Crumpled-up paper

Getting turned down for a job can be disheartening at the best of times and downright devastating at the worst.

Rejection is particularly frustrating if it comes after you went to the trouble of attending a job interview - making it to the very end of the process only to fall at final hurdle can be a bitter pill to swallow.

That being said, life is a never-ending learning experience, and there can be victory in defeat - even when it comes to not getting the job.


Why ask for feedback after interview rejection?

Swallowing your pride and asking 'why?' takes real bravery. After all, you bared your soul in the interview, attempted to sell yourself based on your best qualities, and got turned down all the same – it's hard not to take that personally.

Surely asking your rejectors to elaborate on their decision is akin to asking an ex why they decided to dump you in favour of someone else?

Well, luckily, it needn't be quite as fraught an experience as that.


The benefits of asking for feedback after a job interview

Asking for feedback after a job interview can actually be very helpful on a number of levels. While it may seem like you're willingly rubbing salt into your own unemployable wounds, there are a variety of benefits to be had:


Discover what worked (and what didn't)

Knowing what went well and what didn't can be a great way to streamline your approach to future job applications, and identifying key areas that are in need of improvement can help you to fill in any gaps in your interview game.

If you knocked it out of the park with your presentation skills but struggled to answer their questions about the business, you know to do more revision next time. On the other hand, if you lacked a skill that the other candidate had, you may want to look into mastering that skill for yourself.

It may not even have had anything to do with your skills at all: it could have been a single throwaway comment that irked the interviewer, or the fact you'd neglected to shave that morning. Either way, clarity can help you right your wrongs and ensure lightning doesn't strike twice.


Learn something new

Thorough feedback is frequently helpful, but sometimes, it can be outright enlightening.

From body language to bad habits, asking for comments on your interview performance could lead you to find out something new about yourself that you didn't know about before. This will allow you to work on yourself if necessary.

Whether it's unconsciously doodling on your notepad, not maintaining eye contact out of sheer nerves, or simply seeming disinterested in an attempt to present yourself as calm, brutally honest feedback can make for great constructive criticism.


Find out what they want

Interviewer feedback can be a great way to gauge exactly what employers are looking for (and then make sure you present it in future interviews).

If your interviewer informs you that you seemed too brash and self-assertive, try to reign it in a bit next time. If your suit was too loud, tone it down in future. If your handshake was too weak, train up those forearms!

Whatever feedback you are given is a peek behind the curtain at what other employers are likely to be looking for too, so take note and be sure to tick those boxes on your next attempt.


Leave the door open

A willingness to learn and better yourself is a great trait to have. Actively seeking ways to improve yourself can leave a lasting impression on a potential employer.

If this is a company you really want to work for or a vacancy you are hoping will crop up again, asking for feedback in a polite and grateful manner could leave the door open to future opportunities.

You never know - the successful candidate may not last, and a positive parting of ways now could leave you first in line for a call-up.


How to ask for feedback after an interview

While the setback of job rejection can leave a fresh scar that's particularly tender to the touch, it's important to remain calm, level-headed, and - above all - courteous in your response. This is far easier to do via email, so if possible, go down the digital route rather than making a phone call.

That being said, there are a few things to keep in mind when you're responding to a rejection email. Firstly, remember that their mind is made up by this point and this isn't a window to make them reconsider. Instead, use your response as an opportunity to further endear yourself and leave them with a lasting positive impression.

Display your gratitude for the time they gave you and, if you do choose to relay your disappointment, be sure to do so in a manner that is friendly and reinforces your desire to hopefully work together in the future.

Employers are far more likely to respond to your request if a) you are genuine in your response, and b) you present yourself as a potential candidate for the future. The interviewers have already invested time in you throughout this process, and a positive farewell could still result in good things to come.

Hyper Recruitment Solutions have helped countless candidates to secure rewarding jobs in the science and technology sectors. Browse our latest job listings here, or click the following links for more interview advice...

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HRS team at the 2019 Global Recruiter Awards

We've won our third award in under 12 months!

Last night (20 June), the Hyper Recruitment Solutions team visited London's fabulous Café de Paris for the 2019 Global Recruiter UK Industry Awards. This was the awards' 10th anniversary, and the evening was suitably spectacular, with the venue packed and anticipation running high for the announcement of the winners.

This time around, HRS were up for the Best Small Recruitment Business award, and with two gongs already under our belt for 2018/19 (courtesy of the IRP Awardsi n December and the Recruiter Awards just last month), we were hoping to make it a hat-trick at the Café de Paris last night.

