your resume 4) repeat -happypantsmcgee WSO is not your personal search function.
 

First off OP, sorry to hear that. Unfortunately rejection from a job is one of the hardest to swallow because it feels too personal, like "I'm not good enough, someone was better (even though I'm obviously awesome), or I suck." Almost all the time it's not those, but it still sucks. I prescribe bourbon.

I'm a little more experienced than most on WSO and I've come to love rejection. At this point in my career and for the last 8-10 years I've been primarily pitching to acquire off market companies, to raise money from new fund LP's or other investors for outside somewhat crazy individual deals or putting together (again) crazy deals with multiple moving parts that are grand slams or strike outs in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded. It hurt and I took it personally the first couple dozen times I was rejected but after a few of those things hit-getting a few of those acquisitions, landing a new brand name LP or putting a grand slams together-I realized that getting rejected 99% of the time made those awesome opportunities happen. I've done well for myself and have no regrets but I get shot down or fail the large majority of the time. Still.

And it's ok. If you're not getting rejected you're not trying hard enough or reaching far enough in multiple parts of work and life (obviously within reason-don't apply and set your heart on an MD job if you have 3 years of experience, or try to acquire a $10B company if you work in the lower MM, or ask a super model out if you're 5'2", 180 lbs and work at McD's). I think that's why sales/biz dev experience is a great thing to have on a resume and why PWM guys can keep going. One of my most successful college friends began in PWM (not totally started there but surprisingly after a 2 year IB stint) but after a few years at a wirehouse ended up founding a multi-family office investment firm and has over $5B in assets and it's because he was rejected so often that he overcame it (and he was a political and networking animal and incredibly intelligent).

When you confront rejection enough and realize it's the only way you're actually going beyond the normal, it just doesn't matter anymore.

 

Yeah I completely agree with that. I obviously am nowhere near as polished as you but I think it can build character if you don't point fingers at everyone for why you can't do something or get a certain job (which unfortunately, many fall in this category nowadays).

 

Thanks OP.

I got two stories.

I was my high schools varsity starting goalie my freshman year. After my freshman year, I left to go play for a club team and had a fair amount of success there for two years. On completion of my junior year, I decided that I did not want to play college hockey and returned to my high school team for my senior season. About halfway through the season I lost the starting job and had to watch from the bench as our team reached the state championships. It was a hard time for sure.

My other story is that I had not put too much effort into my classes in high school but was confident that I would be able to bs my way into a college with a strong finance program. Of course that was not the case and I was rejected from a majority of the schools that I applied to. This taught me that you actually need to do shit in order to achieve your goals and that nothing is handed to you. Since the summer started, I have been networking with various guys in the PE/IB/VC industry. I have developed connections with professionals at MS/GS, BX/Apollo/KKR, MM PE funds and VC companies. Now, I have four years of college to do well in school and build relationships with my contacts in order to have the best job prospects coming from a non target. Failure can be a beautiful thing.

 

Thanks for starting this thread. Currently hitting the pavement and I needed the encouragement. Although I don't think its the rejection that's hitting me the hardest, what crushes me is the silence. Reaching out time and time again and hearing nothing back. That said, re-calibrate and keep grinding, I'm confident we'll get there in the end mate.

 

One time I met this awesome girl. Smart, pretty, absurdly talented, and quite funny. By some odd mess-up of fate, I got a date with her. I planned a lovely picnic at a lake. So romantic, I know. Well, i spent a whole day planning a beautiful meal for the picnic, complete with plastic champagne glasses, etc etc. As I was walking to my car to go pick her up, I stumbled and dropped the entire thing on the pavement. Our meal, and my chances, went from as beautiful as the salmon I had prepared, to as ugly as a sticky mass of broken dreams and balsamic vinaigrette faster than you can say "Who the hell brings vinaigrette to a picnic?" Well, I didn't. Not after that. In panic, I ran to the local grocery store, and in a stroke of what seemed like genius, I got supplies for PB&J's. And people say romance is dead.

