Flunking my Anthropic interview again

That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in the interview or application process.

Having been on the hiring side of the interview table now many more times than on the seeking side, I can say that this is totally true.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.

I can only think of one instance where we had two great candidates for one role and management found a way to open another role so we could hire both. In a few other cases, we had people whom we liked but didn't choose and we forwarded their resumes to other teams who had open roles we thought would fit, but most of the time it's just, "sorry."

My first career was in theatre, which a) is (or at least was, back in the day?) much more competitive than tech - par was one callback (ie, second screening) per 100 auditions, and one casting per 10 callbacks; and b) is genuinely, deeply vulnerable - you have to bring your whole self into your work, in a way that you don't in any other field.

It's still never personal, and actors who don't develop thick skins wash out quickly.

I once auditioned three rounds for Romeo, at a company I really liked, and thought I'd killed it. I didn't get the role, and was pretty bummed (particularly since - actors are nothing but petty - I didn't much like the performance by the guy who did). Six months later the casting director button-holed me after seeing another show I was in, and told me I'd been their first choice, and he was sorry they'd not been able to cast me. The trouble was, he said, their only good choice for Juliette was at least a foot shorter than I am, and there was no way that wouldn't have looked awkward.

It's never personal.

Furthermore, that "failed" audition directly led to two later jobs, and I think indirectly to a third. Having a good interview, even in a situation where you don't achieve the immediate goal, can only be good for you - both by developing your own skills, and for creating a reputation for competence within your industry.

But the idea of standing on a stage pretending to be someone else fills me with sheer terror. Even worse would be trying out for that job 100 times and getting rejected every time.

I don't know how actors do it. My hat's off to you.

You're right about training and experience, though. I screwed up on stage (in loads of tiny ways, not usually perceptible to anyone but me) every time I ever stepped onto one, and in big ways lots and lots of times as well. But, you know, I always knew that I (with my castmates' help) would get out of it. Failure is inevitable, and it doesn't matter. In fact, if you haven't failed somehow, in at least some small way, then you either don't know what you're doing, or you aren't trying hard enough to succeed.

Also, when I was training young actors I always told them that they will never experience such unconditional love as when they first step in front of an audience. Those people have given at least their time and maybe their money to see you - don't you think they want you to succeed? They're rooting for you, none more so.

To bring this back to the larger subject of the thread, I think all of that's also true of every job interview any of us will ever attend, or conference paper we'll ever deliver. It'll never be perfect, and that's just fine.