And as it turned out...

...we won!

The awards' organisers praised Hyper Recruitment Solutions for our fast growth, outstanding staff retention, and the "glowing testimonials" our clients have given. Here's what our Managing Director Ricky Martin had to say after the awards had been handed out:

"What a fantastic night - we've done the treble! Picking up wins at the IRP Awards, the Recruiter Awards, and now the Global Recruiter Awards has proven beyond doubt that Hyper Recruitment Solutions is a truly life-changing recruitment company, and we're showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. I couldn't be prouder of the HRS team for the sensational success we've seen in the past 12 months, and it's great to be able to call ourselves global multi-award winners!"

Ricky Martin at the Global Recruiter Awards

Would you like to be a part of our award-winning, life-changing team? Visit the HRS Careers page!

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Two people negotiating a job contract

Are you thinking about changing jobs? Here at Hyper Recruitment Solutions, we often get asked the question...

"When is the best time to switch jobs?"

...and, unfortunately, there's no definitive answer. It's all dependent on your specific circumstances and what point you're at in your career.

The following questions should help you decide if the time is right to make a change:


How long have you been in your current job?

Interviewers will always be interested in the level of 'professional stability' you have displayed in your working life to date. If you're someone who has repeatedly jumped from job to job without ever really progressing upwards or taking the time to settle into a particular role, this can indicate that you'll be quick to leave their company behind, too.

Of course, for a potential employer, this can be incredibly off-putting. If you've only been in your current role for a few weeks or months, it might not be a great idea to switch jobs just yet.


Is there room to progress?

For lots of people, the right time to switch jobs comes when they no longer feel like they can progress in their current role. Have you been in the same job for several years?

If you haven't had a promotion or pay rise for a long time and you don't see one on the horizon, this may be a sign that now would be a good time to switch jobs. After all, you don't want to continue to working hard for an employer who will never encourage you to progress further in your career.


How does it make you feel?

We spend a huge portion of our adult lives at work, and if at all possible, it's definitely worth pursuing a role and a working environment that make you feel happy and positive. If you feel that you're doggedly persevering with a job that - for whatever reason - is making you unhappy, it may well be time for a change.

Of course, there is a difference between a couple of bad days and a job that consistently makes you miserable. Take a few days to mull over your decision, and don't hand in your notice until you're sure about how you're feeling.

If you're ready to switch jobs, why not browse the vacancies we currently have on offer here at HRS?

Search Science Jobs >>   Careers at HRS >>


We have a proud history of scientific achievement and innovation here in Great Britain. A surprising number of watershed technologies were born on this island, and us Brits have always been well-represented across a broad spectrum of scientific fields, from astrophysics to zoology and just about everything in between.



Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Birthplace: London, England (1968)

Field: Astronomy

The first scientist on our list is also the youngest (although Brian Cox was born less than a week earlier). Maggie Aderin-Pocock is perhaps best known for hosting the current incarnation of long-running BBC series The Sky at Night, but she's not just a TV personality: she is an Honorary Research Associate in UCL's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and she's worked on a wide variety of projects over the course of her career, from developing landmine detection devices to managing the observation instruments for the Aeolus satellite.

Aderin-Pocock is also the Director of Science Innovation Ltd, an organisation that works to engage school-aged children in the field of space science.


Tim Berners-Lee

Birthplace: London, England (1955)

Fields: Engineering, Computer Science

If you've heard of Tim Berners-Lee, it's probably because he's the man who invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Without his world-changing work, you might not be reading this article right now!

But TimBL, as he's sometimes known, hasn't been resting on his laurels during the intervening three decades. He has worked with the UK government to help keep online information open and accessible, and he's been a key voice in the ongoing fight to preserve net neutrality.


James Black

Birthplace: Uddingston, Scotland (1924)

Field: Pharmacology

James Black won a scholarship to the University of St Andrews at the age of 15, and graduated from the university's prestigious School of Medicine - the oldest in Scotland - in 1946. In another life, he might have gone on to be a doctor, but he decided against this career path because he objected to the insensitive way in which patients were treated at the time.

Instead, Sir James Black is best known for developing propranolol and cimetidine, which are still used to treat heart disease and stomach ulcers respectively. He was knighted in 1981 and won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988.


