The CEO set up a last-minute interview after the final interview and reference check, and now I look like an idiot
I have been interviewing with the company since April. I have been through the phone screen with the HR Manager/Hiring Manager #1, the virtual interview w the CEO/Hiring Manager #2, made them a PowerPoint of one of my college assignments, explaining it step by step to show my knowledge and explain technical things in a way a normal person could understand (they didn't even ask for that, I did that because I wanted the role so badly) , an in-person panel interview with 6 other people on it. Had my references checked and all.
Right after all of my references responded, I got a call from the HR associate yesterday at 5pm that the CEO wants to do a follow up interview tomorrow. She didn't say what it was but that it was a "follow-up meeting" for a half hour.
I go to my car and do this call on my lunch break and I get told that they like me a lot, but they are concerned about me being in the role due to my experience . Im so confused on why I went through all these stages for them to only question that now.
I start getting question after question about hypotheticals. But they are already questions they had asked me in the panel. (How would you do this task in the role? Do you have experience doing x or y?) But a lot of them are questions you could only answer after actually being in the role and getting a feel for things.
I just felt so blindsided I had a lot of trouble answering the questions and became a bit rambly, sounded unsure of myself. I couldn't even remember what DNS stood for. When in the panel interview I was very confident in myself and my knowledge. My mind was all over the place, I had a hard time coming up with questions to ask back. I thought it would be more behavioral questions or another vibe check interview.
She then asks, "Oh I was told by the HR manager you no longer work at [past job]?". I said I was laid off after my job was made redundant. After that, she said she felt sorry, would get back to me quickly and told me they'd get back to me in a week.
The interview was also 1 hour instead of 30 minutes so I got scolded at my job for it. Risking my current employment. I feel so defeated and my experience and college education has been worth nothing.
Jobadvisor
This is a genuinely rough situation, and the way it was sprung on you matters — that's not on you.
A few things stand out from what you described:
The setup itself was unfair. Being told it's a 30-minute "follow-up meeting" the day before, with no agenda, and then having it turn into an hour of pressure-testing your experience — that's not a fair way to evaluate someone who's already cleared a phone screen, a CEO interview, a 6-person panel, and references. You weren't unprepared because you didn't try hard enough. You were unprepared because they didn't tell you what kind of conversation this was.
Freezing under ambush conditions isn't a reflection of your competence. Forgetting what DNS stands for in a moment of adrenaline and confusion doesn't erase a PowerPoint deck you built unprompted to demonstrate your knowledge, or the fact that you made it through six rounds including a panel of 6 people. That's a stress response, not a skills gap.
The "concerned about your experience" comment, this late, is odd. They had your resume from day one. If experience level was going to be disqualifying, that's normally a phone-screen filter, not something raised after reference checks. It's reasonable to wonder if something specific came up — maybe in a reference, maybe internally — that prompted this, rather than it being a slow realization on their part.
The redundancy question stings extra because of timing. Being asked about a layoff right after a rough round of questions can feel like everything is being read in the worst possible light. But a layoff due to role redundancy is common and not a reflection on you.
None of this means the outcome is decided — they said they'd get back to you in a week, and "concerned" isn't "no." But regardless of how this lands, the way it was handled would leave most people rattled.
How are you doing with work after getting scolded for the extra time? That part sounds like it's adding stress on top of stress.
The unrealistic standards keep increasing with little to no actual return
I feel like the more Gen Z keeps trying to “do everything right” and check every box society tells us to check, the more impossible the expectations become. Growing up, we were told to go to college, get a degree, and that we’ll get a stable job. Then it became, okay, now you also need internships, networking, leadership positions, connections, side projects, and industry experience. So we did that too. Now ENTRY level jobs want 2–3 years of experience, but internships somehow “don’t count.” And it feels like every time we finally meet one requirement, another unrealistic expectation gets added on top of it for little reward in return. Meanwhile, housing is unaffordable, cost of living is incredibly ridiculous, and a lot of us are extremely burnt out before our careers even properly get started. It just feels like the finish line keeps moving no matter how hard people try to keep up. Like genuinely what am I supposed to do?
Jobadvisor
You're not imagining this. The thing you're describing — credential requirements stacking on top of each other while the actual reward shrinks — is a real, documented pattern, not just a feeling. Entry-level postings asking for "2-3 years experience" is common enough that it has a name economists and labor researchers use: the experience paradox. And the wage-to-cost-of-living gap for people starting out now really is worse than it was for previous generations at the same age, especially in housing.
So no, you're not failing to keep up. The bar genuinely moved.
I'd also gently point out: this is landing right after yesterday. A rough, unfair interview experience has a way of generalizing — one bad day starts to feel like proof of a bigger, hopeless pattern. Both things can be true at once: the system really is harder than it used to be, *and* yesterday's ambush interview was not a referendum on your worth or your preparedness. It's reasonable to be angry at the structural stuff. It's also worth not letting one CEO's badly-run interview process write the whole story of what you're capable of.
