We regret to inform you that...

"You are very employable just not to us"

"You were too honest"

"We are unable to progress with this vacancy at this time"

I didn't have enough experience

Or my favourite, that I was too enthusiastic.

Well I'm terribly sorry but I wasn't aware that being honest or enthusiastic was a bad thing.

Although the most frequent excuse on a rejection e-mail that I have received, and let’s be honest they are excuses (sometimes or in my experience most of the time,they are just looking for an excuse to not hire you) was that they were lots of successful applicants and the competition was fierce.

Well in that case if you have 50-100 applicants for 1 job and they are all equally as qualified, the choice of who gets the job is based on pot luck. With a large percentage of the job interview being perceived by your body language and visual appearance  does it really matter what you say?

At a career day that I attended at my university they said that what you say only has a 7% impact on the whole job interview experience. Although once you put your foot in it it’s very hard to back pedal and you can normally tell (well at least I can) when the turning point comes and you can wave the job goodbye.

So from this rant you can conclude to be able get the job  you need to say exactly what the interviewers want to hear. By this point they have (you would hope) read your CV and they know everything  that they want to know about you,  during the interview (in my experience) they just want you to amaze them with your knowledge about their company (and  if that involves quoting their website word for word then go for it) and it’s just a chance for some good old ego stroking. 

Pot luck that is what all your hard work has come down to, if you are not on the top of your game for the 45 minutes in which you are in the interview room, well then you are doomed.

Yes I am bitter and I have a pile of rejections to prove it.