I lost an onsite loop two weeks ago. 5 rounds at a company I genuinely wanted to work at, all the way through to the verbal "we want to send an offer," and then 6 days of silence followed by a one-line rejection. Standard pattern from the 142 rejection emails I read recently .

I asked the recruiter for a real debrief. To his credit, he gave me one. Twenty minutes on the phone, no marketing speak, real specifics about why I lost. I have been thinking about it for two weeks because there are 5 lessons in it that I had not internalized before, and they are probably useful to share.

What happened, briefly

5-round loop: recruiter screen, hiring manager call, technical pair, system design, behavioral with two ICs and a director. After round 5 the recruiter said "we want to move to offer discussion, expect to hear by end of week." Wednesday. By the following Tuesday: silence.…