Dear Joanna,

I just finished an intensive one hour interview with a large telecom company for the position of project manager on a large change management project. I feel that I did a fantastic job. The interviewer said he will get back to me in a week. I couldn’t be more excited on one hand; but very worried on the other.

Is there an objective way to rate myself on how I did on the interview?/span>

Signed: Rating Reviews (RR)

Dear RR

From my perspective, if your interview results in another interview, or if you are asked for references, then I would tell you that you surely did a great job! After an interview, you will always have mixed feelings. Some responses went well. Some didn’t. As many HR professionals confirm, experience, good or bad, is the best teacher. It is important to take time after each interview to reflect on your performance to help you evaluate your interview.

I refer you to Oscar Adler’s Interview Review Form, which is an excellent self-evaluation tool from his book, Sell yourself in any interview. Adler recommends using the form after every interview. Study it, learn from it and be better prepared for your next interview to be better, keeping in mind Malcolm Forbes, who said that

Failure is success if we learn from it.”.

The Interview Review Form aims to review the things the candidate did right, as well as those areas to improve for the next interview.

Sit down quietly, as soon as you can after the interview and write out a your responses to these questions:

1. Overall impression:

What was your general feeling about the interview? Be honest.
Specify examples (“I was very nervous when I shook hands with the interviewer. I hope I didn’t sweat too much and gave a good handshake”)

2. Successes:

What did you do well in the interview?
Rank your strengths in order of what may be important to a successful interview.

3. Areas for improvement:

Be honest with yourself: what could you have done better?
Be specific.

4. Surprises:

What surprised you?
Were you surprised by how you handled certain situations?
Any unexpected questions or actions by the interviewer(s)?

5. Information for next interview:

What information do you wish you had before the interview, including information about companies, interviewers or yourself?

6. Sources of information for the next interview:

How can you get this information for your next interview?
Decide what are your best sources of information, such as company websites, LinkedIn, Facebook, newspaper articles

7. New learning:

What did you learn in the interview, about yourself, the company or even the interview process?

8. Improve your next interview:

What would you avoid in the next interview?

9. Identify your strengths:

What would you do again?

10. Identify difficult questions:

Think through the questions that you were asked and identify those which challenged you the most

11. Areas for improvement:

What would you do differently if you could do the interview over again?

Hope this helps,