Fast forward to the actual picnic. After initial awkwardness, and surprise at the lack of diversity in the menu, it was really going quite well. Enter Goose #1. Seeing the goose approach, I decided to be one with nature, and decided to throw it a little piece of bread. The goose ate its offering, and then stared me down with death in its eyes. Nature had no plans of being one with me. Without breaking eye contact, it honked. I looked past its beady little demon eyes, and say Geese #2-#35 swing their heads around and pinpoint on me. In perfect unison, they started waddle-sprinting. A funny sight at all times, unless they are coming for you. As they approached, my trepidation towards my circumstances grew, reaching their peak when the girl pointed out Goose #1's many razor sharp teeth.

By the time she broke out of her intent gaze at the goose's teeth, I was 10 yards away at a dead sprint, with 30 geese right behind me. Of course, I forgot to drop the large loaf of bread i had in my hands. After 5 minutes of running from 30 geese, each filled with all the fury of hell, I returned to the picnic out of breath, pupils dialiated, and with no bread.

Classic, smooth me, I uttered, "I saved you." to the girl I had moments ago left to die by a thousand goose bites.

There was no second date. There was no follow-up phone call. There was only regret and a new-found fear of geese.

I honestly do not know what the moral of this story is...

 

I posted a similar comment years ago on WSO replying to the question of rejection. Some of the details are starting to escape me now, but I graduated with a 2.5 GPA from a state university (obviously), but only realized at the beginning of my senior year that I wanted to work in high finance. So, over the course of my senior year, I applied to 220 jobs, received maybe 20 calls back, 10 interviews, and 1 job offer at a well respected investment bank. The amount of rejection I endured was so overwhelming that when I finally received that one and only job offer (it was via email) I (briefly) cried--teared up a bit.

I would say that rejection is fairly easy, at least for me. The difficult part is persevering through consistent, long-term rejection. It can cause a person to question his worth as a person, to believe that the pattern of rejection is fundamentally a reflection of his value as an individual. In the face of that rejection you can either choose to fight through it or to give up and seek another career path. I fought through it--barely.

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I was planning on interning at a hedge fund this summer break, but instead I was left with no offers and many days of moping around the house and watching TV (I've started to watch Tyrant on FX and Mr. Robot on USA. Both are pretty good, although Tyrant is much better and the actresses are hotter...god Moran Atias is soooooOOOoOOooooOoOooooOOooo attractive).

All throughout my junior year I sent out an army of emails to various hedge funds: anywhere from Osmium Capital to Pabrai Funds, to Aquamarine Capital, and even to Greenlight Capital, and yes, David Einhorn rejected me personally (I really don't know why I attached a micro-cap idea to my email...fml). I finally landed a phone interview with a Greenblatt-seeded fund whose portfolio manager is charlie479 on valueinvestorsclub, and boy was I excited. I thought I was going places! I thought I was on track to being a somebody! MY MOMMA WAS GONNA BE SO PROUD OF HER LITTLE BOY!

And then the phone interview happened.

At first all seemed well. I kept things casual, and the interviewer did the same. I told him how I sourced ideas and how I sourced the idea that I attached in my email, and he seemed genuinely impressed...the atmosphere was filled with chumminess.

And then he asked me if I had any questions. I stumbled for some reason. I said something to the tune of "not really, I understand the gist of what you all do." Major major blunder, and looking back I really don't know why the hell I said "gist," or why I didn't prepare any questions. For chrissakes, as an investor my entire job is to ask questions. Perhaps I was cocky. Needless to say I learned my lesson once again, from the prestigious University of Hard Knocks.

He then followed up about my low GPA with which, after undergoing my traumatic question asking session, I immediately fell into mass turmoil. I told him unconvincingly about my extra-curriculars, my investment research efforts, etc. Things quickly fell downhill. I eventually told him to enjoy the weekend.

