Exactly. Since interviewing is a skill and interview skill is used as a proxy for job skill and interview skill is a function of recent interview experience, j

Exactly. Since interviewing is a skill and interview skill is used as a proxy for job skill and interview skill is a function of recent interview experience, job experience, and your mix of personality traits, and only two of those are roughly stable. Job experience is a slowly changing dimension, but recent interview experience changes very rapidly and it has a huge effect on interview skill, and the interviewer has no way to calibrate for it. Instead they always try to calibrate for job experience. Interviewers also don't have any hope of calibrating for your mix of personality traits. The whole thing is basically a crapshoot. But I take comfort in that. I don't ever feel bad if I get rejected. I just see the process as essentially random.