[gered]

See, I take a bit of a different view in the example you've given. Like, if I got rejected because I seemed "too excited about my personal side projects" I'd come away from that thinking "if that's really their take away, I'm kinda glad I don't work with them!"

You're right that the conversational interviews (just like any social gathering, really) have their own rules. But I think the most important thing you can do during those interviews is to just be yourself. After all, you want them to get to know you, just as you want to get to know them, right? How else can you each be sure that you're a good fit for each other? If they reject you for something you said that is true but that they just didn't like (e.g. a difference of opinion on something), or they nitpicked some little thing you said even though the rest of the conversation went smoothly ... well, in my opinion, you're better off.

[johnfn]

Normally I'd agree, but I got passed up by a large number of fairly reasonable-seeming companies for arbitrary reasons like this. If it's just one or two, sure, maybe I'm better off. But after that it starts to have a real impact; it becomes harder to negotiate, maybe one of those companies would have been just fine anyways, etc...