First of all this has to mean nothing, if they take someone else this does not have to mean you are bad, this just means the other person was perceived to be a

First of all this has to mean nothing, if they take someone else this does not have to mean you are bad, this just means the other person was perceived to be a better fit. And there can be deciding aspects way beyond your pure technical abilities, like personality, symphaties, ability to communicate clearly, humour and so on. Especially in smaller companies you might be the future collegue of the people you are interviewing with, that means if they don't get the feeling you are a guy they wanna work with, that will be a pass. A good idea for you would be to make sure your self image matches with the external image you produce for your surroundings. I don't know you at all, but I know many people in our profession who would interview absolutely horrible and still be convinced afterwards that they did a good job and are the best candidate. That means the first thing you should do is to ensure you are not lying to yourself and are 100% aware of your shortcomings and your strengths. One technique to do this is the Johari Window: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window