Fresh college grad here. Had an interview for an Assistant Developer role at a clinic. There were two interviewers, and they gave me a WordPress task. I completely froze. I’ve worked with PHP and MySQL a bit but never really touched WordPress, so I just sat there feeling like a total noob.
It felt bad because it was probably easy for someone with WordPress experience. They were polite, asked about my background, work permit, and other non-technical questions, but I didn’t make it to the next round. They said they’d keep my resume and reach out if they don’t find anyone better – but let’s be real, I’m not expecting a callback. Totally bombed my opportunity.
I left feeling embarrassed and frustrated with myself. Just needed to vent.
Seriously, it was an unfamiliar task to you. You’re still learning. Practice your craft and work to improve. So long as you don’t stop, you’ll realize that you should have either poked around until you figured it out, looked it up online, or a bit of both.
Hey bro. Don’t worry about it. Idk if you’ve worked before or what but honestly it doesn’t matter. Whatever happened, happened. I’d say now brush up on your skills and have a look for something else. Who knows what you could find!
Sounds like you weren’t the right fit for the role more than anything. On to the next one and try to filter roles aggressively for tech you want to work with.
Ari said:
Sounds like you weren’t the right fit for the role more than anything. On to the next one and try to filter roles aggressively for tech you want to work with.
Yeah, their main tech stack is WordPress, but the job was posted like it was more of a generalist web dev role. I even asked about it during the interview, and they said, “Actually, we develop our own custom CMS and work with other tech stacks too.
Larkin said: @Larkin
I guess it just leaned more toward WordPress than I was ready for.
To be honest, you probably don’t want to have WordPress as your first job fresh out of college anyway. It’s probably worth the wait to get something that will give you solid technical bullets to add to your resume; the cooler it sounds, the easier job searches will be in the future. I can’t imagine WordPress setting you up for a good paying senior position several years from now.
@Larkin
“Custom CMS” - you dodged a bullet - it can be a career dead end, and they are usually a nightmare to deal with (especially if it’s a PHP agency).
Ari said:
Sounds like you weren’t the right fit for the role more than anything. On to the next one and try to filter roles aggressively for tech you want to work with.
It would make more sense if the company was using C and bro is fluent in JS only.
You had zero WP experience. It just wasn’t a good fit for you, and that’s okay. That’s on the recruiter tbh, not you.
Imagine if you were a seal and a company was trying to hire someone with 5 years of experience being a fish. There’s a little bit of overlap, but those aren’t really the same at all. It’s not really your fault if you don’t have the skills for that role. Don’t feel bad.
Say you did make it to the next interview or you did get the job. You probably would’ve been stressed out of your mind or feeling impostor syndrome for not having any proper training for the gig at all.
I think you should be more forgiving of yourself for not doing well in this interview. Your worth and your self-esteem aren’t tied to how well you did here (or any interview for that matter). Try to not to beat yourself up over this. Imagine taking a test for a class you never even enrolled in. Of course you’re not gonna do well at that, and that’s okay.
Just keep at it. You’ll find somewhere where your skill set will be a better match for what they’re looking for.
Of course you are going to bomb an interview for something you didn’t study for. Don’t get sad about that; it’s nonsensical. It’s like getting sad after bombing a surprise test for a subject you’ve never done before. Next time, research more and get to work with whatever the job is asking for.