You don’t actually want to work there
I’ve done hundreds of interviews at Sentry by now, and I can’t tell you how often I’ve mentally facepalmed. Like, you’ve already talked to a recruiter, somehow made it to me, and then… you still have literally zero understanding of what we do?
Think about it from my perspective: Why should I care about hiring you if you can’t even explain what we’re trying to hire you for? Like, on the most basic level?
If you don’t put in the effort upfront - even if the recruiter reached out to you first - you’re just wasting everyone’s time.
To be fair, this doesn’t happen to me anymore since the recruiter I work with actually gets it. But man, it happened more often than you believe.
Look, I know sometimes internal recruiters are measured on quantity over quality. They’re just trying to hit their numbers. But here’s the thing - if that’s happening, everyone loses. The recruiter wastes time, I waste time, and you definitely waste time.
So reason #1 why you’re not getting hired: You don’t actually care to work there. Not really.
Interviewing is not about checking checkboxes
This one might surprise some people.
Interviewing is about figuring out if you want to work with these people and if they want to work with you. That’s it. It’s not really about your resume.
I’ve been asked: “Well, this person checks everything we have in our job description, why are you still rejecting them?”
Because there’s something missing. The human connection.
Hiring someone isn’t just about fulfilling requirements - it’s about how you present those skills. How you make me feel about working with you.
If you expect to get hired because of what’s written on a spreadsheet, you’re wrong. Sorry.
You need to convince me that you can actually do everything you say you can. And here’s the thing - during an interview, two strangers are talking to each other. If you can’t make that conversation work, it’s game over.
I’ve seen incredible engineers bomb interviews because they couldn’t communicate.
The most effective way to do this is the same principle I mentioned before: Care. Actually care.
If you really care about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, people will listen to you. If you try to fake it, we can smell it from a mile away. Humans are weirdly good at sniffing out bullshit.
I’m looking for genuine, human, imperfect responses because then I know it’s real. If you’re just trying to tick every checkbox and tell me what you think I want to hear - at least with me, you’re gonna have a difficult time getting hired.
Give me messy honesty over polished lies every single time.
Be yourself
This sounds cheesy, but bear with me.
If you start a position being something you’re not really, you’re lying to yourself and the employer. It’s like starting a relationship with a fake personality. Say what you can and can’t do, say what you like and don’t like.
Sure, everyone tries to show their best side in the beginning - that’s totally normal. But be careful to still be who you really are. Because the honeymoon phase wears off, and if you’re too far off center, you’ve just wasted everyone’s time.
Same goes for people interviewing you. I tell everyone on my teams: “Be 100% yourself.” When a candidate asks you something, be as honest and real as you can be. Had a bad day? Say it. Think a process is shitty and doesn’t work? Say that too.
Never try to “sell” or lie to the candidate - you’re not doing them a favor. Interviewing and hiring is always a two-way street. We’re wasting everyone’s time if the candidate doesn’t know what they’re actually getting into.
I’d rather someone turn down our offer because they know it’s not right for them than have them quit after 3 months because we oversold it.
Stick out from the masses
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Good positions at great companies are highly sought after. There’s naturally a lot of competition. Right now with AI everywhere, it’s especially difficult to gauge what’s really going on - especially for entry-level positions where you don’t have much to show yet.
But be creative. Sometimes it’s enough to investigate who the people working there are. Who will be my boss? Who will be the boss of my boss? Can I get in contact with them somehow? And if I could, what do I say that grabs their attention and is unique to me?
Let me tell you about the most unique approach I’ve ever experienced. Matej, currently an Engineering Manager on my team, joined Sentry over 5 years ago as a Frontend Engineer.
What Matej did to grab our attention was this: He opened Chrome dev tools, called the Sentry SDK with our DSN (the URL we send events to) and sent a few events with messages like “Hey Sentry, you should hire Matej” directly into our issue stream.
Genius or annoying? I say genius.
It wasn’t just creative - it demonstrated he cared enough to think about how to get our attention, found a clever way to do it, and then brought everything home in the interviews.
Sure, that’s a very specific example for Sentry, but you get the idea. You need to find ways to make people remember you without being annoying. If you can do that, half the battle is already won.
Motivation beats everything
This is the big one.
When hiring someone, companies usually want someone who can do the job. But I think that’s not everything. What companies and managers actually want is someone who surprises them in a positive way.
Here’s the truth: Hiring someone is a game of chance. You never really know if it will work out until they’re here doing the job. There are so many factors at play - no matter how many interviews, coding challenges, or years of experience someone has, it often comes down to how they feel about it doing the job.
In my experience, if I get a strong sense that someone is extremely motivated to do the job and work at our company, they’re usually really successful - even if other signals were weaker. They figure out what they need to do because they really want to be here.
Motivation is the multiplier that makes everything else work.
Look, I obviously don’t know why YOU specifically aren’t getting hired. But after hundreds of interviews, I can tell you what makes people land their dream job - and what helped me land mine.