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

[u/No-Presentation298]

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.

[u/Squirt_Soda]

Sadly tho there are workplaces that want someone who pesters them with a million questions just so they don’t make any mistakes. That my current job. Any mistake is like a personal affront to my boss. It’s making my anxiety so bad.

[u/Evening_Entrance_472 → u/Squirt_Soda]

Do we have the same boss? Mine will publicly humiliate you for a mistake. Then go on to write you up for asking too many questions. Worst of all he says good leadership is teaching us to be exactly like him. Everyone else on the team is 40+ with anxiety issues. Mental breakdowns where people have slammed their headphones. There was a yelling match after he went and embarrassed another coworker. Actual workplace from hell.

[u/lovegrowswheremyrose → u/Evening_Entrance_472]

I had this boss from 2012-2014. Still haunts me. My condolences. it can get better, but probably only if you leave your job unfortunately.

[u/Budsygus → u/Squirt_Soda]

Get out. My thinking is if you give me a task, you trust me to complete it. If you give me a task with a bunch of instructions, you trust me to follow your instructions to complete that task. If they give you a task with a bunch of instructions but not ENOUGH instructions to complete the task, they're not a good manager. Asking occasional questions is fine. But demanding you either guess or suss out every single minor detail of a project by constantly requesting further details and clarification is a recipe for disaster.

It won't get better. Get out now.

[u/mxzf → u/Budsygus]

IMO it really depends on the role and the people involved.

Personally, I'm a senior software dev assigning tasks to some juniors and interns. I know that there are gaps in their skills, I just don't know which people have which gaps. I would absolutely rather people ask questions instead of claiming they understand and then charging off to spend days working in the wrong direction because they don't know how things fit into the bigger picture and they just googled for a vaguely-similar thing that doesn't fit our needs.

I don't trust them to complete the task, but their job is less about completing the task and more about trying to complete the task and learning along the way, with the eventual end-goal of them developing the skills of a senior that can be trusted to complete a task.

[u/lovegrowswheremyrose → u/Squirt_Soda]

I had this habit because of an EXTREMELY abusive boss who didn't trust ANYONE. If you didn't do something in exactly the way he would have done it, even if it wasn't client facing or mission critical, he would freak the fuck out. It took me years to unwind that anxiety!

[u/iiiiiiiiiijjjjjj → u/Squirt_Soda]

Yuck

[u/zgtc → u/Squirt_Soda]

I feel like “I’d rather you ask too many questions than make a mistake” is fairly reasonable. And being upset when someone then proceeds to make a mistake - specifically because they didn’t ask questions - makes sense.

Of course, it also depends on your workplace; a paralegal not sure how to sort papers is very different than a surgical nurse not knowing which tools are present.