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How bad is it if I forgot to shake their hands at the end?


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My interview started out great. But then I started overanalyzing the situation: getting anxious when they weren't writing after I answered a question, or when I thought the interviewers exchanging looks. Long story short, by the end of interview I was feeling terrible, so I think I forgot to shake their hands. I think I whispered a thank you and walked out. I, also, really got distracted by the writing. I caught myself looking at their paper for more than 30 secs once, so I hope they didn't think I was trying to read what they were writing down. My answers were fine, but everything else was meh.

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Really no point in ruminating or overanalyzing any of this after the fact. This was a great learning experience and try to take what you can from it and consider how you can better prepare yourself for interview situations in the future as well as relaxation strategies you can work on to help calm your nerves to a more manageable level in stressful situations moving forward.

Plenty of members on this board can relate to having a wide range of interview experiences, including having stumbled at points, yet still receiving an offer.

I know it can be tough to distance yourself from the situation right now and let it go, considering the emotions you are feeling right now post-interview, but trust in the fact that life goes on. Worst case scenario, you now have some valuable first-hand experience that you can learn from and use to guide your preparation for a future, more successful performance.

On the other hand, you may even find yourself pleasantly surprised when May rolls around.

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OMG I had my interview today as well and had a similar experience. After I answered a question, one of the interviewers wouldn't write anything down and just stared at me. Then I see another interviewer glancing over at the other interviewers to judge their reaction or to see how they were evaluating me. It actually made me so paranoid. I think that for some of the questions, I may have failed to demonstrate the particular trait that they were looking for with the question and maybe that's why they didn't circle a score for the question? Honestly, I have no idea :(

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Literally 0 impact. First of all, interviewers are humans, and humans form most of their biases in the first few seconds/minutes of an interaction. Unless you do something drastic afterwards (like an incredible personal story, or an insulting comment), you're not going to change their impression too much. In addition, they've formed their opinion about where to grade you relative to your peers early in the interview, and they're not going to spend the time/energy the change their minds based on how you walked out.

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24 minutes ago, PhD2MD said:

Literally 0 impact. First of all, interviewers are humans, and humans form most of their biases in the first few seconds/minutes of an interaction. Unless you do something drastic afterwards (like an incredible personal story, or an insulting comment), you're not going to change their impression too much. In addition, they've formed their opinion about where to grade you relative to your peers early in the interview, and they're not going to spend the time/energy the change their minds based on how you walked out.

I generally agree. As someone who was an interviewer this year, however, I would say that my assessment of candidates can and did change based on what they said during the whole duration of the interview and not just the first two minutes or so 

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1 minute ago, Organomegaly said:

I generally agree. As someone who was an interviewer this year, however, I would say that my assessment of candidates can and did change based on what they said during the whole duration of the interview and not just the first two minutes or so 

Fair, but I bet you rarely changed it in the last minute.

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Don't read too much into what the interviewers are doing... they are not the ones being interviewed, so they won't be paying as much attention to how they are coming across. I doubt there is any correlation between the amount of writing and their thoughts about you. If you felt your answers were fine, then I would not overthink too much...

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/25/2018 at 6:05 PM, Lactic Folly said:

Don't read too much into what the interviewers are doing... they are not the ones being interviewed, so they won't be paying as much attention to how they are coming across. I doubt there is any correlation between the amount of writing and their thoughts about you. If you felt your answers were fine, then I would not overthink too much...

ha I would agree - over thinking is almost a predefined premed trait and while it is useful most of the time in the interview it can result in you going nuts :)

On 3/25/2018 at 5:06 PM, Blasé said:

OMG I had my interview today as well and had a similar experience. After I answered a question, one of the interviewers wouldn't write anything down and just stared at me. Then I see another interviewer glancing over at the other interviewers to judge their reaction or to see how they were evaluating me. It actually made me so paranoid. I think that for some of the questions, I may have failed to demonstrate the particular trait that they were looking for with the question and maybe that's why they didn't circle a score for the question? Honestly, I have no idea :(

you DO have no idea :) For all you know that reviewer just scores most stuff at the end (when I interviewed  people one of my co-interviewers did that and it meant nothing). 

 

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