Job Rejection Sucks
The feeling of rejection is frankly quite awful. You spend hours writing and refining your application, attending assessment centres, travelling to interviews, and worrying every step of the way – only to be told that your potential employers won’t be continuing with your application any longer. It can be pretty defeating, especially if you give it your all and still get rejected from your dream job. However, rejection can serve as an excellent learning exercise. Here are our 5 top tips for finding the silver lining in the cloud which is job rejection.
Face the Rejection
It can be very tempting to shy away from an entire application once you’ve been rejected. After all, why spend any thought on an unsuccessful application when you can start applying for something else?
The problem with this approach is that you’ll never learn what went wrong with your application, and perhaps won’t fully internalise the rejection. As painful as it may be, take a look at your application documents once you’re over the initial frustration or disappointment. Even if you can’t figure out why you’ve been rejected, facing rejection can help you come to terms with it. Then you can start to deal with it.
Find out What Went Wrong
Following from the last point, try and find out what went wrong with your application. It can be tempting to blame the rejection on bad luck, but this isn’t always the case. There’s always something to learn from an unsuccessful application – you just need to figure out what it is.
If possible, try and find the advertisement for the role that you applied for, and see how your application matches it. Did you demonstrate that you have all of the skills that the employer was looking for? If not, what was the reason? Was your application well-presented and easy to read, or was it full of spelling errors and formatting issues? Whatever the case, make sure that you identify the things that went wrong with your application. This means that you can learn how to correct them in the future.
Get Some Feedback
You can’t truly know what went wrong without getting some input from the people who judged your application. Thankfully, it is possible to receive feedback regarding your application. Upon notification of your unsuccessful application, send an email to the recruiters politely asking for some feedback on your application.
If you made it to the interview before being unsuccessful, the interviewers can provide some feedback as well, potentially over the phone or even on the same day as your interview. This information is extremely valuable, and can be the difference between a failed application and a successful one when it comes to your next interview.
Apply the Feedback to Your Next Application
Getting hold of feedback is one thing, but what’s equally important is applying it to your application so that it can be of use for the next job that you apply for. This may seem obvious, but many people receive feedback and never internalise it. This means that they don’t find a way to improve, and end up making the same mistakes in their next application. Make sure that you take all feedback on board, and spend some time improving.
Stay Positive
Finally, remember that not every job will suit you, and that it’s completely normal to be rejected from a job. Job rejection happens to so many people that you shouldn’t feel inferior just because you’ve been rejected from one or even many jobs. It’s important to remain as positive as possible throughout all of your applications. Firstly, a negative attitude might impact your motivation when applying for jobs, or could hurt your interview chances. For this reason, it pays to remain optimistic about the future. Secondly, becoming distraught due to unsuccessful applications can be bad for your physical and mental health, so it’s vital that you maintain a positive outlook.
From all of us at How2Become, we hope that you overcome your job rejection woes and are successful in your future applications!