So, now I'm back to square one, and now I have to get back into the aggressive networking mindset. It's mind-blowingly difficult for some reason. I feel like I'm trying to motivate myself to do tennis suicides in 100 degree Florida weather. Sometimes I day dream about finding that 20X-bagger stock and spending the rest of my life living off of capital gains. Sometimes I dream about cashing out big at the WSOP, flopping sets to victory, and then living off of capital gains. All of my dreams end in "living off of capital gains." Why can't the recession just happen already so that I can invest in all of those quality companies at 1x FCF??

But seriously, whining won't get me anywhere. I just have to pick myself up, brick by muthafuckin brick, get out the cement and mold myself into an even stronger person (speaking of cement, a panel in my fence collapsed in the recent storms we've been having, and cementing the new fence poles down is a real bitch...pressurized wood my ass, those things rot to kingdom come if the morning dew drips on them).

Failure is just the most important ingredient in cooking up the savory dish of success. I've failed so many times in my life thus far that I'm starting to feel numb. perhaps I'm like one of those companies generating negative ebit due to an oversized R&D line-item which will eventually pay off some time in the future. Maybe I'm undergoing a massive infrastructure build-out and generating negative fcf for the time being while diluting my shareholders to keep the over-sized capex sufficiently financed. Or, perhaps my management team is just worthless and paying themselves monstrous compensation in the form of mega adjusted EBITDARXZDL metrics. A great activist should just come in and restore ebit margins to peer level by cutting back the oversized SG&A, thus sending my stock price soaring.

I don't know why I'm rambling like this...it's 2am, my eyes are burnt to crisp from staring at the monitor for so long, and I just need to sleep right now...I just need to sleep...

 

After months of cold-calling and emailing this one particular boutique consulting house (two streets away from my house and I was living on a uni student budget), the principal agreed to sit for coffee with me in his lunch break.

Being the busy man he was he brought along his iPad from which he was conducting his business whilst pretending to be interested in the informational interview he was giving me. Eventually our coffee was ready and I started to nervously sip from it. Until I fucked up.

My coffee slipped from my grasp, landed on the table, lost it's lid and drenched not just the only suit I owned, but also his iPad. In this case I was hoping that I never heard a word from him again.

 

So, this was relatively recent. I get called by a recruiter about a great opportunity at a large, privately owned nationally known brokerage/investment/401k firm that may or may not start with the letter F and end with the letter Y.

No job description, but it's director of (literally, no job description other than director), so I go in cold. Interview with the guy whose position I would be taking. That goes well. Get another interview, this time with two people. That also goes well. Have another interview, that goes well. Get a phone interview with the VP over the position, that goes well. Have 3 video conference interviews with 3 VPs, which also goes well. Finally have a face-to-face interview with the VP over the position, which ALSO goes very well ("You did great!" or so said the recruiter). Now, keep in mind, this process had been ongoing for..oh...since the second week of May. So, around 10 weeks. At this point, the competition is supposedly between me and one other external candidate.

A couple of days go by. The recruiter calls with the bad news. I lost out to an internal candidate, "by a centimeter". As if that matters, since there is no prize for second place. BUT...the recruiter days, the VP thinks I would be perfect for this other director opportunity that requires relocation, but would like to talk to me personally about the decision and the other opportunity.

So I'm like...sure, I mean, I'll have to talk to my wife, but we'd already had talks about that before, so I didn't anticipate any big issues.

And of course, the VP never calls me.

Honestly, I didn't mind not getting the job - but I did think it was a little needlessly cruel to dangle something at the end like that. Oh yeah, and if you are still looking at internal candidates, why in the heck would you string along an external candidate for 10 weeks in interview after interview?!

 

Everyone claims to have thick skin but at the end of the day, rejection still gets to you no matter the circumstances. I’ve been fortunate enough to be rejected from almost everything one can be rejected from. The thing is, nothing is a failure until you decide it is. The difference being that a true failure assumes nothing was learned or done about it. This is all just a hustle; find your angle and play the game.

 

Long story short, I was on WSO looking for negotiation advice on a job I was interviewing for, and mentioned wanting to hardball the target company during salary negotiations because I had outside options.

