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My advice for job interviews: do not complain

Navigating job interviews is hard. The process is imperfect and unfair. Nonetheless, you should try to show the best version of yourself.

During behavioral interviews some difficult questions usually come up that beg for you to complain about something:

• "Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a colleague?"
• "What are the parts of your job that you dislike the most?"
• "Can you give an example of a project that did not go as planned?"

These are tricky questions, as there is no right answer to these. But there absolutely are wrong answers.

And complaining usually is a wrong answer.

After analyzing my own failed (or partially failed) interviews, I can conclude that even if you feel like you have every right to complain, you shouldn't, because it will put you in a bad position, it can easily result in negative feedback.

What's the problem with complaining?

Taking the perspective of the interviewer, I can see the following issues:

• complaining is the easy thing to do, everyone can do it, it does not differentiate you from the crowd
• complaining on its own does not get you from A to B, in a way it's assuming the victim mentality, feeling disempowered to better the situation
• complaining could signal to the interviews that you are a serial complainer, who brings negativity, lowers team morale, gives off negative vibes
• and most importantly complaining could signal a lack of empathy from your side - inability to see other perspectives, or a general disinterest in getting to know other perspectives

What can you do instead?

So does this mean that you should only share good things - rainbows and sunshines - when asked about your previous jobs? Of course not!

It's just that there are more clever ways to express the same, think of it as complaining indirectly:

• explain why you did not like something?
• what did you do to understand the reasons behind it?
• how did you try to improve or change the situation?
• what are some valid alternatives?
• what would you prefer instead?

Most of the time people are not stupid and most of the time there are good reasons for things.

Showing that you understand the underlying reasons and seek alternatives - is the right way to complain. This kind of thinking and framing shows your ability to debug problems, people and processes - which means you have better chances to actually improve the status quo.

Now these are the kind of vibes you want to "radiate" during a job interview. And also this is the kind of mentality that takes you further in general.