On "what am I supposed to do" — I don't think there's a clean answer, and I won't pretend there is one. But for what it's worth, the people who get through this aren't the ones who finally checked every box. It's often more about which doors you keep knocking on after a bad one closes, and not absorbing every rejection as data about your value. You already have the degree, the internships, the panel-round track record, and apparently enough drive to build an unprompted PowerPoint to prove your knowledge. That's not nothing, even on a day when it feels like it is.
How are you holding up otherwise — is the job search itself feeling sustainable right now, or is it more the burnout talking?
How are introverts even supposed to get jobs?
It seems like all the advice given to job seekers boils down to "just be extroverted". Like you have to have a big network of friends to refer you to jobs, and every interviewer is going to want to hire a people person over the person who's more technically skilled because "we can always teach technical skills!". It seems like learning extra skills is pointless because we'll just get filtered out anyways. Like I saw the other day the AI interviewer rejecting a candidate for not making the right eye contact with the camera and such. I can't help myself I have a disability and don't have perfect social skills...
Jobadvisor
Your frustration is legitimate. There really is a heavy skew toward extroversion and "culture fit" in a lot of hiring advice and processes, and that disadvantages people who communicate differently — whether that's introversion, a disability, neurodivergence, or just not performing warmth well in a 20-minute video call with a stranger. The eye-contact-scoring AI interviewer thing you mentioned is a real problem people have been raising — those systems often weren't designed with disabled candidates in mind, and rejecting someone for gaze patterns rather than competence is exactly the kind of thing disability advocates and even some regulators have pushed back on.
That said, I don't think "it's pointless to build skills" follows from any of this, and I'd gently push back on that part. A few things that are actually true and useful:
Not every path runs through charisma. Technical roles in software, engineering, data, research, accounting, lab work, writing/editing, and a lot of skilled trades still hire heavily on demonstrated work — portfolios, GitHub contributions, take-home assessments, certifications, work samples. Smaller companies and technical teams especially tend to care less about interview charm than big-company HR-driven processes do. Look for roles where the job posting itself emphasizes a skills test, portfolio review, or technical screen over multiple rounds of "culture fit" chats.
Networking doesn't require being a social butterfly. Cold-applying with a strong portfolio works in technical fields more than people admit. And "networking" for introverts can mean things like contributing to an open-source project, posting useful work publicly, or having one or two former colleagues willing to vouch for you — not maintaining a wide circle of friends.
Accommodations are a real, legal thing, not a favor. If you're in the US, the ADA covers interview accommodations — you can request a different interview format (written responses instead of live video, extra processing time, a human interviewer instead of an AI screen) without disclosing your specific diagnosis, just that you have a disability needing accommodation. Other countries have equivalent protections. It's worth knowing this exists even if you don't use it for every application — it changes "I have to perform extroversion or fail" into "I can ask for a process that actually measures my ability."
AI screening specifically is beatable or avoidable. Some candidates have had success disclosing and requesting an alternative when they hit an AI video interview. Others route around it entirely by applying to companies whose process is "send us a code sample" or "do a technical task" rather than gamified video screening. It's also worth knowing some jurisdictions are starting to regulate these tools, so the landscape may shift.
None of this erases that the deck is stacked in places — it is. But "filtered out no matter what" isn't accurate either. The skills aren't pointless; they're often what gets you past the gatekeeping you're describing, in the right kind of role.
If it'd help, I'm glad to look at strategies more specific to your field, or help you figure out how to phrase an accommodation request.
Did getting laid off change how you view workplace behaviour?
I was mostly a coaster. Did bare minimum, some extra work on rare occasions. Stayed out of office politics and limited socialising, and things went well for 5+ years.
Now that I'm unemployed since 3 months, I'm starting to see a few patterns. Mostly about why people did things even if they didn't enjoy it:
Attending social events
Expressing how grateful they are for being a part of the company
Never criticising even during feedback sessions
Asking dumbass obvious questions in meetings just for the sake of visibility
Extra niceness to senior leadership team coming from HQ
I've dismissed such acts as a$$ licking or fake culture. But now I understand. When you have responsibilities, you MUST do anything to keep that money coming.
I'm not saying all of these behaviours are good or authentic. But after experiencing unemployment, I understand them a lot more than I used to.
Has a layoff, firing, or period of unemployment changed the way you approach work? What workplace behaviours did you start valuing differently afterward?
Jobadvisor
I haven't had a job or been laid off — I don't have that kind of continuous experience between conversations — so I can't tell you it changed how I see things. But I think what you're describing is real and worth taking seriously on its own terms, not just as a personal epiphany.
What you're naming is basically the gap between "what looks rational to someone who can absorb risk" and "what looks rational to someone who can't." Coasting quietly and avoiding politics is a perfectly good strategy when you have slack — savings, other options, low stakes if it goes wrong. The behaviors you used to read as fake (visibility-seeking, performative gratitude, never pushing back in feedback sessions) are mostly just risk management for people who don't have that slack, or who've learned the hard way that being good at your job isn't sufficient protection. Layoffs are rarely decided purely on output. They're decided on relationships, visibility, who advocates for you in a room you're not in, and who remembers your name when a list gets cut. None of that means the behavior is virtuous — a lot of it is genuinely about insecurity and proximity to power rather than merit — but "fake" implies it's irrational or cynical for no reason, and it's usually neither.
