Confidence vs. Cockiness in Superdays

Recently had 2 Superdays, never heard back.

In both of them, I was confident. There's no chance of them saying "This kid was a nervous reck; he can't handle the stress." I nailed all the technicals, and everyone seemed to like me.

I'm starting to think I might have been so confident that I came off as 'cocky'.

Would it be wise to intentionally show some nervousness during interviews?

Disclaimer: At no point did I ever SAY anything that you would call 'cocky'. It's an issue of demeanor, not of content.

8 Comments
 
Best Response

Maybe you didn't really nail all the technicals as well as you thought. Maybe people were just being polite and they didn't actually like you. Maybe your story wasn't down solid and you didn't do a good job convincing them "why finance" or "why banking." Maybe you didn't show them you were really interested in each specific bank. Maybe you did everything right and there just wasn't enough space because some other people did just slightly better. Maybe since you haven't heard back yet there are extenuating circumstances and you are still in the running for a position.

The point is that there are a million reasons you might not have heard back, but intentionally weakening your presentation skills in an interview is not a good solution to any of them.

 

I think a little bit of nervousness can be endearing to a candidate, but not to the point where you are pissing your pants. I prefer to hire the kid that seems humble but hard working vs the kid who thinks he knows all the answers and has no reason to be nervous at all.

My suspicion based on this post dawinner is that you may have crossed the all important confident / cocky line and it may have rubbed someone the wrong way.

Again, as @cayo275" mentioned, there is no way to know for sure, but if you had your chin held up high and were acting like you owned the place with your body language, that could be enough for me to ding you...nobody likes Managing Analysts ;-)

 
"undefined"

I think a little bit of nervousness can be endearing to a candidate, but not to the point where you are pissing your pants. I prefer to hire the kid that seems humble but hard working vs the kid who thinks he knows all the answers and has no reason to be nervous at all.

My suspicion based on this post @dawinner is that you may have crossed the all important confident / cocky line and it may have rubbed someone the wrong way.

Again, as @cayo275 mentioned, there is no way to know for sure, but if you had your chin held up high and were acting like you owned the place with your body language, that could be enough for me to ding you...nobody likes Managing Analysts ;-)

I think you've got it right

 

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