I made it several rounds into their interview process, and on the 3rd round, I had to print a presentation out for my interview (or so I thought), and went to pick it up from FedEx about 45 minutes before the interview. FedEx botched the prints and I had to scramble to redo them all myself. I printed everything and got into my cab. On the way to the interview I realized the printer I used ran out of paper mid print and one of the presentation copies was missing some slides. On top of that, a slide also printed out wrong. While I was scrambling to fix the presentation and improvise on what to do with the bad slide, I looked up and realized my cab driver was going the wrong way. Only twice before have I ever let out such a long and uninterrupted string of expletives.

When I finally arrived, I was 15 minutes late and it turned out the interviewers already printed copies of everything. I did the interview and it went fine. I didn't end up getting the position, and asked for deny feedback. It was straightforward, mostly around background, showing up late not helping (even though they gave me the benefit of the doubt for my unluckiness) and not showing enough enthusiasm for the role. We wrapped up the call, and as we were hanging up, the interviewer said "Oh, and we read your post on WSO".

 

I was 26 by the time I had gotten my first job rejection(And I'm by no means a dream employee, rock star or rain maker. Nor have I ever gotten anything handed on a silver platter to me.), and It hit me really hard. I had no idea how to handle it...I dove straight into analyzing every single aspect of myself. Personality, resume, etc. Something had to be wrong.

Before that point, I had been rejected many times in other aspects of life. By women, sure, it felt easy. I had never prepared x number of years for those particular women...but jobs? Especially the dream job, I actually had. It felt like I had wasted 10 years and $ xxk in student loans and energy on nothing, that's what hurt most, and all the "why?" thoughts that came pouring in. It's like those kids dedicating their whole youths on getting into Harvard, with a perfect 4.0, all the extra curricular, perfect letter, etc. only to get a rejection letter.

With that said, I later experienced more job rejections, and it really made me grow. You learn that different people fit for the different jobs. It's really not about being the best, it's about being the best overall fit for the job needed. And I'm okay with that, because there will always be more opportunities down the road. In fact, I'd say that it's healthy to get rejected. It's healthy for your mind, for your motivation, for your drive. Be persistent, be dedicated.

I have friends from college that got straight into their dream spots and had rocket careers, only to take a nose dive due to unforeseen circumstances. Some are even better off today, while others have switched fields, living completely different lives.

Younger people often see things in directly measured metrics, such as grades, accomplishments, references, pedigree, and rank themselves by those. Either your the best, or you suck. In reality, it's a much more fuzzy logic world.

Good luck.

 

This isn't a "job rejection" story but I'd like to share it.

So I went to a decent boarding high school. As one of the smartest kids in math and science, I didn't get accepted to my school's STEM research internship senior year for whatever odd reason. Sure I wasn't happy, but at least the research program itself isn't great- the engineering school that they pair HS students and grad students is pretty bad imo.

A year later, not only I made it to one of the top engineering colleges in the country(we are actually a target school for quants but not IBD or S&T unfortunately), but also got a paid research opportunity with this professor who's one of the best in his field (can't give any details, he's really famous and a simple google search would yield to his name haha).

Don't give up, believe in yourself, good luck and prove others wrong. :)))

 

A few good ones:

  • fired from summer job after high school graduation for telling supervisor he was an idiot. Parents were pissed about this at the time. He's probably still cleaning pools.

  • dinged in all ~15 SA interviews. Talk about embarrassing. Out of the blue, one of the BBs I interviewed with called me back in mid spring because somebody renegged. Ended up getting a SA offer.

  • economy imploded in fall '08 and I was back looking for a FT job. Struck out on all ibd interviews, not that too many were hiring. 6 weeks before graduation, a long-only firm posted a position and I received an offer. Almost simultaneously, I received offers from a small PE shop and also the investment management arm of an insurance company.

Gotta keep your head up in this industry. The lows are pretty bad, but the highs have made it all worth it.