Brian Cox

Birthplace: Oldham, England (1968)

Field: Physics

Professor Brian Cox is something of a household name these days, but in the grand scheme of things, it really hasn't been that long since the most notable entry on his CV was playing keyboards for D:Ream (on whose biggest hit, 'Things Can Only Get Better', he didn't even feature!).

It was during his music career that Cox completed a degree in physics at the University of Manchester. After that, he went on to get a PhD in particle physics, and nowadays he can be seen / heard on all sorts of science-themed TV and radio programmes. He has also co-authored a number of physics books, and he works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Speaking of which...


Lyn Evans

Birthplace: Aberdare, Wales (1945)

Field: Physics

Lyn Evans, nicknamed 'Evans the Atom', was the project leader of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland until 2008. He actually spent his first year at Swansea University studying chemistry, only switching to physics in his second year because - rather amusingly - he found physics easier.

Evans has been honoured with a number of science awards since stepping down as LHC project leader, including the Glazebrook Medal, the 2012 Special Fundamental Physics Prize, and the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal.


Rosalind Franklin

Birthplace: London, England (1920)

Field: Chemistry

In 1951, Rosalind Franklin - already an accomplished X-ray crystallographer - became a research associate at King's College London. Famously, her work at King's would prove crucial to the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule that holds the genetic instructions for the growth and reproduction of every organism on planet Earth.

Franklin sadly died of ovarian cancer at just 37 years old. She was not nominated for a Nobel Prize in her lifetime, although her colleagues Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962, once DNA structure had been widely accepted as proven science. To this day, there is still debate over the degree to which Crick, Watson and Wilkins were taking credit for Franklin's work; as a result, she has become somewhat iconic of the discrimination that women in STEM fields face.


Isabella Gordon

Birthplace: Keith, Scotland (1901)

Field: Marine Biology

Dr Isabella Gordon was a leading expert in carcinology, the study of crustaceans (crabs and sea spiders were her particular speciality). During her 86 years of life, she worked at the Natural History Museum - no doubt a dream job for many British biology enthusiasts - received an OBE, and became a Fellow of the Zoological Society.

She also had the distinction of meeting with Emperor Hirohito while visiting Japan in 1961. The 'Grand Old Lady of Carcinology' (as she was posthumously dubbed) was invited to the laboratories of the Imperial Household and spoke to the Emperor, who was apparently something of a marine biology enthusiast himself.


Stephen Hawking

Birthplace: Oxford, England (1942)

Field: Theoretical Physics

What can we say about Stephen Hawking that you don't already know? BBC Earth have a great article listing Hawking's many scientific achievements (as well as the fact that he has appeared on TV shows like The Simpsons and Star Trek), so if you're not familiar with his work, we'd recommend starting there.

Stephen Hawking famously lived with motor neurone disease, which is why he used a wheelchair and communicated via American-accented voice software. When Hawking was first diagnosed, doctors estimated that he had approximately 2 years to live; that was in 1963, when Hawking was 21 years old. He eventually died in March 2018, a couple of months after his 76th birthday.


Peter Higgs

Birthplace: Newcastle upon Tyne, England (1929)

Field: Theoretical Physics

Ever heard of the Higgs boson? Peter Higgs is the man for whom that particle was named. He is a Nobel laureate who received the Prize for Physics in 2013 "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles". (Higgs shared the award with Belgian physicist François Englert in a great testament to the collaborative, border-crossing spirit of modern science.)

Rather remarkably, Higgs was awarded honorary degrees by 15 different institutions between 1997 and 2015. He was even offered a knighthood just prior to the turn of the millennium, but unlike some of the other people on this list, he turned it down, expressing his cynicism towards the British honours system.


Steve Jones

Birthplace: Aberystwyth, Wales (1946)

Field: Genetics

John Stephen Jones was rejected by all of the Welsh universities he applied for, so he ended up going to Scotland and studying zoology at the University of Edinburgh. Years later, he would be made Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London.

Jones published a number of books and presented various TV programmes on the subject of evolution. The study of snails has proven a particular area of interest for him. In 1996, he won the Michael Faraday Prize for his contributions to public understanding of science.


Mary Leakey

Birthplace: London, England (1913)

Field: Palaeoanthropology

British palaeontologist Mary Leakey is notable primarily for discovering the first fossilised skull of Proconsul, an extinct primate that existed approximately 25 million years ago and is now thought to be an ancestor of human beings. She found the skull on Rusinga Island, a small island in Lake Victoria (that lies within the borders of Kenya).

