She didn't get the job. That much is ordinary. The rest is not.
The phone rang, and on the line was the man who would have been her boss. He called, unprompted, to say the interview had been brilliant — and then told her exactly why it hadn't been enough. When he asked for an example, she gave several. She answered, confidently and completely. What she didn't do, in his view, was expand on any single one.
That feedback is a rarity twice over. Most rejections arrive as a form letter, if they arrive at all. This one came as a diagnosis, delivered by the person who would have made the hiring call — a small courtesy the process almost never extends.
One detail lands the hardest. He was only the third person to contact her through the entire process. The first two had called after her second-round interview. The process ran three contacts deep and still ended in a phone call honest enough to sting.