 

I think people forget that in the grand scheme of things getting dinged on an interview is pretty irrelevant. I have been able to keep my head up because I have an adopted brother who was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Guy saw his family and most of his friends get tortured, shot, and sometimes eaten by alligators/lions.

He ended up going to Harvard with nearly a 4.0 GPA and now makes an incredible living working with a secretive branch of the US Gov. He still has friends killed on a monthly basis due to the current unrest between the north and south but manages to stay positive and does not hate the group that is doing this to his people.

Life can always be worse and you need to appreciate what you have vs what you don't.

 

I grew up with a friend who played tennis with us where his family sought asylum after his father was assassinated in his home country. His father was a movement of change politician, and the family came over with literally just only their clothes on their backs.

Last time we spoke he pursued finance and landed an internship during the summer at a BB.

 

I'm going to talk about a story from my high school.

I was generally a pretty successful and involved kid in school, and I decided to join my school's broadcast journalism team, which was, at the time, one of the best in the nation. The only problem? I was terrible at filming, god awful in fact. When I would film scenes, the camera would be shaking, audio breaking out, etc. I stayed with it for 2 years, and all the while had my fellow journalists complain to no end about my incompetence. I was trash talked a lot for being, very noticeably, the worst on the team, and our teacher threatened to kick me off multiple times. Filming for this team was undoubtedly the hardest and most stressful part of my high school experience. We would watch our videos every Friday, and I would always wait nervously, overcome with trepidation for how badly my video was filmed. The moral of the story is this: if you're bad at something, just quit it and move on to something you're good at. Always capitalize on your strengths, which, for me, did not include anything involving a camera.

 

Rejection is hard. It really hurts every time no matter the circumstance. My senior year, non-target, Poli Sci major, some relevant experience I tired breaking in to IB. First, I interviewed with the BBs but got rejected after the first round. Next, I went to the MM got rejected after first and second rounds. It was November and I still didn't have a job, but I kept trying, kept networking, kept studying, but no luck. I was incredibly scared, I didn't know what was wrong with me. Fast forward to a few weeks before graduation, no job, no leads. But something great happened, I met my girlfriend. Ultimately, I landed a job in an Asset Management role at a bank. It's been a year since I got the job and I still am trying to break into I banking. I had a few interviews last week and got rejected from all of them. It hurts even though all things considered I have a decent job. However, I have to think that if I had landed the IB role at a BB I would never have met my girlfriend. The expericnes I had would never have occurred. I'm still trying and I refuse to give up. I appreciate all of the above posts because it's nice knowing I am not going at it alone.

 

Rejection is hard. It really hurts every time no matter the circumstance. My senior year, non-target, Poli Sci major, some relevant experience I tired breaking in to IB. First, I interviewed with the BBs but got rejected after the first round. Next, I went to the MM got rejected after first and second rounds. It was November and I still didn't have a job, but I kept trying, kept networking, kept studying, but no luck. I was incredibly scared, I didn't know what was wrong with me. Fast forward to a few weeks before graduation, no job, no leads. But something great happened, I met my girlfriend. Ultimately, I landed a job in an Asset Management role at a bank. It's been a year since I got the job and I still am trying to break into I banking. I had a few interviews last week and got rejected from all of them. It hurts even though all things considered I have a decent job. However, I have to think that if I had landed the IB role at a BB I would never have met my girlfriend. The expericnes I had would never have occurred. I'm still trying and I refuse to give up. I appreciate all of the above posts because it's nice knowing I am not going at it alone.

 
 Ahhh rejections. Man, have I had a lot of those.

 This story happened relatively recently--I tend to interview every 4-6 months/have conversations regarding opportunities because I like to stay sharp regarding my interview skills, while also keeping an open mind concerning potential opportunities.