The Proconsul skull was far from Leakey's only discovery, though - over the course of her career, she discovered no fewer than 15 new animal species, and 1 new genus. In 2013, 100 years after her birth, Mary Leakey's face appeared on both a Royal Mail postage stamp and a Google doodle.


Anne McLaren

Birthplace: London, England (1927)

Field: Developmental Biology

Millions of people currently walking the Earth were born via IVF (in-vitro fertilisation). This technology, which first yielded results in the 1970s, has allowed many would-be parents to conceive children they would otherwise have been unable to have.

Dame Anne McLaren's work was instrumental in the development of IVF as a viable solution to infertility problems. She was an officer of the Royal Society - the first woman to hold the position - as well as a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She was sadly killed in a car accident at the age of 80, but her name lives on to this day: The Anne McLaren Memorial Trust Fund was founded after her death to support scientific study and events.


Alan Turing

Birthplace: London, England (1912)

Fields: Mathematics, Computer Science

Despite being dead for more than 60 years, Alan Turing was in the news recently when the passage of the so-called 'Alan Turing law' retroactively pardoned men who, like Turing himself, were convicted for their homosexuality. You might also remember the 2014 movie The Imitation Game, in which Turing was portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch.

If you saw that film, you know exactly why Turing is so famous: his code-breaking techniques enabled the Allies to defeat Axis forces in a number of key engagements during World War II. Turing's role in the eventual Allied victory was underappreciated during his lifetime, and he tragically died of cyanide poisoning in 1954 after being convicted of gross indecency and chemically castrated by his own government.


Elsie Widdowson

Birthplace: Wallington, England (1906)

Fields: Chemistry, Dietetics

Elsie Widdowson was a highly influential dietitian who, like Alan Turing, did her most notable work during World War II. As you're probably aware, rationing was introduced in Britain during the war in order to ensure that food supplies didn't run out. Widdowson, together with her colleague Dr Robert McCance, was tasked with overseeing the rationing effort, making sure that people were getting the nutrition they needed even during extreme food shortages.

Widdowson and McCance are also known for heading up the very first government-mandated addition of vitamins and minerals to food (e.g. adding calcium to bread). She became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976, a CBE in 1979, and she died in 2000 at the age of 93.


Robert Winston

Birthplace: London, England (1940)

Fields: Medicine, Biology

Recognisable by his signature moustache, the Right Honourable Lord Winston has done a lot of work to get the general public interested in biology and medicine. He has hosted a litany of BBC series, including Your Life in Their Hands, Child of Our Time, The Human Body, and many more.

Robert Winston is also a medical doctor. He graduated from The London Hospital Medical College in 1964 and quickly established himself as an expert in human fertility. He actually performed the world's first Fallopian tubal transplant in 1979 (although this procedure is seldom used nowadays, having been superseded by IVF - see Anne McLaren, above).


Hyper Recruitment Solutions (HRS) is a British recruitment company specialising in science and technology. We have offices in Essex, Manchester and Edinburgh - use the links below to learn more!

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FURTHER READING: 10 Famous British Inventors

Many scientific jobs are based in laboratories, and even if you've experienced a lab environment in school or university, you might well wonder what it's like to actually work in a lab.

Working in a lab

Here are some of the best and worst things about working in a lab:


Lab equipment is expensive and delicate

In case you didn't already know, laboratory equipment tends to be pretty expensive. If you happen to be a bit on the clumsy side, you may find yourself racking up quite the replacement bill if you're not careful. Most science work requires concentration and precision, so take it easy if around the most delicate equipment if these aren't your strong points.


Your social life may have to take a back seat

When working in a lab, you commit yourself to the experiments you take on. Unfortunately, this can mean that your working hours become somewhat irregular, and other social activities have to be put on hold. Be prepared for your work schedule to be a bit changeable!


Your work can be dangerous

When you talk to your friends who maybe work within the construction industry or in factories, you may hear them say how dangerous their line of work is and how they could have an accident at any given time. When you work in a lab, the same thing applies to you! Working with infectious agents, caustic chemicals and electrified apparatus can put your health and safety in major danger, so be careful!


You actually have to dress like a scientist

You've most likely seen a load of lab work in movies or on TV, where the workers are dressed in long white coats with huge safety goggles protecting their faces. This is surprisingly true to real life - lab coats and goggles are part of the uniform, primarily because of the health and safety concerns mentioned above.

If you're looking for lab-based work, Hyper Recruitment Solutions can help you! Click the link below to browse the latest scientific from all over the UK!

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