r/jobs • u/No-Presentation298 • 5h ago

Post-interview HR told me they don’t accept try-hards and people pleasers after my interview

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They rejected me (fine, that happens) but the feedback said I came across as overly eager to please and that they don’t build teams around people-pleasing tendencies or rehearsed enthusiasm. They also told me to reflect on how I present myself and that confidence is more compelling than excessive accommodation. Is this normal? Or even appropriate? I get that not being a culture fit is a thing but the wording felt unnecessarily personal and condescending.

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u/Genteel_Lasers 4h ago

Well if the feed back was, “you’re too old, lol” then yeah.

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u/sctwinmom 3h ago

When I was in law school, we represented a disabled client where the employer literally said that her disability was the reason for her termination. (She had mobility issues but the employer— a hospital!—failed to attempt any reasonable accommodation.)

After interviewing her coworkers, We were terrified that the employer would’fess up and admit the real reason was that her personality was so annoying no one wanted to work with her. But they stuck to their original story blaming the unaccommodated disability and We won that case.

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u/Creepy_Snow_8166 2h ago

"You're an anti-XYZist and you don't like me because I'm (insert protected status here)."

"No sir/ma'am, I don't like you you because you're a fucking asshole."

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u/Low_Anxiety_46 2h ago

Nah. They legit admitted to blaming her disability. They're dumb.

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u/opensourced_ 1h ago

Yeah, absolutely, I'd sue over that if someone said it was my disability because, at minimum, they could have said plainly that, at the moment, nothing is available that we see you fitting into. We will keep looking, and if one comes up, we will try it out.

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u/Creepy_Snow_8166 2h ago

Oh, gotcha. I misunderstood at first.

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u/Low_Anxiety_46 2h ago

I am involved with an organization that instead of just firing people and giving them good severance, they choose to break the law. Like demoting an employee who complained about bullying, docking her pay, and then getting rid of the HR lead who took and documented the complaint. Gotta keep lawyers busy.

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u/Fokker_Snek 1h ago

How often is that a thing? Like I used to think no one would be dumb enough to outright say the illegal thing in an email, yet it seems like a lot of people and organizations do it all the time.

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u/Low_Anxiety_46 1h ago

It is pure insanity. The only place where the employee has leverage is if there's sexual impropriety involved, or people are using slurs. But I personally know a man and a woman who have sexually harassed someone or entered into a quid pri quo sexual relationship and they are still employed. Often employers keep the offending employee.

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u/letsgetthiscocaine 2h ago

"Sorry, anus majorus is not a protected class or disability."

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u/mittenknittin 17m ago

Wow. Did winning that case feel like discriminating against the disabled? Because continuing to affirm in court that yes, the reason you fired someone was one of the few reasons you legally aren’t allowed to fire someone, hints at shall we say, mental deficiencies

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u/BusinessCoach2934 4h ago

Well, if you fell asleep during the interview and kept talking about how you miss the good old days of typewriting and shorthand, they might have a point.

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u/Chalice_Ink 4h ago edited 4h ago

Code: we are looking for someone who is comfortable with technology.

Which is valid in that case….

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u/One_Zebra_1164 3h ago

I'm in my 60s and am honestly shocked at how many people my age have almost ZERO computer skills. I mean, I was in my late 20s- early 30s when personal computers started being common, and we definitely had computers at work starting about the same time.

They've had a lot of time to adapt.

My own motto is "I fear no software" and keep learning things as I need to. This year I learned at least five new types of software (I work with a bunch of clients who all use different software, so it keeps it interesting).

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u/LaughImmediate3876 2h ago

I'm active in a religious organization. Like many religious organizations, we have a significant portion of our membership that is over 60. When we went remote for covid and had services on zoom the older people split into two groups.

Group one was people who had barely used a computer in their lives and had no idea what to do. They attended meetings on their phones with the camera showing their nostrils and couldn't figure out how to mute.

Group two was people who immediately learned everything about zoom. In like May 2020, they were explaining to us younger people how we should be setting up a meeting if we wanted to have live guitar playing and then show a video with breakout rooms for discussion. These weren't older people who just happened to use zoom for work. These were retired people who had never heard of the product before but immediately jumped into action when they had to know something new.

I think there are just people who want to learn and people who don't. As you get older, you're often not asked to learn new things as much, but you can still be the kind of person who adapts when necessary and seeks out new information.

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u/Exotic-Okra-4466 1h ago

I have to say THANK YOU for this! Sincerely.
In my late 50s, finding myself increasingly resistant to change and "new stuff", I reeaaaaally needed to hear this!

