my interviewers interrupted my timed interview presentation

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I’d be really interested to hear your take on a situation that cropped up for me while I was attending an internal job interview this week.

I’d been asked to prepare a presentation of “no longer than” 10 minutes. I practiced plenty in advance and was generally coming in at 8 minutes, 30 seconds, so comfortably within.

On the day of the interview, I was halfway through presenting my slide deck when one of the interview panel interrupted with a question, which I answered. This turned into three or four minutes of other queries and broader chat amongst the panel members — all very positive about the content — before they asked me to continue. I’d barely got any further when I was warned that I had less than a minute left: They hadn’t stopped the clock for their conversational detour. As a result, I had to push through the final couple of points far more swiftly than I’d intended.

Fortunately the rest of the interview went well, though ultimately I didn’t get the role. During the call to inform me, the interviewer explained that another candidate had more management experience than me (fair). But upon asking for any other feedback, I was told that I should have had more confidence when presenting, particularly during the last minute or so, and that I could have planned the timing better.

I thanked them for the feedback but I’ve been left wondering what I can really do with this for next time? I was hardly in a position to ban any questions, but putting my foot down and demanding extra presentation time to make up for their interruption sounds like a guaranteed way to lose the job. How can I work on this feedback?

It’s unlikely they wanted you to demand extra time to make up for the interruption.

But it’s very possible they assessed you in part on how well you handled the interruptions, like whether you were able to diplomatically regain control over the presentation and keep going — especially if presenting was a core function of the job. (In fact, if it was, they may have even interrupted intentionally to see how you handled it.) This isn’t necessarily 100% fair, because a lot of job candidates wouldn’t feel comfortable redirecting their interviewers — and if they wanted to assess that, they’d get better results by telling you beforehand that they wanted to see you demonstrate those skills, so you’d understand they were role-playing audience members and not worry as much about “interrupting” your job interviewers.

Or, if not that, they might have assessed you on whether you were able to recover smoothly and adjust on the fly in the time you had remaining.

Or they might not have intended to assess you on any of that, but a different candidate handled those things really well and that gave them an advantage.

It’s also possible the feedback means nothing at all — that when you asked for additional feedback beyond what they’d already offered, the person you were talking to just grasped for something without it being a factor that mattered much in their decision.

It’s hard to know whether there’s really anything here that would be useful to work on — but if you’re looking for something, I’d say it’s planning for audience interruptions and adapting in real time when they happen.