Did I make a mistake in being too honest in the PhD interview? I had an interview on Tuesday on a PhD topic and during the interview I was a little nervous.
I regret saying that I don’t like machine learning since the PhD topic requires using machine-learning tools. I explained that I don’t like it since I took a machine-learning course at university, and the professor taught us the subject in an unpleasant and boring way. His teaching manner seriously wasn’t clear.
I also told them that I will give myself a chance and learn it again in a better way since they don’t require deep experience in it.
I shouldn’t have told them this information because it could be an easy reason to reject me.
I have asked the professor in the interview whether he liked my profile. His answer was that he still has other students to interview... I mean if he did like my profile he could have simply said yes.
I still have some hope because if he didn’t find me suitable he would have rejected me the next day. Instead, when I asked him when I would get an answer to my application he told me next week.
I’m feeling bad. I was overly honest, and sometimes was too informal with my speech and facial expressions.
Did I make a mistake in being too honest in the PhD interview?
Update: I have read an article the professors have sent me where they have used a machine learning tool. I made further search and I was able to understand it. I have been invited to another interview and I did so well. They were friendly with me and I kept my honesty in everything. I asked them more questions and they clarified that there are different methods in the PhD and machine learning is just one of them. I told them that I no longer have fear towards ML since I no longer find it complicated. At the end I explained my interest that meets the goal of the PhD program. They will give me the final answer after one or two weeks. Please wish me luck :) I am glad that I have used Academia site and I thank everyone for their comments and answers that I found beneficial.
I want to make two points here, both are indirect answers to your question, but still open to interpretation with regard to your specific interview.

Interviews are less like taking an exam, and more like going on a date. It is possible to do everything right, and still not click. Equally, it is possible that you do many things wrong, but the other person is willing to take a chance on you, because they see something they like and willing to invest on. It is therefore not really worth it mulling over the details of the date in any meaningful sense, since you'll never really know what it was that did or didn't click. Having said that, just like a date, you would want to sound honest, but not arrogant, and generally not put the other person in an uncomfortable position for the sake of 'honesty' if you expect to establish some sort of relationship with them going forward.

There is always a way to rephrase a negative into a positive, and it typically pays off to do so. You come across as a more approachable, less negative person, who sees the good and the opportunity in things, as opposed to the negatives. It's generally a good way to go through life, too. So, in your case, you could have rephrased

&quot;it was boring and it was the prof's fault but I'll look at it if I really have to&quot;

into

&quot;I am reasonably comfortable with the topic; however, I felt it was not given the time it deserved in uni, and my exposure to it so far has been more theoretical. Therefore I look forward to seeing an interesting application of this field in a real-life setting, and to improving my skills in this area: I'm very thankful for the training opportunities on offer in this job -- this is in fact one of the reasons that led me to apply here (blah blah, continue on positive spin)&quot;.



Regarding the second point, as a personal anecdote, I was taught this by my own PhD supervisor during my PhD. A large part of my PhD involved improving a field in which one of the most influential papers had many (in my opinion) naïve assumptions which weakened its conclusions. I approached this in my work from the point of view of &quot;we build Y which doesn't suffer from the errors in X, who did bad things x,y,z&quot;. My supervisor thought this was unnecessarily harsh and had me rephrase it as &quot;X pushed the field forward by proposing X. We improved on this idea by addressing improvements in areas x,y,z, which we believe make the general direction proposed by X even stronger&quot;.
Now, &quot;technically&quot;, both versions say exactly the same thing, and both are 'honest'. However, imagine I wanted to invite Prof X to be my external examiner in my PhD viva at the end of my PhD. Which of the two formulations do you think would predispose them more positively towards my thesis?