Does a negative assessment of my technical skills to a 3rd party recruiter constitute defamation?

I recently had an interview with a major financial business in NYC. The interview was conducted by an employee of the firm. The work, if hired, would be on a contract basis as an independent contractor namely, corp. to corp.
The first meeting was a round one or two technical interviews. These “tech interviews” are and can be highly unstructured and very subjective. They’re often conducted poorly to the point of being potentially unjust. What’s most important, a candidate’s reputation is directly affected by his / her performance in these meetings. Especially, among recruiting firms like the one in the middle of this deal.
I conducted the interview satisfactorily, by my own estimation, noting questions asked, time elapsed, and the general tone / pace of the meeting. I have performed many technical interviews in my extensive career. I felt the nature of the questions asked were general in nature. This is not unusual for a round one interview, however. Something odd, that struck me was the interviewer tense used when describing the position. He initially described the role using the past tense wording. Even stranger, seemingly by Freudian slip each subsequent mention of the position also used past tense. I felt it odd enough to directly ask if the position had been filled, citing the frequent use of past tense phrases.
The meeting concluded on or around the time allotted and on a positive note. I left the meeting with the feeling that I’d be offered an invite for an in-person round two meeting. That was not the case, however. Instead, I received an email through the 3rd party recruiting firm saying, “they felt your experience with WPF and VSTO wasn’t up to the level they wanted.”
This is difficult to accept considering no questions were asked about VSTO at all. And, the WPF questions asked were answered satisfactorily. Despite the position of the interviewer the limited questions were NOT adequate to defame the extensive experience I have with these programming technologies. Technologies, by the way, that haven’t changed in decades. My question is does this constitution a defamation or other cause of action against the employee / company in a NY court or proper jurisdiction?