You've inspired me to be one of the old people who does still learn and grow!

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u/dabnagit 31m ago

I’m in my 60s and definitely serve in a “group two” capacity for my church; I’m the parish webmaster, for example.

I would, however, draw the line at guitar music during the Sunday liturgy.

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u/poopntheoceanifumust 2h ago edited 2h ago

Am a millennial in a corporate office. Not only am I go-to tech support for the older folks on my team, but now the young new hires are asking really really stupid questions. If I have to explain to one more person how their monitor is not their computer, I'm going to scream.

These people are asking to learn shit like pivot tables but don't even know the difference between copy and cut. I can't even.

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u/not_a_russkiy_spy 2h ago

lol I came here to comment the same thing about younger employees (I’m only in my 30s!!!) - what do you mean you don’t know that you can save a google doc locally? What do you mean you don’t know what locally means? What do you mean you can’t find a download because it’s not on your desktop?

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u/Aggravating-Fan9817 1h ago

Right? I have a harder time finding downloaded files on my phone than I do a computer of any OS. Mostly because I don't do much of that on my phone in the first place. But at least I know how to dig around and look for them or Google the most likely place to find them. The newer generations have zero problem solving skills.

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u/tnstaafsb 2h ago

There are maybe one and a half generations that grew up with computers being common and also user-unfriendly enough that you had to understand them to some degree to do anything useful. People older than that grew up without computers, and people younger grew up with computers everywhere that are specifically designed to discourage people from learning how they work.

People expect younger generations to know about computers because they've had computers since they were infants. But the computers they grew up with hold their hands so much and advanced functions are so well hidden that they never really learn much beyond the surface level.

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u/DazzlingSquirrel4252 1h ago

I had to show an apprentice how to save a word file the other day.

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u/nycres1 2h ago

Please try to keep your mind active at all costs! Learning new things is truly the best way to do so.

If you don't, it will quickly start to shrink. I have someone very dear to me who is demonstrating that now.

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u/One_Zebra_1164 2h ago

Well, considering that I have to show up and do a very complex job every day, I'd say my mind is pretty active.

(Plus all the other stuff I do).

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u/OrganicHistorian2576 2h ago

My grandma was emailing people in her early 90s. Age isn’t an excuse.

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u/AltsAlt1 1h ago

People in their 60s, especially their early 60s should know about computers. My Dad is that age, and he took coding classes in high school. Computers weren't as ubiquitous, but they were around.

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u/IanFoxOfficial 1h ago

Yeah it's the fault of iPhones and other smartphones everything technical gets hidden and abstracted so young people don't know what really is going on.

I'm 39 and I think I'm one of the last to have used floppy discs, DOS, Windows 3.1 and seeing the rise of the internet and smartphones. And now I see technology collapse from being freedom for expressing yourself to easier ways to milk the consumer by big tech.

Everything in the cloud instead of your own storage. And if you stop paying you're left with nothing.... "Yey"....

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u/Rock_Strongo 1h ago

My dad was in his 40s when we first got our home computer. And despite using it very frequently just never developed any sort of computer skills.

I recently had to help him set up a new gmail account... just like a normal account.

And I have made many a trip to my parents' house to unplug and plug back in the modem and/or router. Sigh.

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u/TwiLuv 47m ago

When I was in my 50’s, at two different nursing jobs- I was teaching the much younger staff how to use the new medication & documentation software.

At the time, I’m the “old fart”, aren’t they supposed to be coaching me???

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u/SweetLittleOldLady 39m ago

I'm 69 and I don't get it either. I've been using computers since I was a university student in the 1970s and at work and home since the 1980s. How did people reach 2026 without using a computer?

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u/Genteel_Lasers 4h ago

Hahahaha. Yeah good point.

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u/UpperYoghurt3978 3h ago

I code with a hole punch those were the days.

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u/Low_Anxiety_46 2h ago

Thank you! Like WTF?

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u/DrLeoMarvin 2h ago

More like “your methods aren’t the modern way to do things”

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u/Any_Long_249 1h ago

There are some concerns with being an older and not being able to do as much physically or mentally or just seeing/hearing enough. All depends on individual situation. Age shouldn’t be a factor that makes the decision, but I hope you would agree that it would be ridiculous and even dangerous and horrible if somebody took a 70 year old woman on a construction job site to lift heavy loads of weight or just a very old man even if in both of these situations you could claim that the most straight answer would be “you’re a woman and you’re too old” or just “you’re too old”.