 I cold <span class='keyword_link'><a href="/resources/careers/jobs/CEO-chief-executive-officer">emailed the CEO</a></span> of a Boutique Investment Bank (we'll call him Mike) that's focused on the same industry as the firm I currently work at. I immediately received a call back from Mike, and we started talking. Mike knows of my current firm, as we're well known (and a competitor to Mike). He asks the basic questions such as "Why do you want to work for our firm", etc, which I nail on the head (my current role is heavy Biz Dev so I'm pretty good at carrying on a conversation, answering questions, and more). Mike then tries to fish for some intel regarding my firm (like how we run our operations), but I keep my lips sealed. Lastly, Mike asks me about my technical ability, and I honestly tell him that I'm working on grooming it into where it needs to be, since my focus is heavy on Biz Dev. Mike tells me that's not an issue for him at all-- I'm a real good "talker" (like him), he says, and he'd be more than happy to train me while having me take on more of a Deal Execution/Client facing role at his firm. Moreover, Mike invites me to his offices for an in-person the next day, which I gladly agree to.

 I arrive at Mike's office and interview with a Banker on Mike's team. I've won the guy over in about 10 min--easy. We talk casually about bars/women/<abbr title="New York City">NYC</abbr> living for about 20 minutes, and he thanks me for my time. Next up is Mike and his partner (we'll call him Joe). The first banker leaves, and I see two pairs of feet stop at the door for a few minutes. Mike and his partner (Joe) both enter the room.

 I make introductions to both guys, and I quickly realize this has turned into a game of "good <span class='keyword_link'><a href="/resources/skills/finance/colombian-peso-cop">cop</a></span>, bad cop". Mike is doing all of the talking, and Joe is saying nothing. Mike starts asking tons of questions about my current firm such as "What would you say are strengths and weaknesses of your firm", and I realize that he's continuing to do what he did yesterday--fishing for information. I answer their questions generally without disclosing anything proprietary, and play dumb, and I start reading Mike's face and noticing micro expressions of frustration. I knew the interview was going to take a turn for a worse.

 Mike immediately starts hammering me with questions, one after another. And I begin to reply immediately to each question--I don't get flustered very easily. Mike then starts asking me about technicals (remember, we discussed this over the phone). I told Mike I'm currently  taking a few courses, and he immediately begins a rant (why didn't you start your learning earlier, etc). I respond to every one of his questions like I've done all interview. Mike then starts a huge rant about "how my answers lack a lot of depth", how I come across as "Schmoozy Saleslike" in my answers, and how I'm a "good talker". He continues on, telling me about how he has no time for bullshit, and how "he wants to be frank with me, because he's a native New Yorker", telling me that I have "The gift of speaking", but also implying that I have no intellectual ability. He also mentions that he "doesn't want to waste his time", and that he has to leave soon.

 Up to this point, I was simply listening to Mike rant. I knew he was pissed because I didn't give him any of the sensitive information he asked for. But when he got disrespectful, it struck a nerve with me. I turned to Mike and I said :

 "Listen, I appreciate you being frank with me. Now let me be frank with you. You've made it very clear where you stand, so now I'm going to let you know where I stand. Fair? I grew up broke--I've literally had nothing growing up. I've had to claw my way to where I am today, because I've had nothing handed to me. I'm not telling you this to paint a pity story--I'm letting you know where I come from. "Talking" didn't get me here. I paid my way through college by working 40 hours a week in a lab, and working every weekend. I don't think the "talking" got me that. I took 5 upper level science electives each semester during my college years, while doing the 40 hours of research, and got a 3.7. I don't think the "talking" got me that.  So while I appreciate your perspective, regardless of if this changes anything or not, I want to make sure you understand my perspective. Thanks for your time". 

 And with that, I ended the meeting on my terms and rose from my seat. Mike nor Joe couldn't make eye contact and Mike apologized if he came across as disrespectful. I said no worries, shook hands, and left the room.  

 My perspective is this--at the end of the day, I'm not going to let some random guy who knows nothing about my disrespect me. I simply don't tolerate it, and I'll speak up every single time. It was definitely a solid rejection, but in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't get the job and have to deal with this guy's antics.
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