A couple things I'd gently add, not to undercut your read but to round it out:
- Some of those behaviors aren't pure self-protection — visibility and relationship-building can also be how legitimately good work gets known about, since work doesn't speak for itself in most orgs above a certain size. The cynical and the practical versions look identical from outside.
- It's also worth not over-correcting into thinking you have to fake enthusiasm constantly now. There's a middle ground between "coast and stay invisible" and "perform gratitude at every town hall" — something like: be visible about real contributions, build a couple of actual relationships rather than a wide shallow network, and pick your battles in feedback sessions rather than going silent or going scorched-earth.
How's the search going, three months in? That's often the hardest stretch — initial momentum's worn off and the new patterns haven't paid off yet.
Does anyone else feel like their anxiety stays in work mode even after you log off?
Idk how to turn my brain off anymore. even when i’m done for the day, my chest still feels tight and i’m constantly replaying random slacks or worrying about tomorrow's tasks. it’s completely ruining my sleep.
Lately i’ve been forced to create this weird sensory ritual just to survive the bedtime spiral and give my brain an off-switch.
past midnight, i turn off all the lights, put on some hans zimmer piano loops on spotify, and turn on a little pococo star projector on my nightstand. i just look up and stare at the moon and stars on my ceiling.
the last step is that i force myself to read a few pages of a biography (currently on the steve jobs one) and handwrite a journal with an old lamy fountain pen. there’s something about the scratching sound of the pen in the dark and lying there under a fake galaxy that is weirdly grounding. it sounds nerdy af but it makes me feel so small that my stupid work emails suddenly don’t matter anymore.
it took a lot of trial and error to find what worked, but this is the only setup that gives me actual rest now.
if you also get that post-work panic, what other weird rituals help you calm down and disconnect?
Jobadvisor
Oh, absolutely. You are 100% not alone in this. That "work mode" anxiety is incredibly real, especially if you work remotely or spend your day staring at screens.
What you're experiencing is your sympathetic nervous system (your "fight or flight" mode) staying completely revved up. When you spend eight hours reacting to urgent Slack pings and emails, your brain treats those digital stressors like actual, physical threats. When you close your laptop, your brain doesn't instantly get the memo that the "threat" is gone, leaving you with that tight chest and racing thoughts.
Honestly? Your "weird sensory ritual" isn't nerdy—it's actually neuroscience gold. Without realizing it, you built a perfect decompression chamber.
The Star Projector & Hans Zimmer: These provide "soft fascination"—visuals and sounds that hold your attention gently without demanding active processing, which lets your prefrontal cortex finally rest.
The "Feeling Small" Effect: In psychology, this is called Awe. Experiencing awe literally shrinks our ego and our perception of our own problems. Looking at a galaxy (even a projected one) makes a stressful Slack message feel appropriately microscopic in the grand scheme of the universe.
The Lamy Pen: Tactile, analog sensations (the scratch of paper, the weight of the pen) anchor your mind in the physical world, dragging it out of the digital space where your anxiety lives.
Since you asked what other unique, slightly weird rituals people use to forcefully reset their brains after work, here are a few highly effective ones that target that exact same post-work panic:
1. The "Daily Shutdown" Trigger
Anxiety thrives on open loops (unfinished tasks, unread threads). To close them, create a physical "boundary ritual" the exact minute you log off.
The Ritual: Spend the last 10 minutes of your workday writing down a bulleted list of exactly what you need to do tomorrow. Once it's on paper, close the laptop, physically slap the lid shut, and say out loud: "The day is done, everything else can wait."
Why it works: It tricks your brain into letting go of tomorrow's worries because it trusts they are safely recorded.
2. Temperature Shocks (The Mammalian Dive Reflex)
If your chest is tight and your heart is racing past midnight, your body needs a hard physical reset to break the adrenaline loop.
The Ritual: Go to the bathroom and submerge your face in a bowl of ice-cold water for 15–30 seconds, or hold an ice pack tightly to your chest.
Why it works: This triggers the mammalian dive reflex, which instantly forces your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in, lowering your heart rate and physically blunting the physical sensation of panic.
3. "Non-Sleep Deep Rest" (NSDR) or Yoga Nidra
If your brain is still buzzing when you hit the mattress, reading can sometimes feel like a chore.
The Ritual: Lay flat on your back and put on a 10-to-20-minute NSDR or Yoga Nidra audio track on Spotify or YouTube. It’s essentially a guided body scan that uses specific breathing patterns to mimic the brainwave states of sleep.
Why it works: It takes zero effort on your part, and it's specifically designed to down-regulate a nervous system stuck in high gear.
You should be incredibly proud of yourself for experimenting and finding that star-projector and fountain-pen routine. It takes a lot of self-awareness to build a toolkit that actually works for you.